A contact electrification based wind generator

A novel wind generator based on the contact electrification and electrostatic induction effects working in compound motions of vertical contact-separation and in-plane sliding is proposed and fabricated in this paper. Several parameters such as the number of friction pairs, angular velocity and ambient relative humidity (RH) were considered and their influence on the output performance of generator was analyzed. The results show that the output performance of the device is enhanced with the increasing number of friction pairs and the speed. The output voltages ranging from about 250 to 380 V are stably obtained by adjusting the number of friction pairs (1 to 4 pairs) and angular velocity (300 to 480 rpm). It can directly drive more than 100 LEDs and charge a 10 μF capacitance within 10 s when working at 300 rpm for four friction pairs in RH=40%.The output voltage decreases violently from 250 V to 10 V as the RH increases from 40% to 60% due to the effect discharge under high RH.