Voltaic Shoe - Power The World Through Walking

Votes: 9
Views: 891

The industrial revolution brought about an explosion in exploring science and technology. It led to the improvement of the lives of millions, made travel time significantly shorter, and interconnected people on a global scale. As technology improved and its production increased, the world became a better place, but it came with a poisonous cost. The byproducts released with all the coal, and gases that were burned for power, to generate electricity, run the cars on the road, power our refrigerators, and more, started to kill our planet. The temperature started rising, with massive climate changes taking place across the globe. This fact has been known for decades, but only now are we seeing its effects. As it has been said before, the best time to fight climate change was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.

Consider an alternative energy generation method. A very simple solution that can leverage the growing population and generate enough power to keep all home electronics and gadgets powered: A charging shoe. This shoe will capture lost energy from a person as they walk, jog, run, or any movement the shoe is involved with. A very simple concept can be used to make this work: the Lorentz force law. It is well known that relative motion between a coil and a magnet will generate electricity. The magnitude of the voltage captured is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field that is interacting, the length of the conducting coil, and the speed of this relative motion. As the images attached show, fitting a 100 neodymium magnets produces a flux density of 0.76 Teslas at one millimeter away from the magnet’s surface. Individually these magnets have a flux density of 0.5 Teslas. Fashioning these into a Halbach array will increase the flux density almost 2 fold.

The prototype allows the generation of up to 2.5 volts in AC, with a rectifier converting this into just over 1.5 volts DC. This is enough to start charging any standard rechargeable Double A battery . Due to time and manufacturing restrictions, the prototype is only limited to 2.5 volts, but with more precise equipment and better magnet designs along with more coil turns, this number can easily be doubled or even tripled. Excess voltage can be converted to current using a small transformer for faster charging, reducing the number of steps needed for a full charge to less than half of 6000.

This charging system can be added to a wide range of shoes; from consumer, to construction, to formal, and much more. It's just a matter of designing the right aesthetics and comfort according to customer demand. By capturing wasted energy, every user can be a “generator” for their own power, charging their phones, laptops, and other low powered electrical appliances. If enough people buy such a product, the global demand for power generated through non-renewable methods will be reduced and every individual can contribute to accelerating renewable power sources.

Voting

Voting is closed!

  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Koushik Neogi
  • Type of entry:
    team
    Team members:
    Jacob Blaauw - Partner
  • Profession:
    Student
  • Koushik is inspired by:
    Currently global power demand is at an all time high and our methods of meeting this demand are tremendously toxic. Modern clean energy solutions are expensive and require specialized men and women to make a difference. With a shoe, anyone can make this difference.
  • Software used for this entry:
    FEMM (Finite Element Method Magnetics)
  • Patent status:
    none