• Membrane Journal
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2024

As a promising method to address global water scarcity, sorbent-assisted water harvesting from air has shown great potential to deliver drinking water for inlands lacking traditional water sources. In this article, the recent studies of using metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as sorbents to harvest atmospheric water will be introduced. Compared to the other sorbent materials such as zeolites or silica-based materials, MOFs have shown prospective properties such as the water isotherm inflection points as low as ~10%, which are suitable for harvesting water at dry regions. Due to this property, recently, MOFs have been extensively adopted to develop practical water harvesting devices that can harvest water. Since atmospheric water is accessible anywhere and anytime in the world, this technology is expected to open a new avenue in terms of securing safe water for the future.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.263-263
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• 2007

In the future, self-contained sensors and processing units will need on-board, renewable power supplies to be truly autonomous. One way of supplying such power is through energy harvesting, processes by which ambient forms of energy are converted into electricity. One energy harvesting technique involves converting kinetic energy, in the form of vibrations, into electrical energy through the use of piezoelectric materials. Researchers are currently investigating how piezoelectric materials can be used to harvest power. This study examines the use of auxiliary structures, consisting of a mechanical fixture and a lead zirconate/lead titanate (PZT) piezoelectric element, which can be attached to any boundary conditions vibrating beam of the any boundary conditions. Adjusting various boundary conditions of these structures can maximize the strain induced in the attached PZT element and improve power output.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.6-11
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• 2008

Advances in low power design open the possibility to harvest energy from the environment to power electronic circuits. Electrical energy can be harvested from piezoelectric transducer. Piezoelectric materials can be used as mechanisms to transfer mechanical energy usually vibrating system into electrical energy that can be stored and used to power other devices. Micro- to milli-watts power can be generated from vibrating system. We developed definitive and analytical models to predict the power generated from a cantilever beam attached with piezoelectric transducer. Analytical models are pin-force method, enhanced pin-force method and Euler-Bernoulli method. Harmonic oscillations and random noise will be the two different forcing functions used to drive each system. It has been selected the best model for generating electric power based upon the analytical results obtained.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.867-872
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• 2010

Unused energy derived from sources in nature can be captured and stored for future use, for example, to recharge a battery or power a device; this process of capturing and storing energy is called energy harvesting. Extensive investigations are being carried out in order to use piezoelectricity to harvest the energy generated by body movements or machine vibrations. This paper presents a simple analytical model that describes the output voltage effectiveness of a Piezocomposite Generating Element (PCGE) from vibration and its experimental verification. PCGE is composed of carbon/epoxy, PZT, and glass/epoxy layers. During the manufacturing process, the stacked layers were cured at $177^{\circ}C$ in an autoclave, which created residual stresses in PCGE and altered the piezoelectric properties of the PZT layer. In the experiments, three kinds of lay-up configurations of PCGE were considered to verify the proposed prediction model and to investigate its capability to convert oscillatory mechanical energy into electrical energy. The predicted performance results are in good agreement with observed experimental ones.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.205-209
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• 2008

This research was carried out to elucidate the causes of fruit skin browning in 'Mansu' pear for the last 2 years. It was observed that skin browning was induced even by the small mechanical injury produced during grading and packing for the market supplies after harvest on the fruits of 'Mansu' pear. The incidences of fruit skin browning in pears treated with artificial mechanical injuries were investigated between 'Niitaka' and 'Mansu' pears. The results showed that fruits of 'Mansu' are more susceptible to skin browning than those of 'Niitaka', We also found that the epidermis of fruits in 'Mansu' pear was thinner than that of 'Niitaka', and that there was lower incidence of fruit browning in epidermis of pears with high chlorophyll content than those with low chlorophyll content. The skin browning in fruits could be considerably reduced by sorting and grading them wrapped with paper bags for the fruits of 'Mansu' pear.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.67-74
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• 2001

