https://efos.site/

Development of Autonomous Atmospheric Recorder of Electrical Field for Ships

Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE (project code: Τ2EDK-00350)

The forecasting of extreme weather conditions in overseas voyages requires very high sensitivity and increased measurement accuracy from weather stations, which ideally can be achieved by installing permanent weather stations at seas. Since this is a challenging task in marine environments, the large number of available commercial ships can be exploited for the realization of in-situ measurements.

In the framework of the project EFOS – “Development of Autonomous Atmospheric Recorder of Electrical Field for Ships” (https://efos.site/), an energy-autonomous system that collects data of the atmospheric electric field and includes atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity sensors was designed and developed. The sensing system can be easily installed on ships, and it has the capability to be supplied by a power management unit that exploits renewable energy sources, such as solar, thermoelectric and triboelectric.

Specific research targets include:

• Design of the mechanical structure of the electrostatic field mill sensor
• Design of the sensor interface electronics, which should introduce low-noise and consume low-power
• Calibration of the electric field mill sensor
• Measurements realized both indoors and outdoors to evaluate the performance of the sensor
• Evaluation of the energy autonomous operation that can be achieved with the employment of the energy harvesting system

Results

Successful development and experimental evaluation of the differential structure of the field mill sensor. The entire sensing system was successfully supplied from the energy harvesting/power management unit and was able to provide valuable measurement data.

Consortium