Self-Powered Smart Sensors in the Management of Water Infrastructures

The exploitation of water resources requires infrastructures with characteristics of diversified complexity, wide geographic coverage and difficult to access. The water cycle includes processes for water abstraction, transportation, storage, distribution, and wastewater treatment and disposal. Wireless smart sensor networks are essential in the optimization and integrated management of these infrastructures. Energy availability at the sensor node is a necessary condition for the success of a wireless smart sensor network. Harvesting energy from sensor’s node environment allows it to operate without energy restrictions, enhancing its usage. Three energy harvest solutions specially adapted to water systems are proposed. The kinetic energy of vibrations induced in water pipes, and converted by electromagnetic or piezoelectric transducers is one of the proposed solutions. Another solution uses a thermoelectric generator that produces electrical energy using the Seebeck effect from the temperature difference between a phase-change material, used to store solar thermal energy, and the water in a pipeline used as the heat sink.