Harvesting Wind Energy by a Triboelectric Nanogenerator for an Intelligent High-Speed Train System

Abstract

The operation cost of an intelligent high-speed train system is greatly increased by the enormous energy demand of large-scale signal and sensor networks. However, the wind energy generated by high-speed trains is completely neglected. Herein, a wind-energy-harvesting device, which is based on an elastic rotation triboelectric nanogenerator (ER-TENG), is fabricated to harvest the wind energy generated by high-speed moving trains and power the relevant signal and sensing devices. Due to the significant decrease in friction force resulting from reasonable material selection and elastic structure design, the energy-harvesting efficiency of an ER-TENG is doubled and the durability is increased by 4 times compared to the same characteristics of a conventional rotation sliding triboelectric nanogenerator (RS-TENG). Our findings not only provide an in situ energy-harvesting pattern for an intelligent high-speed rail system by recovering the otherwise wasted wind energy generated by high-speed trains but also offer a potential strategy for large-scale wind energy harvesting by TENGs.