Each year, the Energy & Environment: Design and Innovation team engages students in the exploration of energy challenges that result in prototypes of new energy technologies, systems or approaches.

This subteam examined energy waste capture systems and developed a prototype for an energy-harvesting speed bump. Check out their team profile below, and learn what other subteams developed, including a low-cost wind turbine that can fit into a backpack, new green roof technology, new heat capture systems for solar cells, and bricks made of recycled plastics.

Team profile by Adam Johnson, Andrew Rasetti, Avery Taylor, Gabe Debs, Tina Machado and Grace Llewellyn

Throughout the year, our team has worked to design and create a device that is able to convert the mechanical energy exerted by a vehicle into electrical energy. We did this by prototyping a system that utilizes the basic functions of a speed bump for the purpose of energy capture. We considered multiple ideas for this project, but our final design utilizes an air cylinder to supply outside air into a compressed air storage tank. There are many sources of wasted energy in our environment, and this project works to harness some of that wasted energy. 

Our overarching research question was: Would the design of this speed bump be viable and successfully generate electricity?

Testing consisted of manually compressing the air cylinder to pump air into the tank and quantifying the energy stored. We took note of the number of compressions necessary to reach a certain pressure, which is an approximation for the number of cars it would take to fill the tank of a full-scale model. Data collected during testing was summarized in a plot of tank pressure as a function of the number of compressions. Using the line of best fit equation, we calculated that the number of compressions needed to fill the prototype tank to its full capacity of 160 psi was 1,529.

The primary users of this waste-to-energy speed bump prototype are any and all vehicle operators that drive on high-traffic campus roads. Due to the indiscriminate, non-specific users for a speed bump technology, in-depth analysis of the consumers of such a technology is far more constructive for a detailed market analysis of the prototype. 

The primary consumers, then, of this technology are the colleges and universities which will implement waste-to-energy speed bump(s) on their campuses and allow for usage of the energy they produce to offset their emissions. Thus, when marketing the waste-to-energy speed bump prototype, the target market of college campus administrations should be considered, with marketing focused on the reductions in energy usage, emissions and costs that the product provides while simultaneously improving campus safety and student satisfaction. 

With the current push on many college campuses across the United States and throughout the world to increase energy efficiency, cut emissions and become carbon neutral, there is no better time to market a waste-to-energy speed bump prototype with strong potential to augment a college’s carbon offset efforts. At Duke, in particular, the push for carbon neutrality by 2024 is heavily driven by focusing on carbon offset efforts, and waste-to-energy speed bumps would be a cost-effective method of achieving increased offsets directly on campus by harnessing the movement of vehicles that would occur regardless.