Waving Wind Sticks Can Replace Windmills

Sticks planted in the ground get moved by the wind where the movement is captured and converted to electricity. Image Credit: Vortex Bladeless (2015)

Waving Wind Sticks Can Replace Windmills

There is a new wind energy capture technology in town and it deserves a serious look. The form factor is a stick that is effected by the wind as was the Tacoma Bridge on November 7, 1940.

Most people are familiar with a technology that was popularized by the Dutch in recent centuries which was used to move water from or around land and perform many labor tasks in their culture ... and has become the iconic symbol of all things Dutch - the Windmill. Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850, about 1000 are still standing.

The total number of wind-powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around 200,000 at its peak, which is modest compared to some 500,000 waterwheels. Image Credit: Zingrate.com

Capturing the power of the wind through blades and transferring the motion created through a bar shaft to pump mechanisms, generators, or grinders, that once required human effort, to have the benefit of function.

Growing interest in alternative energy sources has made the three-pronged metal and composite wind turbines planted across open, wind-driven landscapes, a familiar sight.

Electric power windmills have been a feature in the Palm Springs entrance to Coachella Valley for at least 20 years. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)

There is a company in Spain that wishes to have this display become less noisy, labor intensive, and cluttered through grabbing the wind energy through vibration or oscillation of a single stick.

This excerpted and edited from Quartz -

HOWLIN' - This wind turbine generates power without blades
By Zach Wener-Fligner for Quartz - May 19, 2015

Thanks to a Spanish energy startup known as Vortex Bladeless, there’s a new type of turbine with a rather different look.

With the potential to be cheaper and more reliable. Vortex’s generator resembles a giant straw in the ground and harnesses wind energy without the need for rotating windmill blades. It’s designed to vibrate in the wind as much as possible, like a guitar string; those vibrations are then converted into stored energy.

According to the company’s website, the Vortex turbines are 53% cheaper to manufacture and 51% cheaper to operate than traditional wind turbines. This is in part due to their lack of moving parts—there just aren’t that many components to break. Their current model, the 41-foot Vortex Mini tube, captures around 30% less energy than a traditional wind turbine, but can also be packed more densely into a given space.

The company has raised about $1 million from the Spanish government and private investors, according to Wired; it says it will begin raising more money via crowdfunding on June 1.
[Reference Here]

Windmills and solar panel farms are popping up everywhere creating an aesthetic eyesore, backed through the infusion of public monies. It is time to consider a cheaper, quieter, and more artful way to capture alternative (to petroleum) energy to fuel our lives.

Most like the concept of converting the lessons learned through the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster to achieve artful display landscapes, here on this Oblate Spheroid, that deliver on the promise of a better way to convert wind to energy for the good of all.


TAGS: windmills, solar panels, Tacoma Bridge, oscillation, wind stick, Vortex Bladeless, turbines, electricity, power generation, Oblate Spheroid, crowd-funding,

Hear This! Converting Waste Heat Into Electric Power

University of Utah physicist Orest Symko demonstrates how heat can be converted into sound by using a blowtorch to heat a metallic screen inside a plastic tube, which then produces a loud tone, similar to when air is blown into a flute. Symko and his students are developing much smaller devices that not only convert heat to sound, but then use the sound to generate electricity. The devices may be used to cool electronics, harness solar energy in a new way, and conserve energy by changing waste heat into electric power. Image Credit: University of Utah

Hear This! Converting Waste Heat Into Electric Power

It sounds like magic but it is really science.

The University of Utah Physics Department has developed a way for devices to take wasted heat derived from everyday processes and through converting the heat to sound … one can then convert the sound to usable electricity.

The US Army is interested in funding this research activity because it is interested in taking care of the wasted heat from radar operations in the field, and also producing a portable source of electrical energy which one can use in the battlefield to run electronics.

The process utilizes two steps with processes called "thermoacoustic prime movers" and "piezoelectric" devices.

Excerpts from Science Daily (the story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Utah) -

A Sound Way To Turn Heat Into Electricity
Science Daily, June 4, 2007

University of Utah physicists developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars.

"We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. "It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat."

Five of Symko's doctoral students recently devised methods to improve the efficiency of acoustic heat-engine devices to turn heat into electricity. They will present their findings on Friday, June 8 during the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center hotel.

Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university's hot-water-generating plant.
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Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. The heat engines also could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat as their electronics grow more complex. And Symko foresees using the devices to generate electricity from heat that now is released from nuclear power plant cooling towers.

