=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3058/paper7
|storemode=property
|title=Energy Generation Using Bombax Ceiba Fibres Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3058/Paper-020.pdf
|volume=Vol-3058
|authors=Jaspreet Kaur,Ravinder Singh Sawhney,Harminder Singh
}}
==Energy Generation Using Bombax Ceiba Fibres Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3058/Paper-020.pdf
Energy Generation using Bombax Ceiba Fibres based Triboelectric
Nanogenerator
Jaspreet Kaur1, Ravinder S. Sawhney1 and Harminder Singh2
1
Department of Electronics Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Grand Trunk Road,Amritsar, India
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Guru Nanak Dev University, Grand Trunk Road,Amritsar, India
Abstract
Triboelectric nanogenerators are promising sources of energy that can harvest energy from
variety of materials. Bombax ceiba also known as silk cotton tree has white fibres which are
present in its ovary shaped fruit. This paper proposed fruit fibres-based contact separation
mode triboelectric nanogenerator which is fabricated in combination with PTFE. Manual
tapping at approximately 4Hz has generated sufficient power that can power 62 green LEDs
which shows that this combination has the capability to produce 124V. Also, this material is
highly electropositive in nature as compared to PTFE. Thus, variety of waste materials can be
explored that can be utilised to harvest green energy. The power exploited from such
materials can be used to run numerous small devices especially in monitoring human health
systems or remote sensing.
Keywords 1
Natural material, Triboelectric effect, Green energy, Energy Harvesting
1. Introduction
Triboelectric nanogenerators are the simple and easy way to harvest mechanical energy to
electrical energy using two basic principles that are electrostatic induction and contact
electrification[1]. According to this, whenever two different materials having different
electron affinities are brought in contact, it results in the production of charges on their
surfaces and through induction electrodes collects this charge. So, material selection plays a
vital role in the current or voltage production in TENG[2]. As there are numerous research
papers in which synthetic polymers were used for production of current/voltage and energy
was harvested from various sources or motions[3]–[10] But recycling of these polymers and
their non-biodegradable nature made researchers to explore new materials that solve these
problems. So various natural materials based TENG was proposed by several researchers and
range of voltage was generated. Feng et al. harvested the energy from green leaves and their
powder which produced 430V and 15µA voltage and current respectively. Further this TENG
was modified by using poly-L-lysine (PLL) in the leaf powder that enhanced the performance
to 1000V voltage production[11]. Zhong and his group prepared fully biodegradable TENG
using chitin (from carb or shrimp), silk fiber (from cocoon), egg white (from eggs) and rice
paper (from wheat or rice) and also proposed a tribo series for these materials[12].
Researchers also proposed the relationship between cellulose content present in material used
for charge generation and the output voltage produced. It was concluded that the material
with more carbohydrate content resulted in more voltage creation but role of roughness of
surface was also important[13]. Variety of leaves such as Hosta leaf, L. Chinese, Populous
International Conference on Emerging Technologies: AI, IoT, and CPS for Science & Technology Applications, September 06–07, 2021,
NITTTR Chandigarh, India
EMAIL: gill_jas8@hotmail.com (A. 1); sawhney.ece@gndu.ac.in(A. 2); harminder10@gmail.com (A. 3)
ORCID: 0000-0001-7127-5333 (A. 1); 0000-0001-7892-0825 (A.2);0000-0002-0829-2154 (A. 3)
©2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
leaf etc. werealso explored for the TENG fabrication and range of voltage was generated[14].
Along with these, dog hair[15], egg shell membrane[16], spider silk[17], orange peel[18],
rose petal[19] etc. based TENGs were also proposed by researchers. This paper proposed a
TENG fabricated from cotton like white fibers which are collected from bombax ceiba tree as
one active material and PTFE as another active material.
2. Materials and TENG setup
Bombax ceiba is deciduous tree which is an important medicinal plant and mostly grows
in tropical and subtropical regions of India. It belongs to a family known as Bombacaceae
which represents silk cotton tree[20]. It grows up to 40 meters in height and it bears flowers
in the months of January to march. Its fruit is ovary shaped, 5 valved and seed are embedded
with white silky fibres[21] as shown in figure 1. Theses fibres are collected and washed with
DI water for several times and dried at room temperature overnight. Further, these fibres are
used as charge generating material and applied on aluminum tape which acts as an electrode.
Other material is Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is a flexible synthetic polymer, is
applied on electrode and connecting wires are attached to these electrodes. The full setup
diagram for TENG fabrication is described in figure 1.
