Design and Experimental Investigation of a Thermoelectric Conversion Device with Power Management for Forest Fire Monitoring

Abstract

Forest fires have long been a significant global problem. How to reliably accomplish the early warning and real-time monitoring of forest fires has become a pressing issue in order to limit the damage caused by forest fires. A novel technological approach for forest fire monitoring has been made possible by the quick development of wireless sensor network (WSN) technology. Currently, batteries are the primary source of power for WSNs used in forests, but frequent battery replacement will compromise the network for monitoring. As a result, the power supply is the key limit to its application in forest areas. This paper puts forward the thermoelectric conversion based on the Seebeck effect. Its notable feature is to convert heat energy into electric energy through the temperature difference between shallow soil and air. In the process of testing the device, the maximum voltage was 803.36 mV. At the same time, a power management system (PMS) for a thermoelectric conversion device was designed. The main feature of this system is that there is no need for an external control module. In the laboratory test, the minimum input power of this system was 200 mV. When the load resistance was 8 KΩ, the output power was 0.55 mW, and the maximum efficiency could reach 65.38% when the input was 500 mV, which fulfills the requirements of low cost and high reliability, providing a feasible solution for solving the energy limitation problem of WSNs in a forest area.