VOL. 12, NO. 22, NOVEMBER 2017 ISSN 1819-6608 ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences ©2006-2017 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN). All rights reserved. www.arpnjournals.com 6285 A MICRO-POWER GENERATION FROM RAIN SHOWER UTILIZING PZT AND PVDT PIEZOELECTRIC TRANSDUCER Muhamad Faizal Yaakub 1,2 , Mohd Farriz Basar 1,2 , Muhammad Sharil Yahaya 1,2 , Faridah Hanim Mohd Noh 3 and Hanis Zafirah Kamarudin 1 1 Faculty of Engineering Technology, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, Durian Tunggal Melaka, Malaysia 2 Center for Robotics and Industrial Automation, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, Durian Tunggal Melaka, Malaysia 3 Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Johor, Malaysia Email: muhamadfaizal@utem.edu.my ABSTRACT As the fossil resources are at risk of extinction, many efforts are being introduced to produce electrical energy. Micro-electrification by utilizing the energy from vibration has become an alternative way to generate electricity. It is through a device with sub-micron-scale dimension sub-micron-scale dimension. This work focus to generate electricity with the utilization of the off-the-shelf piezoelectric transducers; Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) and Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) under different rain shower density. With the three different flow rate of an artificial rain shower, it is able to generate maximum power of 2.4x10 -6 Watt and 27x10 -6 Watt for PVDF and PZT, respectively. However, the energy is significantly influenced by the rectifier circuit. This paper presents the performance of the power generation from raindrop using piezoelectric transducers available in the open market. Keywords: alternative energy, piezoelectric transducer, power generation. INTRODUCTION There are many ways to harvest energy from natural resources for electrification. A large scale Solar Photovoltaics, for instance, has become mainstream in electrification for few decades. Likewise, energy harvesting from rainfall has gained huge interest among researchers to produce electricity. The employment of micro-hydro technique was one of the earliest methods that being adopted by researchers to produced electric energy from the rainfall. For example, Martin and Shrivastava used rainfall source from rooftop to generate electrical energy [1]. The Rooftop Hydroelectric Generation project which stores rainwater at the top of the building flows through the pipe and rotate turbines that connected to a generator. Additionally, the excess storage of rain water on the underground will be used for other uses such as plants and gardens. The design of the micro- hydroelectric power generation is improved by adding the vacuum to pump the water back to the above storage during non-rainy days. The system involves storage tanks, pipe network, and flow control valves. The area with highest rain density could generate power up to 5kW. Another means for electrification from rainfall is by adopting a vibration and bending based technique via piezoelectric materials. The piezoelectric materials are used as a mechanism to transfer ambient motion i.e. vibration, into an electric energy [2]. Apart of this, the electrification also realized by bending the piezo plates to gain its physical strain and oscillation characteristic [3] [4]. In real rainfall, the raindrops’ impact has a different position of the piezoelectric plates, therefore powering devices require a size that is suitable for the application, sufficient power and extended lifetime using permanent and ubiquitous energy sources [5] [6]. Recent literature reveals this system has been studied by many researchers. For instance, Wong et al has reported his very own lab scale piezoelectric energy harvesting test bench. The work simulated the various type of rain condition to produce total energy in the range of 38x10 -6 Joule to 114x10 -6 Joule [6]. A year before that, Warude [7] and friends had done a simulation using ANSYS structural analysis method to analyze the data collected from the experimental setup. It produced 2.66x10 -20 up to 4.55x10 -12 J energy under the designated technique. This study presents an alternative method for electrification i.e. via Piezoelectric Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) and Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) devices. The observation of its performance under three different density of raindrops from the test jig with distance 1.5 meters shows that the system could generate up to 2.4x10 -6 Watt and 27x10 -6 Watt for PVDF and PZT, respectively.The experiment reveals the potential of electricity generation from the natural sources, in this case, raindrops. PIEZOELECTRICITY Ceramic materials have an attribute of piezoelectricity. It was found by Pierre and Jacques Curie in 1880 [8]. Piezoelectric can be described as the capability of particular materials to produce electric potential difference when subjected to mechanical stress. DNA, enamel, dentin, and silk are some examples of the existing natural piezoelectric materials. Material such as quartz, ZnO, synthetic crystalline, sodium potassium is some other material example that exhibits the property of piezoelectric. Among them, Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) and Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) are the common types of piezo materials uses for electrification. According to [7], the acceptable properties of PVDF in generates electricity is slightly lower compared to PZT due to the fact that there is no lead element in the PVDF. However, PVDF is much more flexible, light, tough and