Ocean wave and wind power harnessed by hybrid nanogenerator

Oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface and are a veritable one-stop-shop for renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, tide, salinity-gradient, and water waves. Traditional generators have attempted to harness the widespread and abundant power sources of wind and waves together but have suffered from high costs and low efficiencies due to their low frequency and chaotic nature.

However, wind and waves might at last be tamed by a hybrid energy harvester presented by Liu et al. based on a design for a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) the group first proposed over a decade ago. The novel TENG, with a wind-driven pump, uses a specialized charge self-shuttling mode to combine power from wind and waves.

“This work represents the first coupling of wind and wave energy in marine environments through charge pumping and self-shuttling modes, providing a new pathway for the synergistic development of clean and renewable energy,” said author Tao Jiang.

Improving on their previous model, the researchers’ system uses symmetrical conducive domains within the TENG group and optimizes two distinct types of charge shuttling based on the circuit connections. As a result, the charge self-shuttering TENG was able to increase shuttling charges by 11.8 times and achieve a much higher power density. Testing multiple units in parallel, the authors demonstrated the system’s practical application.

“I hope this work will expand the range of charge-shuttling mode TENGs, increasing their application potential not only in marine energy harvesting but also in providing new inspiration for efficient mechanical energy harvesting in other fields,” Jiang said.

Source: “Charge self-shuttling triboelectric nanogenerator based on wind-driven pump excitation for harvesting water wave energy,” by Shijie Liu, Xi Liang, Jiajia Han, Yuxue Duan, Tao Jiang, and Zhong Lin Wang, Applied Physics Reviews (2024). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0225737 .