PATENT PENDING VERTICAL AXIS WIND TURBINE OR HYDRO-TURBINE

A new prototype of the Disk-Style, Vertical Axis Wind Turbine has just been finished and is being tested at this time. A video of operation of the wind turbine may be seen by clicking on the following link: LINK TO VIDEO OF NEW WIND TURBINE PROTOTYPE A full engineering report that shows the efficiency of the new turbine at forty-four percent (44%) compared to an efficiency of twenty-one percent (21%) for a conventional horizontal axis wind turbine is available upon request from the following link:

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How the turbine works: Rotatable shutters mounted on a circular disk automatically open when directed into the wind, irregardless of the wind's direction.  Pairs of upper and lower shutters are geared together. The lower shutter acts as a counterweight to the upper shutter. The bottom shutter opens in the downward direction and its weight helps to lift the upper shutter in the upward direction, as the wind applies an opening force against both shutters. When the shutters reach the vertical position, stops prevent them from opening further and the force of the wind is transferred from the open shutters to the circular disk.  And the circular disk is attached to the vertical axis for power output. The circular disk, shutters, and outer vertical axis rotate together. The outer vertical axis is mounted via bearings over an inner vertical axis that is stationery.

The shutters are blown closed by the wind (no stops in the opposite direction) as they reverse direction during their rotation and move into the wind on the opposite side of the wind turbine.  When the wind is not blowing, the shutters open by gravity because the lower shutter is weighted to be slightly heavier than the upper shutter and it therefore can cause the upper shutter to open via the force of gravity as the two shutters are geared together.  Wind blows against the open shutters and the open shutters with stops apply a force against the disk, but the open shutters with no stops (opposite side going into the wind) merely close due to the force of the wind (not applying a force against the disk) and the wind turbine begins spinning no matter what direction the wind comes from. Operation of the turbine is remarkably quiet as compared to the appearance of the video due to biasing members that absorb the shock of the opening and closing and provide useful energy output.

Background:

Robert D. Hunt has designed an innovative new disk-style vertical axis wind turbine or hydro-turbine that produces far less drag than does a conventional horizontal axis wind turbine that has vertical propeller type rotor blades of which the entire circumference of the vertical blades, known as the "swept area", creates drag.  An additional negative aspect of conventional wind turbines is that they must be directed into the wind, which is not neccessary with Hunt's new vertical axis turbine.

The high efficiency of the new turbine comes from creating controllable maximum drag on the power generating side of the turbine with open shutters that the wind or water does work on and that move backward with the motion of the wind. The opposite side of the turbine produces minimal drag as esentially only the disk moves forward into the wind as the shutters are folded down into or directly against the disk.  Its efficiency increases with the degree of differential between high drag and low drag.  The greater the surface area of the shutters on the high drag side of the wind or water turbine that transfers kinetic energy to the shutters and the lower the surface area of the disk with the shutters folded down into the disk on the low drag side, the greater the efficiency of the wind turbine.

Conventional turbines must be very tall in order to create leverage by having very long blades to sweep a very large area.  Hunt's vertical axis creates leverage by increasing its width instead of height.  This allows the vertical turbine to be used in many applications, in which horizontal axis turbines cannot be used, such as flat building rooftops or just above the rooftop of a house or portable office building, as a sailboat wind turbine over a cabin area, attached to cellular telephone towers, on top of advertisement billboards, on the top of water towers, at the top of power line towers, etc.

The shaft of the new innovative vertical axis wind turbine may be connected to an air compressor to produce high pressure compressed air that may be used as a form of energy storage and may additionally be used as ballast weight as used in the gravityplane.

The vertical axis wind or water turbine is far more flexible in its operation than is a conventional horizontal axis turbine:  (1) the wind may be blowing from any direction and it does not have to be directed into the wind; and, (2) the amount of drag is dramatically reduced because its swept area is much smaller than the swept area of a conventional wind turbine and the drag force may be controlled; and, (2) torque is gained be an increase in horizontal distance instead of an increase in vertical distance, which allows it to be used in many applications in which a conventional horizontal axis wind turbine may not be used and allows the use of very low wind speeds.

The force produced by the mass of the wind is directly applied to the rotational axis of the turbine, thereby, allowing our vertical axis turbine to extract more power at slower wind speeds by using a longer lever-arm. The length of the lever-arm does not change the power output; the length merely changes the rotational speed, with a longer lever-arm having greater torque with a resulting slower rotational speed. The greater torque allows slower wind speeds to be used to generate wind power. Our disk style wind turbine can be optimized for slow wind speeds merely by placing the shutters near the outer circumference of the disk to produce more torque by having a longer lever-arm. Using this geometry, our vertical axis wind turbines can be designed for use in areas having very low wind velocities.

To increase the power of our vertical axis wind turbine, the size of the shutters must merely be increased (increased surface area) to resist more of the wind’s mass that applies a force against the shutters and work is accomplished. The shutters can extend out beyond the disk to accomplish greater surface area. In comparison, only incremental increases in efficiency may be expected for horizontal axis wind turbines having vertical rotor blades that use aerodynamic lift as the motive force.

EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE REGARDING THE POWER OF SAILBOATS -- LIFT VS DRAG

It is well known from detailed accounts of old oyster schooner fisherman with actual oyster dredging experience using wind sail power that drag is a more (efficient) method of developing wind power than is lift. Lift is faster, but drag has greater torque and more overall power. These oystermen report sailing to the oyster site with their sails on-a-reach (a lift configuration) that obtained greater speed, but once upon the oyster reef, they configured their sails wing-to-wing (a drag configuration) to produce the power necessary to pull an oyster dredge. Wind-to-wing situates the sails basically 90 degrees perpendicular to the wind, in the same manner in which our shutters are situated to produce a near perfect drag vector angle. A sail (wing) was set out perpendicular to the wind on each side of the boat and the drag effect of the wind, due to a favorable vector angle, pushed the boat along with great force. When these oystermen tried to use the sails in the lift configuration to dredge oysters, the boat would almost immediately stop when the dredge was put over as insufficient force was produced to move the boat forward against the resistance of the large metal oyster dredge as it pulled against the heavy oyster shells.

Empirical knowledge of this fact relating to oyster dredging using sail power played a part in designing our drag effect wind turbine. We consider drag to be a much more powerful force and thus a much more efficient force than lift in harnessing the kinetic energy of motion from the wind. Lift provides acceleration that gains greater speed at the expense of overall efficiency. The vector angle of the wind used by lift detrimentally deflects a large portion of the air mass that contains the kinetic energy, which results in the energy not being useful to the direction needed to provide a beneficial force and/or not being harnessed at all as it is deflected.

ARTIST RENDERING OF POWER BARGE THAT HAS WIND TURBINES ABOVE THE BARGE AND HAS "RUN-OF-THE-RIVER" HYDRO-TURBINES BELOW THE BARGE