Development of a

pizoelectric battery charger

         Harvest wasted vibrational energy and use it to charge a battery

Device attached to the motor of a small air compressor.

(Click on the picture to see a video of the device charge a battery.)

Overview/project goals:

In choosing a project, my goals were to do something unusual, possibly even patentable, that required that I learn something new, and which was design intensive, while simultaneously not fabrication intensive (being a design class project).  Having been a fabricator for many years previous, I know the importance of simple machines.  Not only is a simple machine cheaper and easier to manufacture, but a machine with fewer parts has fewer parts to break.  I am also excited about the prospect of multipurpose machines, and, consequently, my interest in piezoelectric materials, otherwise known as “electroactive materials” or  “smart materials.”  In this project, I use a piezoelectric material, lead zirconate titanate (PZT) as a generator .

The main goal of the project I chose to tackle is to charge a battery using the wasted energy of motion.  The air compressor in the photos is nothing to the device but a vibration source.  The real device, a piezoelectric generator, is attached to the underside of the sheet metal.

Romy Fain

romy@berkeley.edu

Comments/questions?  Contact me:

By Romy Fain

Mechanical Engineering/Materials Science

University of California, Berkeley