Wind turbines can offer a double win in the fight against climate changes
You can also harness wind for other purposes. generate clean energyTurbines could be used to funnel carbon dioxide into systems that extract the greenhouse gas from the air.SN: 8/10/21). Researchers say their simulations show that wind turbines can drag dirty air from above a city or a smokestack into the turbines’ wakes. This increases the amount of CO.2This allows it to be removed from the atmosphere by machines. The researchers will describe the process. They also created simulations Wind tunnel testing of a scaled-down system at a meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics in Indianapolis on November 21.
Addressing climate change will require dramatic reductions in the amount of carbon dioxide that humans put into the air — but that alone won’t be enough (SN: 3/10/22). One possible part of the solution is direct air captureSystems that remove CO2From the atmosphereSN: 9/9/22).
The large amounts of CO are not.2The carbon dioxide produced by power plants and factories is often concentrated at heights that prevent it from being removed by machinery. “We’re looking into the fluid dynamics benefits of utilizing the wake of the wind turbine to redirect higher concentrations” down to carbon capture systems, says mechanical engineer Clarice Nelson of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
According to Luciano Castillo (mechanical engineer at Purdue), large wind turbines generate turbulence, which pulls air into their wakes. It’s an effect that can concentrate carbon dioxide enough to make capture feasible, particularly near large cities like Chicago.
“The beauty is that [around Chicago], you have one of the best wind resources in the region, so you can use the wind turbine to take some of the dirty air in the city and capture it,” Castillo says. Wind turbines don’t require the cooling that nuclear and fossil fuel plants need. “So not only are you producing clean energy,” he says, “you are not using water.”
The financial burden associated with the removal of CO can be reduced by running the capture systems.2 From the air. “Even with tax credits and potentially selling the CO2, there’s a huge gap between the value that you can get from capturing it and the actual cost” that comes with powering capture with energy that comes from other sources, Nelson says. “Our method would be a no-cost added benefit” to wind turbine farms.
CO can be affected by many factors.2 Nicholas Hamilton, an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, Colo.), who wasn’t involved in the new research, describes transport using real-world turbines. He also discusses the interactions that turbine wakes have to water, plants, or the ground. “I’m interested to see how this group scaled their experiment for wind tunnel investigation.”
