How earthquakes can be a good thing
— The problem Motus is solving
When I was in grade 5 my teacher had the class do a project about renewable energy. In my research, I came about the usual information one does when researching the basics of renewable energy; i.e. I learned what solar, wind, and hydro electricity were. I remember thinking that renewable energy was the coolest thing in the entire world — I mean — we could actually have enough energy to keep humankind alive without hurting our planet. However, there had to be more to renewable energy than just solar, wind, and hydro. Currently, renewable energy is a huge market. It makes up 16.3% of Canada’s energy. Renewable energy makes up about 13.4% of the world’s average energy usage -and this is only growing. However, even with all these innovative forms of renewable energy, there has to be more ways of harvesting renewable energy.
Fast forward to grade 10, when I stepped in to my first physics class. In this class, I learned about kinetic and potential energy and sources in which this energy originates. What I learned, was that there is kinetic energy all around us. In fact, what many people don’t know is that there is an enormous amount of kinetic energy occurring right now under our feet — in the earth
THE PROBLEM.
That same year in grade 5, I learned about the devastating Nepal earthquake. It had a magnitude of 7.8 on the richter scale, killing more than 9 000 and disrupting the lives of more than 9 million. It was hard for me to conceptualize what 9 million people looked like as well as how the movement of tectonic plates could change the lives of people forever. Needless to say, that was when I realized the severity and tragedy inflicted by earthquakes. But what if we could take something horrible (such as earthquakes) and use it to improve people’s lives, even just a little bit.
If we go back to my kinetic energy lesson in grade 10, you would remember that the earth exhibits potential energy in the form of vibrations. These vibrations are especially potent in earthquakes and the tectonic plates must vibrate significantly more to create that amount of destruction. But what if we could harness that kinetic vibrational energy and turn it into electrical energy to turn on our lights, power our cars etc.? Combining natural disasters and energy harvesting seems like a natural fit — so I wondered — why aren’t we doing it already?
As I did more research — I found out that this is already being done in Japan with tsunamis, but not with earthquakes although both disasters do rely on similar principles of the shifting of tectonic plates. Underwater turbines were placed in the ocean that can remove remove energy from the flow of the tsunami and can thus use that energy for electrical purposes.
But that’s tsunamis — not earthquakes. At the moment, barely anything has been done to try to harvest the vibrational energy from earthquakes.
EARTHQUAKES AND PIEZOELECTRICTY:
As a brief scientific overview, earthquakes are the vibrations of the earth that are produced by the release of energy during a sudden rupture. Earthquakes release two types of vibrational waves. The first is surface waves which typically have the strongest vibrating frequency and cause the majority of the damage in an earthquake. The second are body waves which vibrate through the interior of the earth. Primarily, we should be looking at the surface waves as they are the easiest to capture.
Now I’m sure you’re wondering how all of this translates into energy. The answer is piezoelectricity.
Actually, more like piezoelectric materials. Piezoelectric materials are asymmetrical crystals that can produce energy when a force is applied to them. When this pressure is applied, the electrical charges of the crystal are put out of order thus creating a dipole. This dipole is actually voltage which can be converted into electrical energy. In the case of earthquakes, the force applied to the piezoelectric materials are the vibrations the earth produces!
So where is this going in the future?
In theory, harvesting energy from earthquakes is possible but we are relying on quite the heavy assumption that we actually know where these earthquakes are. However, the science in these statistical prediction models is quite advanced and has been making significant progress over the past 5 years. As a result, we can only hope that in the future, this incredible opportunity to slightly appease the horror of natural disasters will turn into a reality.
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