Power Engineering - New high efficiency wind turbine undergoing field trials

15 April - US-based Hunt Aviation, Corp is conducting tests on a high efficiency vertical axis wind turbine prototype that based on company engineering studies may produce over twice as much power within the same area as a conventional horizontal axis wind turbine.

This radial new wind turbine design could potentially be a disruptive technology for the wind power industry that has struggled to obtain efficiencies above twenty percent using rotor blade technology. The new turbine was originally developed as a low drag wind turbine to harness power from the air for the Gravityplane while gliding and now the new design is being commercialized to produce wind power.

"Our wind turbine is capable of being used for many applications for which rotor style wind turbines cannot be readily used because the wind can come from any direction and its flat, rectangular shape will fit on any horizontal surface. We are designing models to power cell towers, for roof top installation, power barge installation, and to power water pumps for municipal water supply systems, to power portable office building, and we are designing units to replace sails on wind powered boats that will generate and store power," Gene Cox, Hunt Aviation's President, stated.

"We hope to have our first wind turbine powered boat constructed within two months. The craft will produce it greatest power by going directly into the wind. There are no sails to put up or take down and no tacking is required. The design allows single person operation. Further, the wind turbine produces and stores power and provides heating and air conditioning while sitting in the harbor or at anchor offshore. Power is stored as compressed air in pontoons. The compressed air, using pneumatic motors, can drive propulsion systems, generators for electrical power, comfort control devices, or any other mechanical device. Air compression produces the heat of compression. The heat can be used or be rejected to the environment and the air expanded to create cooling."

International patents for the wind turbine that was invented by Gravityplane inventor, Robert D. Hunt, were filed last month. The wind turbine uses the effect of drag to harness wind power instead of using lift as conventional bladed wind turbines do. "I grew up around the seafood industry in Mississippi and was always interested in the old sailing schooners used by the fishermen," Hunt explained. "The fisherman knew that to have enough power to dredge oysters you had to use drag instead of lift. They sailed on a reach using lift to power their sail boats for greater speed, then once at the oyster reefs, they would swing a sail out to each side of the schooner in a process known as 'wing-to-wing'. The wind would then push the sails downwind using drag to have enough power to pull the large steel oyster dredge across the heavy oyster shells."

"I realized that a wind turbine using drag would be more powerful and then I designed it to have less overall drag than a conventional rotor blade style wind turbine by mounting shutters onto a rotating disk and having the shutters fold down into the disk as they move into the wind. Then the shutters open to catch the wind on the opposite side of the wind turbine and are pushed backward as they apply a force against the disk. One of the many advantages of my wind turbine is that because of the high degree of torque generated it can operate in very low wind speeds."

Hunt Aviation is developing a program for municipalities to mount the company's turbines on city water towers to provide water service and to supply additional electrical power that may be used by the cities for less than they currently pay for pumping water. "The towers are already there and it is simply a matter of sitting one of our wind turbines on top of it, which allows the cities to do something good for the environment while they save money," Cox stated. "We encourage any city that wishes to obtain more information regarding this application to contact us."

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