A microscopic wind turbine, which converts even the slightest air movement generated while walking into energy. It is the idea of a Chinese researcher to have the smartphone always charged.
Is the smartphone always empty when it is needed? Does the headset turn off in the middle of a conversation? These small technological glitches could soon become a thing of the past thanks to the wearable wind turbine developed by a team of Chinese researchers.
REFILL ... WITH AIR. Ya Yang and his colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Nanoernergy have created a small device that can generate energy by simply moving the air while walking. The current, stored in a common battery, can be used to recharge a wide range of electronic devices.
Unlike common wind turbines, which generate electric current using also magnets and solenoids, Yang's is much smaller and simpler. It is made up of two plastic strips inserted in a tube (as you can see in the short animation that follows) which, when the air passes by, come into contact with each other, generating static electricity. This energy is then captured and made available to power sensors and other small devices.
JUST A BREATH. To work, the miniturbine needs ... little: a light breeze of 1.6 meters per second of speed (equal to about 5 km / h) is enough to start the generation of current. To get the best, however, you need to work harder: the ideal conditions, in fact, are obtained with an air flow from 4 to 8 meters per second, or between 14.5 and 29 km / h, which are the speeds that they can only be reached with a quick run on foot or with a "brilliant" ride by bike.
The search, however, is only at the beginning: at the moment the amount of current generated allows just to turn on a handful of LEDs. Further studies will make the mini turbine powerful enough to power a smartphone and a careful assessment of the device's resistance to wear and atmospheric agents will be needed. But the researchers think big and are already trying to figure out how to leverage their research to evolve traditional wind turbines.