henric
04-21-2012, 01:42 AM
By Jeremy Phan
14361
Wind is one form of renewable energy that is helping in the fight against global warming and moving away from fossil fuels. While it isn’t deployable everywhere due to minimum wind speed requirements, there are now wind farms popping up all over the world. At last count, Canada has 5,403 MW of wind power installed across the country.
Eole Water’s wind turbines take traditional wind turbines and add in one crucial feature: water condensation. Star Wars fans may now be thinking of “Tatooine” and the condensers used in the desert to gather water. You may have noticed the same thing happening with window air conditioners and that is where the idea for Eole’s water-condensing wind turbines came from.
Traditional wind turbines are closed systems, wherein the air does not enter the turbine or machinery, only flowing around the blades to rotate, spin, or otherwise move them. Eole’s turbines take in air through the nose, at which point a generator heats the air to vaporize the water (turning it into steam). Subsequently, the steam is filtered and cooled/condensed to produce clean, potable water.
14362
Eole’s 34 m/111 ft. tall wind turbines have 13 m/42.6 ft. diameter rotors that require 15 mile per hour/24 km per hour winds to spin. This generates the 30 kW of power required to power the condensation systems. The system is completely self-contained and the clean water condensed out of the air is stored in the base for easy access.
13:20 UPDATE: The turbine can be switched to one of three modes, depending on the specific needs of the installation:
■100% of power generated (30 kW) is used to produce clean water
■50%/50% split (15 kW)
■30% water/70% power (21 kw)
After 10 years of research and development, a prototype was erected 6 months ago in the arid conditions of Abu Dhabi, a capital city which sees only an average of 81.8 mm/3.2 inches of rain annually. In these real world conditions, the wind turbine has consistently produced 800 L/211 US gallons of water daily. Eole Water is now in talks with manufacturers to commercialize and deploy these turbines. Target markets include organic farming, disaster areas, and other isolated areas without access to clean water.
14361
Wind is one form of renewable energy that is helping in the fight against global warming and moving away from fossil fuels. While it isn’t deployable everywhere due to minimum wind speed requirements, there are now wind farms popping up all over the world. At last count, Canada has 5,403 MW of wind power installed across the country.
Eole Water’s wind turbines take traditional wind turbines and add in one crucial feature: water condensation. Star Wars fans may now be thinking of “Tatooine” and the condensers used in the desert to gather water. You may have noticed the same thing happening with window air conditioners and that is where the idea for Eole’s water-condensing wind turbines came from.
Traditional wind turbines are closed systems, wherein the air does not enter the turbine or machinery, only flowing around the blades to rotate, spin, or otherwise move them. Eole’s turbines take in air through the nose, at which point a generator heats the air to vaporize the water (turning it into steam). Subsequently, the steam is filtered and cooled/condensed to produce clean, potable water.
14362
Eole’s 34 m/111 ft. tall wind turbines have 13 m/42.6 ft. diameter rotors that require 15 mile per hour/24 km per hour winds to spin. This generates the 30 kW of power required to power the condensation systems. The system is completely self-contained and the clean water condensed out of the air is stored in the base for easy access.
13:20 UPDATE: The turbine can be switched to one of three modes, depending on the specific needs of the installation:
■100% of power generated (30 kW) is used to produce clean water
■50%/50% split (15 kW)
■30% water/70% power (21 kw)
After 10 years of research and development, a prototype was erected 6 months ago in the arid conditions of Abu Dhabi, a capital city which sees only an average of 81.8 mm/3.2 inches of rain annually. In these real world conditions, the wind turbine has consistently produced 800 L/211 US gallons of water daily. Eole Water is now in talks with manufacturers to commercialize and deploy these turbines. Target markets include organic farming, disaster areas, and other isolated areas without access to clean water.