Waste-to-energy: Utilization of recycled waste materials to fabricate triboelectric nanogenerator for mechanical energy harvesting

The aim of this study was to generate electrical energy from recycled waste materials. To our knowledge, this is the first successful development of a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) device using discarded cigarette filters (CFs) as a positive triboelectric material and plastic waste materials as a negative triboelectric material. The fabricated cigarette CF-TENG device exhibited an outstanding electrical output performance. In particular, the device with a dimension of 2.5 cm × 2.5 cm generated 42.8 V voltage and 0.86 μA current under the compression force of 10 N with a frequency of 0.1 Hz. The device generated a maximum output power density of 63.2 mW/m2 at a load resistance of 40 MΩ, which is higher than that of previously reported waste materials based TENGs. The energy harvested by the CF-TENG device could turn on 44 LEDs (light emitting diodes) and display an LCD (liquid crystal display) timer clock that indicates its potential candidacy to power portable electronics. The applicability of the developed CF-TENG in daily life was investigated to harvest waste-vibration energy from a centrifuge machine being used for its normal purpose and the result shows that a 3 V output voltage could be harvested by the device. Therefore, this work pave way for the development of waste materials based TENGs for environmental remediation, and generation of renewable and green energy.