KAIST Succeeds in Real-Time CO2 Monitoring Without Batteries or External Power

Summary

< (From left) Master's Student Gyurim Jang, Professor Kyeongha Kwon > KAIST (President Kwang Hyung Lee) announced on June 9th that a research team led by Professor Kyeongha Kwon from the School of Electrical Engineering, in a joint study with Professor Hanjun Ryu's team at Chung-Ang University, has developed a self-powered wireless carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring system. This innovative system harvests fine vibrational energy from its surroundings to periodically measure CO2 concentrations. This breakthrough addresses a critical need in environmental monitoring: accurately understanding "how much" CO2 is being emitted to combat climate change and global warming. While CO2 monitoring technology is key to this, existing systems largely rely on batteries or wired power system, imposing limitations on installation and maintenance. The KAIST team tackled this by creating a self-powered wireless system that operates without external power. The core of this new system is an "Inertia-driven Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG)" that converts vibrations (with amplitudes ranging from 20-4000 ㎛ and frequencies from 0-300 Hz) generated by industrial equipment or pipelines into electricity. This enables periodic CO2 concentration measurements and wireless transmission without the need for batteries. < Figure 1. Concept and configuration of self-powered wireless CO2 monitoring system using fine vibration harvesting (a) System block diagram (b) Photo of fabricated system prototype > The research team successfully amplified fine vibrations and induced resonance by combining spring-attached 4-stack TENGs. They achieved stable power production of 0.5 mW under conditions of 13 Hz and 0.56 g acceleration. The generated power was then used to operate a CO2 sensor and a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) system-on-a-chip (SoC). Professor Kyeongha Kwon emphasized, "For efficient environmental monitoring, a system that can operate continuously without power limitations is essential." She explained, ...