Harvesting Energy from Pavements

Abstract

Rapid Industrialization and Urbanization has amplified the dependency of Indian economy on import of fossil fuels such as Oil, petroleum, and Natural Gas for energy production. The excessive consumption of these fossil fuels is always associated with high greenhouse gas emissions which can affect the Climatic changes and ecological balance of the country. Hence, the need for innovative technologies to harvest energy has increased. Energy Harvesting or Scavenging is the process of capturing the wasted energy from naturally occurring energy sources, accumulating and storing for later use. India has the second largest road network in the world. Hence, connecting road network can prove to be beneficial if used as a source of energy. From pavements two sources of energy can be identified viz., solar energy and mechanical energy. Technologies dealing with solar energy are – Asphalt Solar Collector combined with piping system, photovoltaic cells and thermoelectric Generators. Technology dealing with Mechanical energy is by using embedded piezoelectric crystals. The primary focus of this paper is to quantify the electric voltage generated by a bituminous specimen for different positions of piezoelectric crystals for same impact loading. The harvested energy can be used for small scale road applications like road furniture, lighting, roadside advertising or railway and airport signage where the installation and maintenance cost are low.