Catalan Leyre, Garacochea Amaia, Casi Alvaro, Araiz Miguel, Aranguren Patricia, Astrain David
Department of Engineering, Institute of Smart Cities, Public University of Navarre, 31006 Pamplona, Spain.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Aug 27;20(17):4839. doi: 10.3390/s20174839.
Although there is an important lack of commercial thermoelectric applications mainly due to their low efficiency, there exist some cases in which thermoelectric generators are the best option thanks to their well-known advantages, such as reliability, lack of maintenance and scalability. In this sense, the present paper develops a novel application in order to supply power to volcanic monitoring stations, making them completely autonomous. These stations become indispensable in any volcano since they are able to predict eruptions. Nevertheless, they present energy supply difficulties due to the absence of the power grid, the remote access, and the climatology. As a solution, this work has designed a new integral system composed of thermoelectric generators with high efficiency heat exchangers, and its associated electronics, developed thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Thus, the heat emitted from volcanic fumaroles is transformed directly into electricity with thermoelectric generators with passive heat exchangers based on phase change, leading to a continuous generation without moving parts that powers different sensors, the information of which is emitted via LoRa. The viability of the solution has been demonstrated both at the laboratory and at a real volcano, Teide (Canary Islands, Spain), where a compact prototype has been installed in an 82 °C fumarole. The results obtained during more than five months of operation prove the robustness and durability of the developed generator, which has been in operation without maintenance and under all kinds of meteorological conditions, leading to an average generation of 0.54 W and a continuous emission over more than 14 km.
尽管由于效率低下，商业热电应用存在重大不足，但在某些情况下，热电发电机因其众所周知的优势，如可靠性、无需维护和可扩展性，仍是最佳选择。从这个意义上说，本文开发了一种新颖的应用，为火山监测站供电，使其完全自主运行。这些监测站在任何火山中都不可或缺，因为它们能够预测火山喷发。然而，由于没有电网、地处偏远以及气候条件等因素，它们面临能源供应困难。作为解决方案，这项工作设计了一种新的集成系统，该系统由高效热交换器的热电发电机及其相关电子设备组成，借助物联网（IoT）技术得以开发。这样，火山喷气孔散发的热量通过基于相变的被动热交换器的热电发电机直接转化为电能，实现无运动部件的持续发电，为不同传感器供电，传感器信息通过LoRa发送。该解决方案的可行性已在实验室和西班牙加那利群岛的泰德火山（Teide）实地得到验证，在那里一个紧凑型原型已安装在温度为82°C的喷气孔中。超过五个月的运行期间获得的结果证明了所开发发电机的稳健性和耐用性，该发电机在无需维护的情况下，在各种气象条件下运行，平均发电量为0.54 W，信号持续传输超过14公里。
