Scientists find a way to generate electricity through vibrations
Filed under: Data Center, Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring
Scientists have discovered how to make electricity by converting low-frequency vibrations, like simple body movements, the beating of the heart or movement of the wind into energy. The discovery could enable you to charge your iPod or BlackBerry with a wave of your hand. According to researchers at the School of Material Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the findings could also be used for environmental monitoring.
The vibrations from movement is converted into electricity using zinc oxide nanowires. The nanowires generate an electric current when subjected to mechanical stress, according to the American Chemical Society. The researchers presented their findings at the ACS’s annual meeting in March.
The nanowires can be grown on a wide range of surfaces including metals, ceramics, polymers and fabrics.
The researchers believe the discovery could be used by the military to generate electricity for sensors and communication devices when they are far from energy sources, but what is the application for environmental monitoring?
For our purposes, we monitor the environment to ensure that it remains the same so that equipment is not adversely affected by a dramatic change in temperature, for example. In theory, we could use the nanowires to convert the ambient vibrations of the room into electricity and use that to charge the monitoring equipment. Or perhaps set a threshold for the ambient vibrations so that a change in the environment would kick the nanowires to turning on an alarming device.
The nanowires reminded me of metal whiskers or zinc whiskers, a data center manager’s worst enemy. They’re tiny hairs that grow spontaneously on metal surfaces and can cause short circuits. According to Wikipedia, zinc whiskers have been responsible for increased systems failure rates in computer server rooms. They can grow underneath zinc electroplated floor tiles used in raised floors due to the friction when they’re walked on. They can break off disk drives causing head crashes or bearing failures.
They’re a data center manager’s worst nightmare because zinc whiskers wouldn’t be the first thing that would spring to mind when faced with a systems crash in the server room.