The Random Thoughts of a Geek heading for Banbury
The Random Thoughts of a Geek heading for Banbury

Alternative Wind Turbine designs…

Helium-filled floating wind turbines

As in my Q-Blade Post 1. I made reference to both HAWT (Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine) and VAWT (Vertical Axis Wind Turbines),

A standard VAWT design has been covered by the Ultimaker Blog:

There are several other designs that are more novel. One of these novel approaches is the O-Wind, the O-Wind takes advantage of horizontal AND vertical winds without requiring steering. Nicolas Orellana Olguin and Yaseen Noorani of Lancaster University designed this small VAWT like turbine in such a way that it is easy to 3D Print

How it Works:

The turbine is of a spherical shape with a single axis of rotation going through it.

Its dimensions and shape mean that it is very suitable for small-scale energy production by individual apartment dwellers e.g. by being fixed outside balconies.

The turbine makes use of Bernoulli’s principle for its mechanical motion.

The structure is lined up with vents which have large entrances and smaller exits for air.

In the presence of wind, there is a pressure difference between the two terminals causing the turbine to move.

The vents are placed all across the sphere making it receptive to wind from all directions in both the vertical and horizontal planes.

The turbine will rotate in the same sense about a fixed axis regardless of wind direction.

So unlike a standard Savonius wind turbine VAWT the O-Wind does not only work with wind coming from the Horizontal plane.

Some other different designs can be found below:

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