Direct heat energy from windmills

Let's take the monster windmills of today and throw away their gear box and electricals. Replace with a rough surface armature in a matching stator with a well determined air gap.

Lets think about that. An air gap will equal little if any friction, no friction no heat.

To generate heat by friction you need one surface rubbing against another.

thanks stan...

i was thinking of fluid friction. ie deliberately engineering to increase what is called 'windage losses' in rotating machines. if it comes to that and physical rubbing is necessary, well let that be engineered in, with say, bristles on the rotor.

the point of the post was to get heat energy directly from windmills that can be built cheaper without gearing and electricals

The windmill makes the same amount of energy, if you use it as heat or electricity.

Electricity is movabl and can be turned into heat with a resistor at any time or place.

If you want heat, use a copper plate and turn a magnet very close to it. By adjusting the gap you can adjust the load and all the rotating energy fron the windmill will end up as a hot copper place.

If that plate is the bottom of a kettle it will boil the water, etc etc

This is not that stupid idea.

I would harvest the heat in a different way: with a permanent magnet generator, direct coupled to the rotor (no gears).

When you then take the electrical energy down to a point where it can be used (a boiler or accumulator) you can work with very easy techniques. (conductors and heating wire) Much more easy and less losses.

With a car/truck alternator you can generate 12/24V DC which can drive a PLC and feed a battery to keep the PLC running when wind is low. With this 24V you can drive a circulation pump to distribute the heat for house warming and processes. The PLC can then decide when to kick in a gas fired heater in case you run out of accumulated heat.

To make the windmill even more basic you can choose for a vertical axis type.

The basic is existing and typically for the modern world, made to expensive as they add a system to have 230V AC 50Hz.

You are living in a part of the world where the expensive oil is used to boil water for desalination. This makes fresh water expensive. Where I live we burn the oil to heat our houses, which is even more stupid.

I was suggesting a simple mechanical way to allow a vertical shaft to be coupled to a rotating magnet and the shorted turn of the copper bottom of his boiler or kettle would get hot and heat water. If he has a large tank this could be self limiting and need no controller. Just an adjustment so as the wind became stronger and slight centrifugal cam could advance the magnet closer to the copper plate.

In any event the gap could vary from 1/4" to 1/10 inch from the copper, depending on how well it was made to run close and not touch. The close the better as more magnetic drag = more heat. Other metals can be used.

Copper is commonly used as a braking rotor in this way on vehicle brakes where the heat is wasted. More moderns ways capture the electricity with regenerative braking

Hmm, So how long would this "idea" generate heat before the surfaces worn smooth from the friction, a month or a year. What is the expected life of a electric generator attached to a wind mill?

Another question: Why do i always see the idea of flash desalinator coming out of India, but Europe, US and Australia tend towards microfiltration/reverse osmosis deslaination processes. I used to work for a company that dealt with some of these treatment plants, and was informed that in their opinion flash desalination would not produce high enough quality water for drinking cost effectively. Old american engineers tend to lean very strong away from flash desalination (Vendor Driven Engineering), but i think flash with reverse osmosis to polish the water might be a good combination. Maybe we can recover the salt for refining as table salt also?

There are no wearing surfaces. The magnet and copper plate rotate closely together, bit not touching. The closer the better, within the limit of design.

Life is limited to the bearings and gear train design. These being mature technologies you can get very long life sealed bearings.

I happen to feel it is better to place an alternator at the top and bring the power down by wire to a heater element

Interesting, but how much heat do you expect to get this way? How much do you need for the flash desalinator process? Also, how does this method compare to using a standard electrical wind turbine (or solar heater for that matter) to heat the water. Can the flash desalination process handle the inconsistent speed (generated heat)?

I haven't done any research on the flash desalinator process or previous attempts of using the technology in this way but if all looks good, it may warrant moving to the next stage and building a small prototype to test feasibility. My have other applications, but I am a little concerned about things such as heat degrading the magnets, etc.

Hi

Windmills are perfect to generate power, especialy out in the open such as sea or ocean where there is no boundaries. So why not harvest the energy first and then separate the salt water in the actual water filtration plant on the shore. With all the water filtreting components being more accessible on the shore will leave the windmills being the only equipment that has to be repared on the water. Windmills are a great idea for harvesting energy but to impliment it and turn it into a great success story is another dilema which will take negotiations and time to position the floating windmills.

By the way thanks for the idea, I might even think of doing something like this myself. Joking .. Anyways good luck with it.. I hope it will help save lives.

Why not just hook your windmill to the vacuum pump exhausting the fresh

water vapor from the vacuum chamber?? (Which can be part of the floatation system, and warmed by the surrounding sea, - a great heat sink BTW, the fresh water will condense in a normal pressure tank cooled by the sea.)

It's been done, with power produced to boot. Google "Open Circuit OTEC".

The navy had a pilot project some years back.

"Everything old is new again".

I can see where the concept of moving a permanent magnet around and round a ferrous boiler would be remarkably simple and easy to maintain. (is there an eddy current generated in the permanent magnets as well as the walls of the boiler which would heat them up too much? Anybody here know for sure?) Would be easier to build and maintain than than a vacuum pump, and WAY simpler than a generator. The advantages of a vacuum pump of course are that you don't get nearly as much scale forming on the inside walls of your boiler. As far as an ocean mounted wind farm goes though, you will get the usual problems of octopuses living in your intake pipes, zebra mussels blocking them, storms dragging the anchors, and ships cruising through the wind farm. I am sure there are other problems associated with ocean mounted installations, none of which by themselves are insurmountable, but it always seemed to ME that those associated problems in total are much more important than the technical problem of what do you do with your windmill when you get it.

My neighbour here in Ottawa has his windmill driving an automatic transmission from a wrecked truck. He uses the heat from the tranny radiator to help heat his chicken coop, and the power take off to pump water to his cows. He points out that his method is not speed or frequency dependant, and uses no electricity. He figures folks are always working backwards with alternative energy...that here they got a electric generator and now what can be done with it..when they should be looking at the job that needs to be done and picking an appropriate method. He admits that it isn't very efficient, but then, it IS very useful. And it uses recycled parts.

He has a second windmill that runs an air compressor. Useful stuff, compressed air. I could make post after post about compressed air, and its uses. (My windmill froze and crashed down in the last ice storm...I have some idea of what can go wrong! But it ran electricity. Never enough to do anything really useful, and it was too difficult to store the electicity safely. I was happy to see the damned thing fall!)

Remarkably good post gniMan...it can lead to some good discussion.

Hi gniMan. This was experimented with in Sweden in the late 1970s, and I can remember one such unit in the middle of nowhere, not far from the town of Karlstad. It consisted of a vertical shaft placed within a large metal drum, on this shaft and within the drum were five disc brakes, each of 18ins diameter. The drum was filled with water, and when the shaft turned the brake pads were applied, very gently at first, as the wind speed increased the the brakes were applied with even more pressure. The result was that the temperature of the water increased dramatically. The shaft was turned by a wind turbine which had a diameter of 12ft, and the water drum was connected to a hot water tank in the experimental house. I think that the problem way back then was that the world was awash with oil, so in those days nobody would invest in alternative energy. Still, we live and learn.

One way to generate heat from the wind, using off-the-shelf components, is to do so hydraulically. The rotor is connected to a pump and the resulting high pressure oil is "throttled" through an orifice. The heat could be removed by routing the heated oil through a heat exchanger.

Controlling the flow from the pump would allow braking of the rotor in overspeed conditions. Various other control functions would also be possible.