Additive manufacturing-based recycling of laboratory waste into energy harvesting device for self-powered applications

The laboratory waste produced in several parts of the world has scaled up the pollution and adverse effect on human health in the present era. The “3 R” (reduce, reuse, and recycle) scheme is adopted by many communities for efficiently recovering waste products and utilizing them for the production of energy. In the present work, the laboratory waste is collected and directly utilized for fabricating a laboratory waste-based triboelectric nanogenerator (LW-TENG) operating in vertical contact-separation mode. The substrate, electrode, and triboelectric layer are randomly selected from lab waste. The waste plastic petri dishes were extruded into thin filament wires for 3D printing of the substrate for the LW-TENG. The effective electrical output is generated by LW-TENG having a triboelectric layer plastic-glass delivering voltage of 185 V, current of 1.25 μA, and power density of 8.1 μW/cm2 across the load resistance of 500 MΩ. The positive and negative triboelectric layers are altered and the electrical output is systematically investigated. Additionally, the LW-TENG device is attached to various locations of the laboratory to demonstrate the energy harvesting from the mechanical motions. It is also utilized for demonstrating real-time applications that could be beneficial as a self-powered human tracking device (HSD) that tracks the location of the human during an emergency and self-powered exercise counter.