Fabrication and characterization of flow harvester

This paper includes design and construction process of a small energy harvester which generates electrical power from flow of water inside a pipeline as well as air flow from any ambient sources like exhaust gases from vehicles and air coolers. The flow harvester (FH) is consists of two Neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnet which is placed inside a plastic body as a rotor and copper coil having diameter of 0.1 mm is used to make the generator coil and a handmade turbine from waste plastic is used to feed purpose. When the flow speed of water is 0.36 m/s, it gives 56 V peak-to-peak AC output voltage and 18.1 V root-mean-square (rms) voltage while number of coil turn is 1800. In this experiment it was found that maximum DC output voltage of 16.5 V against 2000 Ω load resistance. The flow harvester has generated 276 mW power at 400 Ω load resistance. This FH can harvest energy from the waste flow in household activities to power the miniature electronic devices.