Energy Harvesting from Fluid Flow in Water Pipelines for Smart Metering Applications

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper a rotational, radial-flux energy harvester incorporating a three-phase generation principle is presented for converting energy from water flow in domestic water pipelines. The energy harvester together with a power management circuit and energy storage is used to power a smart metering system installed underground making it independent from external power supplies or depleting batteries. The design of the radial-flux energy harvester is adapted to the housing of a conventional mechanical water flow meter enabling the use of standard components such as housing and impeller. The energy harvester is able to generate up to 720 mW when using a flow rate of 20 l/min (fully opened water tab). A minimum flow rate of 3 l/min is required to get the harvester started. In this case a power output of 2 mW is achievable. By further design optimization of the mechanical structure including the impeller and magnetic circuit the threshold flow rate can be further reduced.

Inkjet 3D Printed Miniature Water Turbine Energy Harvester-Flow Meter for Distributed Measurement Systems

“…Dimensions of our harvester are: outside diameter 25.4 mm and 14 mm length. Thus the device is 8 time smaller that presented in [4] and tree times smaller in comparison to [5], but density of power generated by the harvester is almost at the same level. Harvester have also two times lower "starting" water flow, 1.4 L/min in comparison to 3 L/min from [4].…”

“…Almost similar concept have been presented in positions [4,5] but our solution is based on the process of 3D printing of parts of the harvester. Dimensions of our harvester are: outside diameter 25.4 mm and 14 mm length.…”

Reliability or Sustainability

“…More importantly, our scheduling algorithm (including power management) can ensure the sustainable operation of the system. In fact, there is an increasing interest in developing more efficient water flow energy harvester [Pobering and Schwesinger 2008;Hoffmann et al 2013;Morais et al 2008]. In addition, optimization for energy harvesting networks is an emerging hot research area [Sudevalayam and Kulkarni 2011;Gu and He 2010;Huang and Neely 2013;Yang et al 2013;Liu et al 2011;Liu et al 2010].…”

Power Source for Wireless Sensors in Pipes

“…Additionally, electromagnetic conversion was presented in Refs. [11,12]. Electromagnetic harvesters loose not only efficiency with shrinking dimensions, they require a relative large movement of a magnet to a coil, or vice versa, too.…”