A team of researchers at MIT (Cambridge, MA) is investigating whether energy generated from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires. This team also claims that this technology opens the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation’s borders to detect smuggled radioactive materials.
Current tools available to predict and track fires, including remote automated weather stations, are expensive and sparsely distributed. Also, adding sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data in fire prediction equipment.
The new sensor system promises to avoid this problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply (see Fig. 1 ). Each sensor is combined with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. Basically a tree does not produce much power, but over time its “trickle charge” adds up. “Just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time,” said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers.
Fig. 1. Each sensor system taps into trees as a self-sustaining power supply.
The sensor system produces enough electricity to allow the trees’ temperature and humidity sensors to regularly and wirelessly transmit signals (see Fig. 2 ). Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center.
Fig. 2. The system generates enough electricity to allow the trees’ temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals. (Image byfrom Rebecca Macri.)
Voltree Power (http://voltreepower.com) will be testing the wireless sensor network in the spring of 2009. The test will be conducted on a 10-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service. For more information, call Elizabeth A. Thomson at 617-258-5402 or e-mail thom son@mit.edu
Christina Nickolas
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