Vibration Energy Harvester from Brownian motion

[Johan]

Hi all, been a while since I studied physics but I saw something that I found strange,

This device: https://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/good-vibrations/ from University of Arkansas

A free floating graphene sheet extracting energy from brownian motion and converting that to electric current.

wouldn't this violate the second law of thermodynamics? or am I missing something?

 

[mfb]

The article is not really clear, so I had a look at the paper (pdf). As far as I understand that, you need a thermal gradient or mechanical motion of the overall system to drive these vibrations if you want to extract useful energy from them. The article makes a much bigger deal of this harvesting than the publication, which focuses on the research.

 

[Andy Resnick]

That recent report references this review, which may be of additional interest.

 

[Johan]

mtb, I'll have a look at the paper to see if I can get a better understanding of what is going on.