A field experiment was carried out to determine the effects of chemical/mechanical treatments at mowing on the field drying rate and hay quality of alfalfa(Medicago sativa L., cv. Vernal) and spring oats(Avena satvia L., cv. Swan). The chemical drying agent of 2% $K_2CO_3$, mechanical mower conditioning, and no treatment(control) were treated for hastening hay-making in the spring of 1997. The forages were harvested at early bloom stage in alfalfa and heading stage in oats. After field dry, square bales were made by hay baler, and the dry matter(DM) loss, visual estimation and nutritive value of hay were evaluated after storing two months. The field drying rates of alfalfa and oats were high at mechanical treatment, but the drying effectiveness of chemical agents alone was very low. With mower conditioning, the duration of field dry was shortened by 1 day compared with control. therefore, mower conditioning enhance the field drying rate of alfalfa and oats. The DM loss of alfalfa and oats hay was reduced by mechanical treatment, but the efficiency by chemical alone was low. The visual score(leafiness, green color, odor and softness) of hay at mechanical treatment was slightly higher than that of chemical and control. The nutritive value(ADF, NDF, in vitro digestibility, and relative feed value) of hay was also high with treatment of mechanical, but those of chemical alone were similar compared with control. The nutritive value of hay after two months in both alfalfa and oats was decreased when compared with at harvest.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.267-272
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• 2008

Energy harvesting from the vibration through the piezoelectric effect has been studied for powering the small wireless sensor nodes. As piezoelectric uni-morph cantilever structure can transfer low vibration to large displacement, this structure was commonly deployed to harvest electric energy from vibrations. Through our previous results, when stress was applied on the cantilever, stress was concentrated on the certain point of the ceramic of the cantilever. In this study, for miniaturing the energy harvester, we investigated how the size of ceramics and the stress distribution in ceramic affects energy harvester characteristics. Even though the area of ceramic was 28.6 % decreased from $10{\times}35{\times}0.5mm^3$ to $10{\times}25{\times}0.5mm^3$, both samples showed almost same maximum power of 0.45 mW and the electro-mechanical coupling factor ($K_{31}$) of 14 % as well. This result indicated that should be preferentially considered to generate high power with small size energy harvester.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.425-433
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• 2009

The developed final shattering machine for labor-saving mechanization of shattering of sesame consisted of input part, shattering part, re-shattering part for unshattered pod and pneumatic sorter. The bundle of sesame was held as upside down and fed into the machine continuously. Then, the fed bundle of sesame was shattered by side shock and agitation. The performance of shattering for the sun dried bundle of sesame of conventional manual work and final shattering machine was compared. Since the shattering ratio measured by the final machine was 97.2% at the first operation, in case of fully dried sesame by drying stand, the harvest of sesame can be completed by only one time shattering operation. The work hour per area of 10 a for the mechanical work and the manual work were 0.3 hour and 13.9 hour, respectively. The total shattering ratio of the final machine with vertical feedings of bundle of sesames was 97.2%.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.501-515
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• 2014

This paper presents a linear computational homogenization framework to evaluate the effective (or generalized) electromechanical coupling coefficient (EMCC) of adaptive structures with piezoelectric structural fiber (PSF) composite elements. The PSF consists of a silicon carbide (SiC) or carbon core fiber as reinforcement to a fragile piezo-ceramic shell. For the micro-scale analysis, a micromechanics model based on the variational asymptotic method for unit cell homogenization (VAMUCH) is used to evaluate the overall electromechanical properties of the PSF composites. At the macro-scale, a finite element (FE) analysis with the commercial FE code ABAQUS is performed to evaluate the effective EMCC for structures with the PSF composite patches. The EMCC is postprocessed from free-vibrations analysis under short-circuit (SC) and open-circuit (OC) electrodes of the patches. This linear two-scale computational framework may be useful for the optimal design of active structure multi-functional composites which can be used for multi-functional applications such as structural health monitoring, power harvest, vibration sensing and control, damping, and shape control through anisotropic actuation.

• Ceramist
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.122-132
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• 2019

Wearable electronic devices with batteries must be lightweight, flexible and highly durable. Most importantly, the battery should be able to self-generate to operate the devices without having to be too frequently charged externally. An eco-friendly energy harvesting technology from various sources, such as solar energy, electromagnetic energy and wind energy, has been developed for a self-charging flexible battery. Although the energy harvesting from such sources are often unstable according to the surrounding environment, the energy harvesting from body movements and vibrations has been less affected by the surrounding environment. In this regard, flexible piezoelectric modules are the most attractive solution for this issue, because they convert mechanical energy to electrical energy and harvest energy from the human body motions. Among the various flexible piezoelectric modules, piezoelectric nanofibers have advantages when used as an energy harvester in wearable devices, due to their simple manufacturing process with good applicability to polymers and ceramics. This review focused on diverse flexible piezoelectric nanofibers and discusses their applications as various energy harvesting systems.