A Design Electric Generator from Old Hard Drive Magnets

Abstract

Abstract This research is the design of a electric generator from the old hard drive magnet which is installed in the desktop computer as an alternative energy resource. The advantages of this research could be the solutions to the problems of the shortage of electricity in some country area and to the problems of electronic waste. This generator can be applied with a lot of machines such as the windmill, water turbine, and bicycle, etc. The design includes two main parts. The first part is the stator which contains 9 sets of a 1000 turns coil made of copper wire AWG 27. They are connected to each other with the pattern of three star phases, and each phase has 3 coils. The other part of the design is the rotor which is made from the permanent Neodymium magnet from the used hard drive. The magnets are oriented in a circle shape in different 12 points, and each circle consists of 4 layers of the magnets. The generator from this design gives 120-300 rpm while testing for its performance. The generator voltage at no-load is approximately 17-30 Volts. Moreover, the power dropped on-load (100 Ohms) is about 0.2-1.1 Watts. The power measured from charging a 12 V, 5 Ah lead acid battery, is closely to 0.1-0.9 Watts.