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Need to know if this could work as a wind turbine?

Rhjr16

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My supervisor was told to throw this industrial compressor fan unit away because the motor stopped working on it. It is around a $2,000 part and so I considered saving it in hopes I could use it as a wind turbine.

It turns very easy and rotates for a solid minute by just pushing it with my hand. Would this even be possible or efficient if it did work? I don’t know much about small wind systems so I apologize for the ignorance.

Thanks for any help,
Josh
 

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If you're just going to be playing around and it's free, I can't think of a reason to say no. If nothing else it'll be a fun learning opportunity.
 
My supervisor was told to throw this industrial compressor fan unit away because the motor stopped working on it. It is around a $2,000 part and so I considered saving it in hopes I could use it as a wind turbine.

It turns very easy and rotates for a solid minute by just pushing it with my hand. Would this even be possible or efficient if it did work? I don’t know much about small wind systems so I apologize for the ignorance.

Thanks for any help,
Josh

Sure it doesn't hurt to try and play with it as a fun project. Just to note, I looked into this kind of possibility before myself, and what I learned is that the problem is, the angle-of-attack for a motor fan (drive) blade is different than the angle-of-attack for a turbine (driven) blade, so although, you will get some rotation from wind going through it, it will not be optimized to have maximum shaft torque.

It would be better to experiment with fans that have variable pitch blades, so that they can be twisted/adjusted and find best angle-of-attack / torque in a wind (driven) airflow scenario.

This is just a general description of the problem, since there are many types of fan designs, yours looking like a centrifugal fan, you just have to think about how the air will enter the wing/blade (from which direction), and how the Bernoulli's principle vs Newton's third law will affect the wing movement, and figure out if it's possible to optimize the existing design (without excessive modification) to achieve some type of useful result.
 
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I have played with those things as well, those really huge barn fans, about 6ft across. They are designed more to push air rather than capture the breeze, so the attack angle is pretty steep, it is possible to bend the stems though with a torch and make them flatter. Back in the early days I was going to gear it down and hook it to a 5k generator head I have, but figuring out the belt drive has never been attempted yet.
 
Wouldn't it need to be attached to an altermator, AC or DC, which would cause resistance and so remove the free spinning you see and which now has no load / resistance.

Find, cost out and attach a weather proof alternator may not be affordable or doable. What about bearings and or slip rings for wind direction changes.

Also important is a tower to get it into clear air and how to strongly attach it to the tower from violence of wind. A "good" tower is often 50+ feet high and of substantial cost and maintenance needs to be factored in as well as power cables on the tower, to the alternator and then to the system.

Also you will need to design and manufacture and attach a tail or rudder and figure out furling in high winds to avoid destruction.

Point is, the above is just freeballing thoughts and nowhere near a complete assessment. So it might be fun to play with but free is going to cost you a lot of money and time to maybe get a little power out of it. Maybe spend all that on solar, your family or a more rewarding, time and money sucking hobby?
 
The issue with that designed fan is getting air into it.
It is a high friction blower.
If you mounted it on a horizontal frame, tied to a low friction wind vane and set in a large bellow funnel, about 3 times the inlet diameter at the opening, it might produce some flow.
 
As kind of mentioned above; this looks like a propeller for a centrifugal blower. In the factory I work these are used at rotation speeds of >2.000rpm while eolic turbines operate at around 20rpm. Your propeller can probably rotate faster than a giant eolic turbine but even If you get it up to 100rpm, it will still be far from the 2.000rpm. If you had something like gears to increase transmitted rotation, then it could work, but you would soon encounter the second limitation; propeller area. With such small propeller you need air coming in at high pressure (similar to the one it was providing); could be 0,5bar, 1bar, 2bar,... that from wind is a lot.

Perhaps it would work better with water. It's higher density puts more pressure per unit of area. Increasing transmitted rotational speed before it is transformed into current would still be necessary.
 
stick it in the river, keep the motor dry, a water turbine is good too.....
 
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