WOW - From ANCIENT Tunisia (3000 BC - 900 AD) - The Future Of Wind Power?

[kpete]

From Tunisia, The Future Of Wind Power?

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/images/b/bb/Square_Sails_3000_BC.pdf
(exciting stuff in that pdf!)

An unlikely Tunisian startup is hoping to bring wind power into the 21st century by employing technology first developed thousands of years ago.

Saphon Energy was founded in 2009 by a Tunisian banker, Hassine Labaied, and his inventor friend of two decades, Anis Aouin. The duo teamed up to create an entirely novel and yet instantly recognizable new type of wind energy harvester that relies on no blades, or moving parts, whatsoever.

Instead, Saphon’s “Zero Blade” technology uses a stationary circular sail, approximately 4 feet in diameter, attached to the top of a pole. As the wind moves the sail back and forth, a hydraulic system captures the kinetic energy and converts it into mechanical energy. The system can also store the mechanical energy as hydraulic pressure, to be deployed later, when there is no wind.

“The sail boat is still the best system for capturing and creating energy from the wind, and it does so without blades,” Labaied told TPM in a telephone interview.

more:
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/tunisia-wind-power-saphon.php?ref=fpblg

[BlueToTheBone]

1. I'd love that on my hill! We are a perfect wind site

and solar as well. We could give back to grid all year long.

Thanks for this great info. I'm gong to keep following this company.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

2. Very, very cool!

Sign me up!

[drm604]

3. I'm Skeptical.

I can't find any clear explanation or illustrations of how this works. The description is contradictory.

"relies on no blades, or moving parts, whatsoever"

"As the wind moves the sail back and forth, a hydraulic system captures the kinetic energy and converts it into mechanical energy. The system can also store the mechanical energy as hydraulic pressure, to be deployed later, when there is no wind."

"Mechanical energy". "Hydraulic pressure". Both of those things imply moving parts. It contradicts itself.

They hype the idea that the energy is storable as hydraulic pressure. You could do the same thing with regular wind turbines (or any other kind of power).

This could easily be just another scam to take investor's money.

[kentauros]

11. As we have discovered all too often

journalists have trouble describing anything to do with either science or engineering. Where they see "moving parts" a better description would have been "rotating parts". That's just a guess on my part, but would you be less sceptical if that were the case? This idea to capture kinetic energy from the wind without rotating parts would still work as proposed

[drm604]

12. But I can't even tell what they're proposing.

There doesn't seem to be any description anywhere on the site of how it works. That lack of detail is troubling. It seems like it's all hype with no substance.

Over the years I've seen all kinds of company websites making all kinds of claims and nothing ever comes of most of them.

[TalkingDog]

16. It wasn't clear in the article, but I understood what it said

The "sail" is attached to the "mast". The "sail" catches the wind and turns the "mast" (at least that's what I assumed). This movement is then turned into energy.

Or, like the "sea fingers" (I don't know what they are really called) the "sail" catches the wind and as it TRIES to turn the "mast" the "mast" vibrates. That movement is then turned into energy.

The second one involves no moving parts.

I'd go to the website (if they have one) to see if there is a more graphic description.

[kentauros]

18. I know.

It's difficult to tell from what little I can access through this "webwasher" firewall. But, by the graphic alone, it appears that the "sail" flexes in the wind, thus creating the movement through linkages. What I can't figure is whether the concavity faces into the wind or away from it for this flexing action...

[piratefish08]

14. it works like THIS - but with air instead of water - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTNkoyvLFs

the problem is we are brainwashed in this country to believe that anything that doesnt begin and end oil can't possible be of any value......

[Motown_Johnny]

33. At some point the "sail" must push back against the wind

and I don't see how it could do that without expending energy.


Unless you just wait for the wind to die down so it can return to it's original position on it's own. I don't see how that could be generating much energy.

If the sail switched positions after a "stroke" so that it could "tact" against the wind to return to it's original position then it might be practical.


Maybe it is just a terrible author trying to explain a new machine. The description does not make sense. There must be moving parts.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. See the link to the patent in #32

It's very strange - there actually is rotary motion, but they attach a pivot to it, and then use the motion of that to pull and push pistons.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. That PDF is completely irrelevant

It's about how square sails were limited in their usefulness for boats (eg limited in the direction of travel achievable from a wind direction). How is that related to a sail on a fixed pole, that relies on moving the pole back and forth?

