Technology Trending: gamifying CO2 saving, acoustic core heat pumps, body energy harvesting

An app gamifying the climate journey, hi-fi speakers powering heat pumps and the human body as an antenna to harvest energy are in the week’s technology radar.

Gamifying the climate journey

Engaging consumers with their energy consumption has proved notoriously challenging but the rise of smartphones with their apps has opened a path to bring new innovations to this and other activities.

Gamification is one such innovation and has been introduced by E.ON Innovation and its Germany-based green energy supplier subsidiary eprimo in the new Klimareise (Climate Journey) app, with the aim to turn energy and CO2 saving into a fun, playful and easy to do experience.

On the app, users start their ‘climate journey’ with an interactive video that helps them to create a personal energy profile. Based on inputs, the app determines a person’s CO2 footprint and shows how it compares to the average in Germany.

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In the next step, users can actively reduce their footprint by accomplishing fun challenges set by the app, these varying from ‘big’ actions like “travel by train instead of by plane” to ‘small’ such as “cooking with a lid on the pot rather than without”.

To avoid the challenges becoming chores, the app uses a point scoring system so they add up. They can then be used to support social and sustainable climate protection projects and in the future to be exchanged for vouchers and discounts on sustainable products or services.

E.ON has reported that since its launch, thousands of users have started using the ‘Klimareise’ app, which Mark Ritzmann, managing director of E.ON Innovation, describes as a “fantastic result”.

“Utilising gamification mechanics to achieve a fun road towards sustainability for the users was just a great idea by our innovation team.”

Using Hi-Fi speakers to develop eco-friendly heat pumps

French deeptech start-up Equium has been on a mission to eliminate the use of refrigerants, as potent greenhouse gases, from heat pumps.

And its solution is based on thermoacoustics – a combination of thermics, acoustics, and fluid mechanics – utilising a Hi-Fi speaker powered by electricity. Embedded in a tube filled with helium, an acoustic wave is generated, which causes the gas to compress or expand in turn producing heat or cold respectively. The device also is silent.

According to Equium, its acoustic heat pump core isn’t just greenhouse gas-free, but also is made from 100% recyclable materials to boast an overall very low carbon footprint.

At the same time, its ecological mode of operation is claimed to provide the same efficiency as a conventional heat pump. In order to achieve the desired power output, users can simply increase or decrease the speaker’s volume.

Equium plans to make its acoustic cores available to heat pump manufacturers starting in 2024, once the current field tests are completed.

Human body energy harvesting

Next generation wireless technology may use the body to harvest waste energy to power wearable devices – that is, if research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst comes to fruition.

The concept draws on the technology visible light communication, which is essentially a wireless form of fibre optics using light to transmit information using LEDs that switch on and off at very high frequency

Previous research had shown that in visible light communication systems, expected to be a key technology for 6G, there is significant ‘leakage’ of energy in the form of radio waves.

The new research has sought to harvest this energy, with the development of a coiled copper antenna and with the human body found to be the best medium for maximising its collection – up to ten times more than the bare coil alone.

With this, the research team has come up with their ‘Bracelet+’, a simple coil of copper wire which can be worn as a ring, belt, anklet, necklace or bracelet, with the latter seeming to offer the right balance of power harvesting and wearability.

“Bracelet+ can reach up to microwatts, enough to support many sensors such as on-body health monitoring sensors that require little power to work owing to their low sampling frequency and long sleep-mode duration,” says Jie Xiong, professor of information and computer sciences at UMass Amherst.

“Ultimately, we want to be able to harvest waste energy from all sorts of sources in order to power future technology.”

And with homes, vehicles, streetlights and offices all lit by LED bulbs that could also be transmitting data, the infrastructure is already everywhere available.