Research On Flexible Seaweed Structure Inspired Triboelectric Nanogenerator For Wave Energy Harvesting

With the deepening of human’s understanding of the strategic position of the ocean,the development of ocean resources,and the value of ocean scientific research,countries around the world have added their attention to the ocean to a level which has never been.Smart ocean is the main trend of future development.Although some important tasks such as ocean resource surveys,ocean environment monitoring,and sea area safety assurance can be accomplished through satellites,ships,and submarines,none of these methods can complete these tasks for a long time,at close range,seamlessly,and in real time.The advent of the Internet of Things has solved this technical problem,and ocean wireless sensor networks have provided possible solutions for accomplishing these important tasks.The wireless sensor network under waves mainly uses sound waves as the physical carrier for wireless transmission.It collects information through various static and dynamic sensor nodes scattered in the broad wave domain.It integrates data acquisition,transmission,processing and fusion functions.It is distributed intelligence.Network system.However,replacing batteries used in widely distributed ocean sensors has undoubtedly become a huge workload.Therefore,wave energy collection technology has become the preferred method to solve this problem.Triboelectric nanogenerator is a new type of energy harvesting technology that uses friction to couple electricity and electrostatic induction to convert mechanical energy in the environment into stored electrical energy.It can supply power for microelectronic devices and has been widely used in chemistry,medicine,biological research and other fields.Because of its low-frequency energy collection and high output characteristics,easy preparation and low cost,triboelectric nanogenerator have been used to collect wave energy.In this,paper,a flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator is proposed based on the principle of vertical contact separation triboelectric nanogenerator,which can be used to collect wave energy.By studying the working principle of the flexible seaweed friction nanogenerator,the V-Q-x relationship equation of the triboelectric nanogenerator is established,and the factors that may affect the characteristics of this triboelectric nanogenerator are studied.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:First,through theoretical and experimental analysis,a flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator is designed,and related experimental studies are conducted to verify that it can collect wave energy.According to the theory of vertical contact-separation triboelectric nanogenerator model,the theory of flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator was studied,and the design of flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator device was designed and fabricated.Secondly,this paper derives the formula of the motion characteristics of the flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator in ocean wave environment,and conducts fluid-structure coupling simulation.It can be obtained from the simulation results that when other conditions remain unchanged,the degree of deformation increases with the increase of the relative flow velocity caused by the amplitude and frequency.As the length increases,the degree of deformation increases.As the Young’s modulus increases,the degree of deformation becomes smaller.Third,this paper studies the relevant factors and conditions that affect the output performance of the flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator,such as amplitude,frequency,its own size,Young’s modulus,and salt content in the environment.The results show that as the amplitude and frequency increase,the output performance will gradually increase,and the change in Young’s modulus and size does not necessarily result in an increase in its output.Due to the good sealing during the preparation process,its output performance is not affected by salinity.In the parallel study of multiple sets of seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator,the effect of the number of parallels and the parallel spacing on the output performance was explored.The results show that the parallel output performance increases with the increase in the number of parallels and the parallel spacing.Finally,in order to study its output performance,the seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator is connected to the designed collection circuit to carry out the load characteristic experiment and charging experiment.Under simulated ocean wave conditions,the maximum output power is 0.91 W/m3 when the external resistance is 10 MΩ.It takes about 3 minutes to charge a 47 μF capacitor to about 3 V.This also verifies that the flexible seaweed structure triboelectric nanogenerator has good performance of collecting wave energy,and has great development value in the future intelligent ocean Internet of Things.