The working mechanism is such that both materials are placed facing each other having
electrodes on their back which are further connected to connecting wires to complete the
circuit. Initially when both materials are pressed against each other it results in production of
charge on their surfaces because of different electron affinities. But the charge so produced is
equal so no potential difference is created. Further when this pressure is released, the
potential gradient appears and consequently current will flow in the outer circuit. This
gradient tries to achieve the equilibrium with increase in distance and once this balance is
achieved, the current flow ceases. Up to this one peak of output is generated and next but
opposite peak is observed when force is applied on these active layers and brought in contact.
Thus, ac output is generated from the TENG that can be stored or rectified and utilized in any
application. The working of contact separation mode TENG using Bombax ceiba and PTFE
is described in figure 2.
Figure 1: Fabrication process of contact separation mode TENG
Figure 2: Working mechanism of TENG
3. Results and Discussions
To study the functional groups, present in bombax ceiba fibres, FTIR using Agilent Canny
630 is performed and result is shown in figure 3a. The prominent peak at 3339.7 cm-1
represents the presence of stretched O-H bond while C-H group is denoted by peak at 2922.2
cm-1. Further peaks at 1729.5 cm-1 and 1595.3 cm-1 signifies the presence of carbonyl group
(-C=O) and carboxyl group respectively. Stretched mode of carbonyl aldehyde group is
observed at 1237.5 cm-1 and stretched C-O group at 1028.7 cm-1. The presence of carboxyl
group, which is an electropositive material as mentioned in tribo series, makes this material
to exhibit static charge when brought in contact with other material. In case of PTFE[15], the
presence of various modes of CF2 group are observed at prominent peaks of 1207.7, 1148,
633.6 and 499.5 cm-1 as shown in figure 3b.
Figure 3: FTIR a) Bombax Ceiba fibres b) PTFE
The output from TENG is observed using manual tapping at 4HZ frequency over the area
of 6x8 cm2. The bombax ceiba based layer is connected to negative probe of DSO (Keysight
EDUX 1002G) and PTFE to positive probe. When tapping is applied it is observed that this
combination has the capability to generate approximately 98V. Moreover, while pressing (p)
positive peak is observed and negative peak on releasing (r) as shown in inset figure 4. It is
concluded from the aforementioned reason that bombax ceiba fibres are more electropositive
as compared to PTFE. Lastly, the output voltage so produced from this combination is
utilized in powering green LEDs. The output collected from TENG is connected to array of
green LEDs which are arranged in series and when tapping is performed 62 LEDs are
powered as shown in figure 5. As each green LED requires 2V for its working, thus this
TENG has generated 62 x 2 = 124V.
Figure 4: Output observed from Bombax Ceiba and PTFE based TENG. Inset: enlarged version of one
peak.
Figure 5: a) Setup for powering LEDs b) Powered green LEDs
Thus, it can be concluded that the fibres of bombax ceiba fruit can be used for power
generation that is otherwise a waste material. This voltage produced can be changed to DC
voltage using rectifier and further utilized in powering small electronic devices through
capacitor.
To further extend this work, the material’s biodegradability should be tested so as to check
the time for which its content maintains its electron affinity. Another point is verifying the
durability of material so as to calculate the time for which it will provide constant output.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, a waste material based TENG is proposed that is prepared using Bombax
Ceiba fibres and PTFE. These fibres are available in the months of march and April and
appears like cotton. These fibres contain carboxyl group that makes it more electropositive
than PTFE. Also, this electropositive nature is verified by the output waveforms obtained
from DSO. Further the output voltage obtained from TENG was utilized to power 62 green
LEDs thus resulting in the production of 124V. Thus, this naturally available and eco-friendly
material can be utilized to harvest green energy that can run small electronic devices or
network of small IOT based sensors.
5. References
[1] F. R. Fan, Z. Q. Tian, and Z. Lin Wang, “Flexible triboelectric generator,” Nano
Energy, pp. 328–334, 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2012.01.004.
[2] Z. L. Wang, “Triboelectric nanogenerators as new energy technology for self-powered
systems and as active mechanical and chemical sensors,” ACS Nano, vol. 7, no. 11,
pp. 9533–9557, 2013, doi: 10.1021/nn404614z.
[3] T. C. Hou, Y. Yang, H. Zhang, J. Chen, L. J. Chen, and Z. Lin Wang, “Triboelectric
nanogenerator built inside shoe insole for harvesting walking energy,” Nano Energy,
2013, doi: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2013.03.001.
[4] B. Zhang et al., “Breath-based human–machine interaction system using triboelectric
nanogenerator,” Nano Energy, vol. 64, no. July, p. 103953, 2019, doi:
10.1016/j.nanoen.2019.103953.
