Bladeless Turbines: Could Colossal Vibrators Be the Future of Energy?

[Nevilledog]

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Brian J. Karem
@BrianKarem
“Colossal vibrators”?

Bladeless Turbines: Could Colossal Vibrators Be the Future of Energy?
This phallic-shaped object might produce wind power! Check out how bladeless wind power may work.
interestingengineering.com
12:55 PM · Mar 23, 2021

https://interestingengineering.com/bladeless-turbines-colossal-vibrators-future-of-energy-wind-power

Gigantic windfarms lining hills and coastlines around the world have become commonplace, but there might be another way — a bladeless way — to harness the wind, according to a green energy company that claims to have reinvented wind power by removing turbine towers, blades, and the wind itself.

However, while the six-person startup Vortex Bladeless has published its own study on the new energy-generating design, its proof-of-concept has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal — although it is currently receiving funding from the European Union, and a Norwegian state energy company. So, take this arguably phallic alternative to bladed turbines with a grain of salt.

Giant vibrators with bladeless turbines attract oddly specific attention

"We are not against traditional windfarms," said inventor of Vortex Bladeless David Yáñez, in a report from The Guardian. His startup — based in Madrid — has proposed a turbine design capable of harnessing energy from winds without the sweeping white blades everyone associates with wind power.

Many have expressed skepticism on the project's engineering merits, but Norway's state energy company — called Equinor — recently placed Vortex on a list of the 10 most exciting startups in the energy sector. Equinor also contributes financial development support to startups via its tech accelerator program, which means there's at least a market incentive for this project.

The startup's bladeless turbines are roughly 10 ft (3 m) tall, and take the shape of a curve-topped cylinder affixed vertically with an elastic rod. While uninformed eyes may see wiggling motion in the giant cylindrical object, it's actually designed to oscillate inside of a wind range — generating electricity from the vibration.

*snip*

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Interesting. Sounds similar to tidal wave generators, eh? Nice to see these new technologies hit

the marketplace...

[Disaffected]

6. Problem is,

they never seem to do that (hit the market place). or if they do, they don't last long because they offer no advantages over the conventional three blade, horizontal axis turbine (which is pretty much all one sees in wind farms).

These contraptions are similar to perpetual motion machines in that they randomly spring up, may attract a few naive investors, and soon drop out of sight.

[WiscNastyWoman]

2. Mind Boggling

It is best to say nothing at this point, all things considered. 😐

[jcgoldie]

3. exactly

I had several jokes lined up here all of which I ultimately thought better of... good thing I read this topic before I got into the whiskey tonight...

[Ellipsis]

4. Bette Midler could make a "Sophie Tucker" joke out of that headline

[Aristus]

10. We at DU have heard worse...

Welcome!

[lame54]

5. How many C batteries does that thing take?

[Nevilledog]

8. *snicker*

[Voltaire2]

7. Also known as the orgasmatron.

[milestogo]

9. That's a little too colassal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Amazingly, they wrote a paper with lots of equations, but never tried to say how much power

it would produce. All they do is show it will get vibrated by the wind. The closest they come to talking about power is asserting that

The performance in the conversion of wind’s kinetic energy into mechanical energy should be as close as possible to the Betz limit

Their reference for that is Betz's 1920 paper, which is about real turbines (ie things that rotate - the meaning of 'turbine').

Betz's law indicates the maximum power that can be extracted from the wind, independent of the design of a wind turbine in open flow. It was published in 1919 by the German physicist Albert Betz.[1] The law is derived from the principles of conservation of mass and momentum of the air stream flowing through an idealized "actuator disk" that extracts energy from the wind stream. According to Betz's law, no turbine can capture more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy in wind. The factor 16/27 (0.593) is known as Betz's coefficient. Practical utility-scale wind turbines achieve at peak 75–80% of the Betz limit.[2][3]

The Betz limit is based on an open-disk actuator. If a diffuser is used to collect additional wind flow and direct it through the turbine, more energy can be extracted, but the limit still applies to the cross-section of the entire structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law

Even if their assertion is correct - that this could extract close to that limit, the thing to remember is that the cross section of this rod is very small, in comparison to a bladed turbine. Its width is about a tenth of its height. So that 3 metre tall rod has an area of 0.9 sq. m. - the same as a real turbine of radius 0.5m. Their problem is that, to get 4 times the area for 4 times the power, they have to double the height and the diameter of their (circular cross-section) rod. So that's 4 times the material (even if the wall of it is a constant thickness). A rotor, on the other hand, gets 4 times the swept area with just doubling the length of the rotor. All you need to worry about for thickness is whether it's strong enough. This is why turbines are getting larger and larger - the bigger they are, the more power you get for the material needed to build it.

Without actual measurements of how much power they can generate from a built prototype, and how that will scale up, and an idea of the cost of manufacture, this is useless.