On Harvesting Energy from Tree Trunks for Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

This work describes an experimental study on the possibilities of harvesting energy from tree trunks in order to power sensor nodes for environmental monitoring, particularly in wild forests. As the trunk of a living tree can be divided into isothermal subvolumes, which are generally referred to as annual rings, and the trunk is a good heat storage material, depending on the tree dimensions and its species, it can potentially offer different temperature gradients according to the tree trunk depths. The hypothesis is to consider the application of this temperature gradient on the faces of a Peltier cell to obtain electrical energy. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, a wireless sensor network was developed for measuring internal temperature of trunks from different trees. The experimental results show that it is possible to obtain a sufficient temperature gradient to harvest energy from tree trunks. Additionally, it is also shown that it is possible to harvest thermal energy during the day and during the night while photovoltaic cell only works under sunlight.