The promotional video has no details about how these work in practice. They claim higher 'efficiency' than turbines, but there's no indication of what they're actually measuring. An efficiency should be a ratio, but what is their ratio?

[HopeHoops]

5. Why aren't buoy generators in wider use? They make sense and have no environmental impact.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Pretty expensive to build, install and maintain, I think

The moving parts are right in the saltwater environment.

[HopeHoops]

9. Yeah, but aluminum shafts with plastic bouys and copper cores aren't going to deteriorate.

[HooptieWagon]

25. Aluminum and copper in proximity in salt water

Is a crude battery. Severe deterioration by electrolysis will result.

[Uncle Joe]

6. This looks promising.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[hahahareally]

7. perfect!!

[msongs]

10. Video has ZERO information about the actual product lol - expensive vid tho nt

[drm604]

13. How many times have we seen excited threads about some supposed new innovation

that never amounted to anything?

[bluedigger]

17. And we'll keep right on reacting like that.

Until something works.

[DetlefK]

15. I think it's a scam. Why is there no animation of the "Saphonian" in action in the video?

Maybe because their idea isn't by far as good as they promised and their efficiency-calculations are bull-shit?

Quote from article:"As the wind moves the sail back and forth"

- What if the wind is either too strong or too weak to whip the sail back and forth?
- Would the whipping result in cyclic motion (-> AC) or would it lead to chaotic fluctuations that have to be trimmed down to AC (leading to a waste of electric energy)?
- What if the wind comes from a different direction, e.g. 45° turned? Is there an adjustment mechanism to realign the sail?
- Wind turbines supposedly cause noise, headache, nausea, kill birds and disturb radio signals, but a huge pole with a sail attached to it does none of that?

And why do we never read headlines that wind turbines cause noise, headache, nausea, kill birds and disturb radio signals from countries that ACTUALLY USE wind turbines as a main power source?

[JDPriestly]

19. Sails were the energy source for boats and ships for a long time.

I suppose these sails would work like sails in the ocean or on a river.

When the wind is still, they would not work, but they would work well when the wind is strong. And there are places where the wind is strong a great deal of the time. I don't know how enough energy would be generated to make a difference, but then, the big sailing boats managed.

[drm604]

20. Sailing boats moved from place to place.

How would that be applicable to this? Maybe it is in some way, but there's nothing I can find on that website that explains how.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Ironically, turbines work like a modern sail; these are like square-riggers for half the time

Because it rotates, a turbine blade can extract energy from the wind continually, and it does so because of its aerofoil shape, just like the curved sails on a modern boat. But these just use air pressure on a surface at right angles to the wind - which moves it backwards, and so, after a bit, there has to be a recovery phase where something (such as the elasticity of the mast) moves it back to the starting point.

I'd like to know their estimates for the lifetime of the flexing mast.

[madokie]

26. I wouldn't think there would be a flexing mast

more like a bearing that this sail swivels on powering a hydraulic pump as it goes first one direction until the wind slides away then back the other way as the wind powers it in that direction. Back and forth, piston in and out pushing hydraulic fluid both directions. No flexing just swiveling in a bearing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. I can't see how it could push hydraulic fluid both ways

Once the wind has pushed it back to a certain angle, what are you saying would restore it to its former angle? If it's a flexible mast (the equivalent of a tree waving in the wind), then there's elastic energy built up in it, and a force that has increased as it flexes more and more. This overcomes the force of the wind on the sail (which also presumably decreases as the sail changes its angle), and momentum means the whole system will behave with something like simple harmonic motion - there's a point at which the force of the wind balances the force from the bent mast, but the inertia of the system will keep the mast going back to its original position, by which time the wind force is higher (allowing new work to be done).

But how do you get the wind to do useful work when the sail is pushing forward against it to return to the original position? The wind would still be forcing the sail and mast away from the original position.

You could have a counterweight on a swivelling, rigid mast instead of a flexible one, it's true; but the idea of a bearing to swivel around destroys claim of 'no moving parts' even more. As well as the piston that someone pointed out has to be a moving part by definition, the bearing is just as much of an engineering problem as the bearing for a rotating turbine.

