Motivation
The modern era is facing problems regarding the supply of sources of energy, increasing energy costs and environmental problems associated to the use of traditional fossil fuels. Numerous methods and strategies have been made and done in order to solve the energy crisis as well as to protect the environment from further damage. Some of these methods and strategies include the development of renewable energy sources. These methods and strategies could greatly influence the progress of the society if it is used in technologies which are intensely common in the modern era such as the mobile phone. Mobile phone is used by most of the people in the planet and charging it could cost a lot of energy. One of the useful strategies to charge mobile phones is the use of energy harvesting methods such as the piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectric effect is a phenomenon or a concept of harvesting and storing small amount of electrical energy from ambient vibrations. The objective of this project is to evaluate and assess the use of piezoelectric effect in charging mobile phones. The project is important since it could greatly reduce the amount of energy consumed in charging mobile phones which is a common technology in the modern times. It could also influence the progress of the use of energy harvesting methods in modern technologies such as the mobile gadgets.
Background
Mobile gadgets such as cell phones, hand phones, iPhone, tablets and iPhone are becoming more and more available to common consumers (Ahmed et al., 2014). Mobile gadgets are devices which could be used to send and receive short messages and calls while moving from places to places. Mobile gadgets also used batteries as the main power source of the device. Some consumers consider the life-time of the batteries in choosing the model of the mobile gadget. In the modern era, the most advanced battery technology for mobile gadgets which are available in the market is the Lithium ion batteries (UKessays, 2015). However, it has only small amount of life-time and it became a problem for mobile gadget users. Mobile gadget users have to find charging points if they have important messages or calls and their battery runs down (Livingston & Hemalatha, 2014).
One major solution to the battery problem of mobile gadgets is the use of energy harvesting techniques. Some of the energies are unused such as vibrations due to the movement of the finger and vibrations produced by sounds. These types of mechanical energies could be harvested or recovered using piezoelectric material (Ahmed et al., 2014). The recovery of energy from unused sources through the direct piezoelectric effect has a simple mechanism which involves three major stages (UKessays, 2015). The first stage is the recovery or trapping of mechanical energy from the sources available. The second stage involves the conversion of mechanical energy into a useful electrical energy through the use of piezoelectric material as transducer. The last stage is the storing of electrical energy in the battery of the mobile gadget (Livingston & Hemalatha, 2014).
Various designs have been made by several experts in order to use the piezoelectric effect for charging mobile gadgets. The designs made by several experts have different efficiencies due to the two major factors which is the reliability of the piezoelectric material and the cost effectiveness of the design (Ahmed et al., 2014). The objective of this project is to design a cost effective and reliable mobile charging technology with the use of the piezoelectric effect. This project also opts to evaluate or to assess the design depending on the piezoelectric material to be used.
Reference
Ahmed, N., Zuber, K., Qaasim, M., & Wafee, H. (2014). Mobile Charger using piezoelectric effect. Rizvi College of Engineering, University of Mumbai.
Livingston, J. & Hemalatha, M.(2014). Charging an electronic gadget using piezoelectricity. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 7(7): 945-948
UKessays. (2015). Self-Charging Cellphones Using Piezoelectric Zno Nanowires Engineering Essay. UKessays.com. Retrieved from http://www.ukessays.com/essays/engineering/self-charging-cellphones-using-piezoelectric-zno-nanowires-engineering-essay.php.
