Modelling and simulation of respiratory effort in energy harvesting using Matlab

Abstract

Energy harvesting from human power is investigated without being fully dependent to the DC sources. Respiratory effort is chosen as an energy harvester in order to prove the capability of human respiratory effort in producing the energy which can be used as the other alternative in powering low power electrical devices. Besides, the energy from human body can be generated 24 hours daily without having any limitation as the human is continually breathing even during sleep. The generated power carried out as the electromagnetic generator is worn on the human chest because the generator can be operated when there is a motion of the chest wall during the inhalation and exhalation processes. The respiratory effort is modeled and simulated using Matlab/Simulink software. A few conditions of breathing are being considered in order to examine different output power from the system. From the result obtained throughout the simulation, it can be proven that the human respiratory effort can produce energy through harvesting technique. The energy harvesting method produced 6.17 mW of the output power from an adult. Moreover, the output power increases as the breathing rate increases.