[5] M. Wang et al., “Air-Flow-Driven Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Self-Powered
Real-Time Respiratory Monitoring,” ACS Nano, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 6156–6162, 2018,
doi: 10.1021/acsnano.8b02562.
[6] A. Pandey, P. Badoniya, and J. George, “Rotary triboelectric nanogenerators as a wind
energy harvester,” Int. J. Recent Technol. Eng., vol. 8, no. 2 Special Issue 7, pp. 321–
327, 2019, doi: 10.35940/ijrte.B1119.0782S719.
[7] C. Ning et al., “Washable textile-structured single-electrode triboelectric
nanogenerator for self-powered wearable electronics,” J. Mater. Chem. A, vol. 6, no.
39, pp. 19143–19150, 2018, doi: 10.1039/c8ta07784c.
[8] R. Hinchet et al., “Transcutaneous ultrasound energy harvesting using capacitive
triboelectric technology,” Science (80-. )., vol. 365, no. 6452, pp. 491–494, 2019, doi:
10.1126/science.aan3997.
[9] M. S. U. Rasel and J. Y. Park, “A sandpaper assisted micro-structured
polydimethylsiloxane fabrication for human skin based triboelectric energy harvesting
application,” Appl. Energy, 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.07.109.
[10] X. Pu et al., “Rotation sensing and gesture control of a robot joint via triboelectric
quantization sensor,” Nano Energy, vol. 54, pp. 453–460, 2018, doi:
10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.10.044.
[11] Y. Feng, L. Zhang, Y. Zheng, D. Wang, F. Zhou, and W. Liu, “Leaves based
triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and TENG tree for wind energy harvesting,” Nano
Energy, vol. 55, pp. 260–268, 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.10.075.
[12] W. Jiang et al., “Fully Bioabsorbable Natural-Materials-Based Triboelectric
Nanogenerators,” Adv. Mater., vol. 30, no. 32, pp. 1–10, 2018, doi:
10.1002/adma.201801895.
[13] S. K. Singh et al., “Seed Power: Natural Seed and Electrospun Poly(vinyl difluoride)
(PVDF) Nanofiber Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators with High Output Power
Density,” ACS Appl. Bio Mater., vol. 2, no. 8, pp. 3164–3170, 2019, doi:
10.1021/acsabm.9b00348.
[14] Y. Jie et al., “Natural Leaf Made Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Harvesting
Environmental Mechanical Energy,” Adv. Energy Mater., vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 1–7,
2018, doi: 10.1002/aenm.201703133.
[15] M. Singh, A. Sheetal, H. Singh, R. S. Sawhney, and J. Kaur, “Animal Hair-Based
Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG): A Substitute for the Positive Polymer Layer in
TENG,” J. Electron. Mater., 2020, doi: 10.1007/s11664-020-08031-y.
[16] J. Kaur, R. S. Sawhney, H. Singh, and M. Singh, “Electricity nanogenerator from egg
shell membrane: A natural waste bioproduct,” Int. J. Green Energy, vol. 17, no. 5, pp.
309–318, 2020, doi: 10.1080/15435075.2020.1727482.
[17] S. K. Karan et al., “Nature driven spider silk as high energy conversion efficient bio-
piezoelectric nanogenerator,” Nano Energy, vol. 49, no. May, pp. 655–666, 2018, doi:
10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.05.014.
[18] A. Gaur, S. Tiwari, C. Kumar, and P. Maiti, “Bio-waste orange peel and polymer
hybrid for efficient energy harvesting,” Energy Reports, vol. 6, pp. 490–496, 2020,
doi: 10.1016/j.egyr.2020.02.020.
[19] Y. Chen et al., “Triboelectri fi cation on natural rose petal for harvesting
environmental mechanical energy,” Nano Energy, vol. 50, no. May, pp. 441–447,
2018, doi: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.05.021.
[20] M. M. P. and A. K. S. C. Verma, S. Subhani, E. Vashishth, R. Singh, P. Pant,
“Comparative Phytochemical Study of Stem Bark Versus Small Branches of Bombax
Ceiba Linn Using Hptlc- Uv Detection Method,” World J. Pharm. Res., vol. 4, no. 4,
pp. 912–922, 2015.
[21] V. Rameshwar, D. Kishor, G. Siddharth, and G. Sudarshan, “Review Article A
Pharmacognostic and pharmacological overview on Bombax ceiba,” Sch. Acad. J.
Pharm., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 100–107, 2014.