Energy Harvesting for Powering Distributed and Autonomous Airflow Controllers of a Smart Local Exhaust Ventilation System

Abstract

This paper presents an airflow energy harvester in a local exhaust ventilation (LEV) system based on differential pressure between the inside and outside of the system to power the airflow controller of the system. This helps to realize a distributed system with fewer wiring requirements, which helps to reduce system costs and installation complexity. The energy requirement of the airflow controller was determined and an appropriate turbine design was selected. A prototype was built and tested with an airflow speed of 3.5–16 m/s in a test rig. The energy harvester can generate 0.2 – 20 W of power in the tested conditions, which is sufficient to meet the energy requirement of the LEV system.