Highly Integrated Planar Airflow Energy Harvester for Self-Powered Air Quality Monitoring

In smart cities, air quality monitoring is essential to maintain the citizens in good health. In order to acquire accurate data, numerous sensor nodes must be deployed. However, the use of batteries to supply energy to these sensors does not seem suitable. In recent studies, ambient mechanical energy harvesting from Triboelectric Nanogenerators (TENGs) have gained in efficiency, while they kept their simplicity in terms of design. In this contribution, a highly integrated planar airflow energy harvester is presented as an opportunity of using permanent and constant city airflows. This device can produce power for a wide range of airflow velocities. A maximum power of 4.52 mW RMS was observed at 10 m.s−1. The perspective to supply a connected object for air quality monitoring is considered. The results show that from a 5.63 m.s−1 airflow, our energy harvester can achieve the object energy budget (702 mJ) in 15.74 minutes. This approach is promising for exploiting the available energy in the city and concurrently monitoring its air quality.