In line with our windheatingsystem.com posts.
For a while we have been wanting to design a wind turbine that does not generate electricity, but instead uses mechanical force to generate usefull things like heat. We recently purchased a set of blades and hub, and are now in the process of building a demo turbine, hoping to show the efficiency and output of this type of wind turbine. Eventually we can sell it as a kit for who needs heat (or cold) in places where the wind can be strong.
Set of blades with a diameter of 2.25 cm (about 7 feet).
Blade hub with 20 mm axle, which is short but long enough for our purpose.
This set of blades should produce about 400 Watt of energy in wind of 9 m/s or 5 Beaufort. The power of the turbine will increase rapidly with diameter and this is supposed to be a small portable version. That said, with some adaptions a 400 W blade set can churn out 3 kW at usefull wind speeds. 3 kW free heat is usefull for many homes in cold places.
This chematic shows the blades that catch the wind, then the rotational torque is transferred to a ‘hot box’ where we will do measurements to relate the temperature rise to the rpm. We have some other scenarios in mind but this will be the basic testing setup. We will use a Raspberry Pi to make measurments during operation.