An invention by Asst.Prof. Fatih ÖZALP, our faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, titled “Concrete Roads and Grounds Harvesting Energy” has been patented. The patent was registered by Turkish Patent and Trademark Office on October 21, 2021.
The rapid depletion of oil, coal, natural gas and other non-renewable energy resources around the world and the increasing demand for supply increase the need for renewable energy. The project aims to meet this need and to achieve energy conservation by harvesting the energy caused by vibration on concrete roads or floors. While a very small part of the energy needed for highways is converted into motion energy, which acts as the main task in transportation, a large part is dispersed into the environment in the form of sound, vibration, heat, etc. In order to increase the share of renewable energy in the final energy consumption and to ensure energy efficiency, the invention harvests the energy wasted during the movement of the vehicles. Energy harvesting is the process of capturing the naturally existing energy in the environment, converting it into energy for devices and storing it for later use. In this project, it was aimed to meet the requirements mentioned, to eliminate the disadvantages and to construct energy-harvesting concrete roads or floors for energy efficiency.
Thanks to the piezoelectric transducer system positioned in the slots formed on the concrete blocks of the roads or floors that are the subject of the invention, it is aimed to harvest energy from the loads of the vehicles passing over them. This paved the way for the use of clean energy technologies by converting mechanical energy, which is not considered to be idle on the roads, and resulting from the passage of vehicles, into electrical energy. Currently fossil fuels etc. It has been ensured that an alternative, innovative, ecological and renewable energy source is obtained from the energy sources that are obtained with methods but have undesirable effects such as greenhouse gas emissions to the environment. In this way, it was aimed to reduce the consumption of harvested energy and fossil fuels, and to prevent carbon emissions caused by electricity production equivalent to the estimated harvestable energy.
We congratulate our faculty member and wish him continued success.
