Electricity from air flow

Who can deny importance of electricity in our lives?

We are so dependent on electricity. It has significant impact on our economies too. Media proliferates with energy news. For example, it is possible to see at least an article almost in every news paper or a news piece on TVs in different form and shape in different parts of the globe. And needless to say google has 13,300,000 entries on this word. The most discussed feature about electricity is production of it with green principles. In other words to make it environment friendly is itself now an industry!

In this post, I’d like to introduce a new inventive approach undertaken by a group of researchers at the City College of New York. They are developing a new way to generate power for planes and automobiles based on materials known as piezoelectrics, which convert the kinetic energy of motion into electricity.

I cannot go into technical details here however am linking the abstract of the paper titled “Harvesting energy in the wake of a circular cylinder using piezoelectric materials” for those who are interested in mechanics of this approach. The paper will be presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics will take place from November 22 to 24 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in USA.

In my view this is an important progress for our future. There are of course many other similar studies and work are underway in every part of the globe. Have you seen/heard similar futuristic inventions in clean energy?

Regards,
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz