One of the judges, Giorgio Cacopardo, sales director at sponsor Marsilli said: "Sheng's project stood out because we could see its industrialisation in the near future and there was some ingenious thinking behind it."
Yuan, originally from Shanghai, presented his PhD project on the potential to harvest magnetic field energy to power condition monitoring devices, such as partial discharge sensors and infrared detectors at electrical substations, as well as real-time weather stations beneath overhead power lines.
His proposal includes a bowtie-shaped core, which he discovered to have a much higher magnetic moment and as much as five times greater power output than a conventional solenoid, and a switch in the matching circuit, which could increase transmission efficiency by 30%. These innovations could improve the reliability of condition monitoring devices, and reduce their maintenance and running costs. Yuan plans to complete his PhD project within the next one to two years and has already filed a patent.
Yuan said: "It's an honour to have won this prize. I enjoyed the opportunity to demonstrate my project – how it can be beneficial to the industry and society at large and how we can improve the facilities we currently have."