Aproveitamento energético no tráfego: uma análise para o campus UFMG - Pampulha

Abstract

Due to the lack of energy, some countries are searching for new technologies to produce electric energy in order to avoid importation taxes and abusive prices. The studied methods are based on electro-kinetic generators; they transform partof the energy dissipated by the traffic into electric energy. More important, each method has an ideal usage scenario, which depends, for instance, on the traffic, road, intensity, among others. The current paper presents acasestudy performed at UFMG –Pampulha Campus to evaluate how much energy can be generated if the campus direction decide to employ electro-kinetic generators, more specifically the rack pinion mechanism. As the most relevant result, if all speed breakers are modified at the campus entrances to anequipped rack pinion speed breaker, the campus traffic will generate the equivalent of 107,559kWh/month; sufficient energy to support 660 residences per month in Brazil. Moreover, if this energy was used where it is generated, at UFMG –Pampulha campus, then this could provide the equivalent of 5.4% of the energy that the campus demand per month. The main contribution of the present paper is to describe a quantitative study to generate energy from the traffic flow, with the use of electro-kinetic generators installed at speed breakers of urban roads.