Saving Energy With Sensors & PCMs

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  The final product (shows the ramp)

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  Initial brainstorming

Inspiration

I first got the inspiration for the project when I realized that the overheating of my computer was causing extreme heat loss and energy waste. All energy is circular, meaning that all forms of energy can be converted to electricity. Therefore, I was wondering whether I could convert the thermal energy from my laptop, which came from the electricity used by the laptop, into electricity, closing the loop of energy in the system and ensuring that no electricity is wasted.

What it does

My product has a compartment beneath the laptop. This compartment contained a layer of oil, which was a very low specific heat. This transferred the heat to the metal compartment, and the discrepancy between the outside air and the oil was measured by the Peltier module and the thermoelectric sensor, INA219, which was then recorded by the Arduino serial plotter. The electricity itself was created by the Peltier module and the voltage regulator, which I then connected to a pjone charger and used it to charge my phone.

How we built it

I used several sensors that I connected to Arduino UNO to get the necessary data and to make sure that all consumed energy was converted back into energy and not wasted. The sodium acetate was made at home, and the compartments were made using solid receptacles.

Challenges we ran into

Connecting the sensors properly took a bit of time and making sure the heat discrepancy was enough took some time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making a successful product and making sure that we are making a socially beneficial system.

What we learned

I learned that all different kinds of energy can be converted back into electricity so that energy is not wasted and that electrical systems can also become circular systems, which opens a whole new world of possibilities in the perspective of environmental conservation and sustainable energy production since the net GHG emission for this method of electricity production is 0.

What's next for Saving Energy With Sensors & PCMs

I hope that I can expand this concept to other products and even connect the different systems through IoT so that data between sensors can be shared and analyzed more carefully. I also hope to integrate AI to suggest ideas on energy usage patterns after analyzing the energy usage patterns of users.

Built With

• adafruit
• arduino