Electromagnetic energy harvesting using magnetic levitation architectures: A review

Abstract

Motion-driven electromagnetic energy harvesters have the ability to provide low-cost and customizable electric powering. They are a well-suited technological solution to autonomously supply a broad range of high-sophisticated devices. This paper presents a detailed review focused on major breakthroughs in the scope of electromagnetic energy harvesting using magnetic levitation architectures. A rigorous analysis of twenty-one design congurations was made to compare their geometric and constructive parameters, optimization methodologies and energy harvesting performances. This review also explores the most relevant models (analytical, semi-analytical, empirical and nite element method) already developed to make intelligible the physical phenomena of their transduction mechanisms. The most relevant approaches to model each physical phenomenon of these transduction mechanisms are highlighted in this paper. Very good agreements were found between experimental and simulation tests with deviations lower than 15%. Moreover, the external motion excitations and electric energy harvesting outputs were also comprehensively compared and critically discussed. Electric power densities up to 8 mW/cm 3 (8 kW/m 3 ) have already been achieved; for resistive loads, the maximum voltage and current were 43.4 V and 150 mA, respectively, for volumes up to 235 cm 3 . Results highlight the potential of these harvesters to convert mechanical energy into electric energy both for large-scale and small-scale applications. Moreover, this paper proposes future research directions towards eciency maximization and minimization of energy production costs.

Study in circular auxetic structures for efficiency enhancement in piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting

“…Energy harvesting from the ambient vibration in different environments is an active line of research. Conversion of the vibration energy to electricity is mainly achievable through three popular methods namely electromagnetic [14][15][16] , triboelectric [17][18][19] and piezoelectric [20][21][22][23] . Piezoelectric elements have been widely utilized in vibration energy harvesting so far [24][25][26] , however, the low power and low efficiency of the PZT based energy harvesters is still a main challenge.…”

Bio‐Derived Natural Materials Based Triboelectric Devices for Self‐Powered Ubiquitous Wearable and Implantable Intelligent Devices

“…In order to efficiently collect the wide range of various environmental mechanical energies, such as walking, tapping, sliding etc., four modes of TENGs have been proposed and demonstrated, including lateral sliding mode, [56][57][58][59] vertical contact-separation mode, [45,52,60,61] freestanding mode, [62][63][64] and single-electrode mode. [24,48,50,65,66] Compared with traditional mechanical energy harvesting devices based on mechanisms such as piezoelectric [19,67,68] and electromagnetic effects, [69][70][71] TENG has its advantages regarding the versatile material selection, lightweight, flexibility, low cost, high conversion efficiency, etc. [25,33,34] The electrical outputs can be used to power small electronics (such as an electronic watch, LEDs, calculator, small sensors) [72][73][74][75][76][77] or as the sensing signal in self-powered sensor systems.…”

Theoretical and Experimental Investigations of a Pseudo-Magnetic Levitation System for Energy Harvesting

“…The measurement results show that the variation in power generated is relatively significant due to the variation in walking and running gait styles as well as the angle of attachment of the device. The relevant studies that report the major achievements in the magnetic levitation harvesters in paper [30] are presented. The authors proposed four selection criteria for the harvester comparison: (1) two or more magnets (and one or more coils), (2) including at least one levitating magnet (and one or more fixed magnets), (3) executes axial motions of the levitating magnet(s) and 4architectures with mono-stable electromagnetic-induction configurations.…”