Electrochemical Energy Harvesting for IoT Applications : Comparing Electrode Materials in Galvanic Cell

A novel energy harvesting platform based on electrochemical energy was developed and tested in this article. The electrochemical platform consists of harvesting module, energy management electronics, supercapacitor as an energy storage, sensors, wireless data transfer and receiver. The energy harvesting module consists of two metal electrodes immersed into an electrolyte. Seawater, salt water, and salt water with a mixture of soil were used as this electrolyte medium. The mixture is a novel idea for energy harvesting for IoT. The energy obtained from the harvester platform was used to run the energy management electronics, measure temperature, humidity, air pressure and the voltage of the energy storage supercapacitor. The measurement data was sent wirelessly with Bluetooth technology to the data receiver. Results indicate that it is possible to get enough energy from the electrochemical harvester to run the whole harvesting platform with sensors and wireless data transfer. This is very advantageous because these platforms typically need batteries or connection to power grid. The suggested platform provides thus possibility for autonomous operation with reduced maintenance.