Monday, September 22, 2008

MIT taps trees to power forest fire warning sensors

By Mass High Tech Staff

MIT researchers are working to outfit entire forests with a sensor network, powered by the trees themselves, that could help spot fires earlier and even identify situations that could result in fires.

The project, which is being led by MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE), includes technology from Voltree Power LLC, a maker of bioenergy converters based in Canton and led by Stella Karavas, the co-founder and former vice president of engineering firm MagCap Engineering LLC, also in Canton.

The new sensor system aims to turn trees into a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree doesn’t generate a lot of power, but over time the “trickle charge” adds up, according to statements from Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of the CBE.

The U.S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts. The new system aims to provide power to the sensors where traditional recharging or battery replacement is impractical and costly.

Testing of the wireless sensor network, is slated to begin in the spring of 2009 on a 10-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service. The original experiments for the project were funded by MagCap Engineering, through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.