Design of a novel mini notched turbine with optimized power management circuit
This paper proposes a novel mini notched turbine that can be used as feasible energy source for medical systems, aerospace, car, and home applications, or could be converted into a maintenance free energy generator system, of continuous and sustainable operation. The micro system developed in this work is an innovation in turbine designs, and has special characteristics such as: novel mini notched blades, which contribute to increased rotor speed, and an innovative turbine casing, that combine benefits of the impulse and reaction turbine models. Also, paper presents a methodology for optimizing ultralow power management circuit to improve the efficiency of DC-DC converter, this is accomplished using particle swarm optimization technique, where the converter efficiency is used as the fitness function and inductor and on-time are chosen as optimized parameters. This design improves the DC-DC converter efficiency and the efficiency of power management circuit by 10% comparing with conventional power management circuits over a wide range of input power, allowing harvesting more power and delivering it to load. This approach is not limited to ultra low power applications; it can easily be extended in portable applications to extend the battery life.