How to Get Power from Heat and Sound

Symko's work on converting heat into electricity via sound stems from his ongoing research to develop tiny thermoacoustic refrigerators for cooling electronics.
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In 2005, he began a five-year heat-sound-electricity conversion research project named Thermal Acoustic Piezo Energy Conversion (TAPEC). Symko works with collaborators at Washington State University and the University of Mississippi.

The project has received $2 million in funding during the past two years, and Symko hopes it will grow as small heat-sound-electricity devices shrink further so they can be incorporated in micromachines (known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS) for use in cooling computers and other electronic devices such as amplifiers.

Using sound to convert heat into electricity has two key steps. Symko and colleagues developed various new heat engines (technically called "thermoacoustic prime movers") to accomplish the first step: convert heat into sound.

Then they convert the sound into electricity using existing technology: "piezoelectric" devices that are squeezed in response to pressure, including sound waves, and change that pressure into electrical current. "Piezo" means pressure or squeezing.

Most of the heat-to-electricity acoustic devices built in Symko's laboratory are housed in cylinder-shaped "resonators" that fit in the palm of your hand. Each cylinder, or resonator, contains a "stack" of material with a large surface area -- such as metal or plastic plates, or fibers made of glass, cotton or steel wool -- placed between a cold heat exchanger and a hot heat exchanger.

When heat is applied -- with matches, a blowtorch or a heating element -- the heat builds to a threshold. Then the hot, moving air produces sound at a single frequency, similar to air blown into a flute.

"You have heat, which is so disorderly and chaotic, and all of a sudden you have sound coming out at one frequency," Symko says.

Then the sound waves squeeze the piezoelectric device, producing an electrical voltage. Symko says it's similar to what happens if you hit a nerve in your elbow, producing a painful electrical nerve impulse.
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Devices that convert heat to sound and then to electricity lack moving parts, so such devices will require little maintenance and last a long time.
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Symko says the devices won't create noise pollution. First, as smaller devices are developed, they will convert heat to ultrasonic frequencies people cannot hear. Second, sound volume goes down as it is converted to electricity. Finally, "it's easy to contain the noise by putting a sound absorber around the device," he says.
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The Chunnel Begets ... The Strunnel!

On the train to France entering the Euro Tunnel (Taken on June 11, 2006 ) - Image Credit: Flickr - mbcrawford

The Chunnel Begets ... The Strunnel!

Russia is proposing to dig a tunnel, a very long tunnel, by which crossing and transporting goods across the Bering Strait to Alaska (and back) can be accomplished without the necessary calculations for weather and/or the limitations of air transport.

Much like the "Channel Tunnel" - The Chunnel ... I supposed one could call it The Strunnel!

The Chunnel, (Euro-Tunnel), Mini-Europe, Bruparck, Brussels (Taken on May 19, 2005) - Image Credit: Flickr - demode

Excerpts from Bloomberg (ht: SlashDot) -

Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska
By Yuriy Humber and Bradley Cook

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, told reporters in Moscow today. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he said.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

"This will be a business project, not a political one," Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of Russia's agency for special economic zones, said at the media briefing. Russian officials will formally present the plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments next week, Razbegin said.

The Bering Strait tunnel will cost $10 billion to $12 billion, and the rest of the investment will be spent on the entire transport corridor, the plan estimates.

The Chunnel Construction Tour (Taken in August 1989) - Image Credit: Flickr - aplumb
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In Alaska, a supporter of the project is former Governor Walter Joseph Hickel, who plans to co-chair a conference on the subject in Moscow next week.

"Governor Hickel has long supported this concept, and he talks about it and writes about it," said Malcolm Roberts, a senior fellow at the Anchorage-based Institute of the North, a research policy group focused on Arctic issues. Hickel governed Alaska from 1966 to 1969 as a Republican and then from 1990 to 1994 as a member of the Independence Party.

Alaska's current officials, however, are preoccupied with other issues, including a plan to develop a pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the lower 48 U.S. states, Roberts said.
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Rail links in Russia and the U.S., where an almost 2,000- kilometer stretch from Angora to Fort Nelson in Canada would continue the route, would cost up to $15 billion, Razbegin said. With cargo traffic of as much as 100 million tons annually expected on the World Link, the investments in the rail section could be repaid in 20 years, he said.

"The transit link is that string on which all our industrial cluster projects could hang," Zubakin said.

Japan, China and Korea have expressed interest in the project, with Japanese companies offering to burrow the tunnel under the Bering Strait for $60 million a kilometer, half the price set down in the project, Razbegin said.
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The figures for the project come from a preliminary feasibility study. A full study could be funded from Russia's investment fund, set aside for large infrastructure projects, Bystrov said.
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