Real-time carbon dioxide monitoring without batteries or external power

A research team has developed a self-powered wireless carbon dioxide (CO₂) monitoring system. This innovative system harvests minute vibrational energy from its surroundings to periodically measure CO₂ concentrations.

The research was published in Nano Energy.

This breakthrough addresses a critical need in environmental monitoring: accurately understanding “how much” CO₂ is being emitted to combat climate change and global warming. While CO₂ monitoring technology is key to this, existing systems largely rely on batteries or wired power, imposing limitations on installation and maintenance.

The KAIST team, led by Professor Kyeongha Kwon from the School of Electrical Engineering, in a joint study with Professor Hanjun Ryu’s team at Chung-Ang University, tackled this by creating a self-powered wireless system that operates without external power.

The core of this new system is an “Inertia-driven Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG)” that converts vibrations (with amplitudes ranging from 20–4,000 μm and frequencies from 0–300 Hz) generated by industrial equipment or pipelines into electricity. This enables periodic CO₂ concentration measurements and wireless transmission without the need for batteries.

The research team successfully amplified minute vibrations and induced resonance by combining an elastic spring with a 4-stage stacked inertia-driven TENG. They achieved stable power production of 0.5 mW under conditions of 13 Hz and 0.56 g acceleration. The generated power was then used to operate a CO₂ sensor and a low-power Bluetooth communication system.

Professor Kyeongha Kwon emphasized, “For efficient environmental monitoring, a system that can operate continuously without power limitations is essential.”

He explained, “In this research, we implemented a self-powered system that can periodically measure and wirelessly transmit CO₂ concentrations based on the energy generated from an inertia-driven TENG.” He added, “This technology can serve as a foundational technology for future self-powered environmental monitoring platforms integrating various sensors.”

Gyurim Jang, a master’s student at KAIST, and Daniel Manaye Tiruneh, a master’s student at Chung-Ang University, are the co-first authors of the paper.