[madokie]

28. I know from playing with various objects in the wind

that something that is cupped like this facing into the wind where it is only allowed a limited amount of movement will set there and rock back and forth. As far as the piston pumping both ways, think of it as a two way hydraulic cylinder that powers out and powers back in. Add a couple one way check valves and viola you have a piston that pumps as it goes one direction and pumps as it goes the other direction. Not unlike how a bridge rectifier with an alternating current works. I think the cup and the effect it has on the wind is what you're missing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. No, the analogy to a bridge rectifier is unfounded

In that, an EMF reverses direction, and diodes allow an alternate path for current to flow, so that the output still has the same direction of current as before. But the force due to the wind does not reverse. When a force is in the same direction as a part moves, you can extract energy from it (eg with a piston). But when the force is in the opposite direction to the movement, you need another force to oppose the wind force. Just think of it as a weight moving up and down - the force of gravity is constantly down, and you can extract energy as the weight moves down, but you can't extract energy again as the weight moves up.

To be like a rectifier, you'd need valves to reverse the flow of air over the sail. You could do that, in a tunnel, but it's not what this is doing.

What objects were you playing with? Did they have a flexible stem, for instance? Or are you saying the wind sucked the cup back, against the flow of the wind - and, if so, why does it suck when the object is moving in one direction, and blow when it's moving in the other?

[madokie]

30. I was referring to the direction of the oil flow

from the piston. If it is a double acting piston as I suspect it would be otherwise there would be wasting motion the anology of a bridge rectifier is sound.

Its rocking back and forth on the bearing. as the cupped dish rocked to one side the wind spills out of it and the force of the wind flowing over the other side, not unlike a wing at this point, pulls the disk back where the wind catches it again and due to the motion it is traveling in at that point in time it will travel in that direction until it completes the cycle to start again at the other end of the rocking motion.

Sorry if you can't understand it. Its not moving back and forth its moving side to side pivoted on the bearing at the top of the shaft its connected to at the rear of the cup. Its pretty simple actually

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Well, if it does move side-to-side, then the link to 'thousands of years old' technology

is even worse than I thought - totally misleading. That's about a sail being blown in the direction of the wind, not getting flipped from side to side.

What you describe still sounds unlikely to me. When the cup is slightly to one side, the force on the part that is more or less flat to the wind will be considerable. You'd need a lot of force from an aerofoil effect (or a lot of momentum built up from earlier aerofoil effect in the return stroke) on the other side to overcome that, let alone have force left over to compress a piston during it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. I've looked at their patent

http://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2012039688&recNum=25&docAn=TN2010000005&queryString=%28IC/F03D%29%2520&maxRec=4314

It's weird. The 'cup' pivots around a point on its circumference; that point is linked to a turbine behind the cup, so as the turbine goes round, the pivot moves, meaning that the pistons nearer the centre of the cup go in and out in turn, with the wind pressure on the cup.

So this still has a rotating wheel with wind vanes; they're just smaller, and only on the circumference, with the 'cup' in the centre of it.

[madokie]

35. I couldn't make any sense of that patent at all

most patents I can but not this one. Anyway I guess it would be safe to say I don't know what I know.
Peace
I thought I understood the process from experiments I've conducted years ago playing with a cupped surface facing into the wind nothing unlike the picture of what they were showing. color me cornfused now fore shore. my bad

[Motown_Johnny]

36. .

^snip from your link^


The system (SCEE) has a wheel (F) equipped with a series of blades arranged all around it. The wheel (F) turns in a pivoting connection about a fixed axle (L). Set on the axle (L), a support (E) attaches the end plates of a series of double-acting actuating cylinders (D)



So it does have moving parts which means the author of that article is a moron.


I agree with you, it is still a rotating wheel. It just seems to have one vane/sail which turns the axle.

[drm604]

21. It does seem like a large flapping sail would cause a lot of noise.

Especially if it's flapping hard enough to move hydraulics.

[4th law of robotics]

22. I'll wait until I see it work

it's a cool idea but science articles are often over the top in their claims.

[daaron]

24. I wanna make one! nt