Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In today’s world, energy storage has become a critical issue in energy generation and harvesting technologies. As a result, research efforts in the sustainable energy discipline have consistently focused on the generation of energy from environmentally-friendly sources. Recently, a fundamentally new technology, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), has been demonstrated for its unique merits that include considerable output power, high efficiency, and cost-effective materials. There is a significant body of research focusing on designing TENG; however, there are no guidelines for developing improved TENG designs and structures. To address this challenge, this work introduces TENG design guidelines experimental and computational designs. Furthermore, this dissertation has two primary objectives: (1) to develop accurate 3D multi-physics finite element model (FEA) and (2) to perform a detailed techno-economic life cycle assessment. The developed FEA is used to determine appropriate TENG geometries offering an optimal efficiency for such a design. Experimentally, different case studies are developed for water wave, and wind energy harvesting. Regarding water wave energy, a duck-shaped TENG is proposed to achieve an instantaneous output power up to 1.366 W.m-2. As for wind energy, TENG and Darrieus conventional turbines are compared, with results predicting the unique advantages offered by TENG at low rotation speed. Moreover, inspired by the hummingbird-wing structure, we proposed a TENG design that attained 1.5 W m-2 peak electrical output. In addition, an 11 life cycle environmental metrics are determined. The environmental impact of the selected TENGs is lower compared to traditional photovoltaics technologies. Moreover, The Levelized Cost of Electricity of selected TENGs is also very sensitive to the module efficiency and is expected to be lower than that of other energy technologies if the modules’ efficiencies and lifetimes exceed 25% and 15 years, respectively.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Abdelsalam Ahmed
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2909735145