Time: April. 9th, 2018
Source: Institute of New Energy Technology in the College of Information Science and Technology
Publisher: JNU News Center

Prof. Tang Qunwei of the Institute of New Energy Technology in JNU's College of Information Science and Technology published a research paper titled Generators to harvest ocean wave energy through electro kinetic principle on March 17 in the Nano Energy, the top journal in the international energy field to show the ways for harvesting ocean wave energy.

It is a challenge to harvest ocean wave energy by electrokinetic principle. We present here film-type generators made of carbon for wave energy harvest. The electrical signals arise from charge transportation along percolating channels driven by moving electric double-layer boundary at generator/seawater interfaces. Both voltage and current outputs are maximized by optimizing carbon dosage, wave frequency, hoisting angle and seawater temperature, producing a voltage of > 20 mV and a current of > 10 microamp from a 15 cm2-sized generator. We illustrate the electricity can be scaled up through series and parallel connections of multiple generators. Upon persistently rushing by waves, these film-type generators are stable over several hours. This approach to ocean wave energy harvest provides new opportunities for unprecedented low-investment, scalable power outputs and high stability.

Tang is the project leader and the first author is Tan Jin, a postgraduate student. This research is supported and funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Program No.61774139, 21503202, 61604143).

Tang is an introduced high-level talent who devotes to the research of development and utilization of new solar cells and marine resources over the long-term. He has published 130 SCI research papers (including 102 papers in JCR Q1) in the international material and chemical journals last five years as the first author or the project leader, demonstrating his international influence in the solar cell field.

Link to paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285518301733