Industry: Energy, electricity, and environment
Subject: Using clean energy instead of fuel to save energy and prevent air pollution
There are almost 3 billion vehicles worldwide, which generate wind turbulence through their movement. Accordingly, highways are able to provide an outstanding amount of wind to drive a turbine due to high vehicle traffic. These potentials are unused so far. On the other hand, wind energy is considered to be the worldwide fastest-growing source of clean energy alongside solar power.
Due to the fact that the highways are sufficient source of potential wind energy to supply its own electricity demand. In this regard and to acquire an effective wind turbine design, an in-depth analysis of fluid flow due to traffic on highways has been performed. Since the wind potential is inherently intermittence, then, a storage system for the power generated is considered to be designed to distribute a constant power. Basically, in order to be able to use this mechanism permanently for highway advertising and street lighting and even other amenities, we need a storage system.
This design must be sustainable. So, it is supposed to be able to store adequate energy for use when there is low traffic or even no car to path through. Therefore, we have two options, using batteries as energy storage or figuring out a better alternative. Since we are relying on the slogan of using environmentally friendly technologies. Then CAES would be the strong candidate. Another notable point is to aptly use vertical turbines which are capable of capturing wind in any direction, whereas, horizontal turbines need to be pointed in the direction of the wind. Additionally, heavy parts such as the generator and gears can easily be placed at the base of the turbine.
Al-Khawarzmi as a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing awareness of energy issues, reducing energy waste and working with others to ensure equality of access to energy. Al-Khawarzmi has been responsible for the overall leadership of this innovative Traffic Advertising wind Turbine (TAWT).
The motivation for designing a highway wind turbine is to contribute towards the global trend of using green energy in a feasible way. Mostly, wind turbines are employed in the countryside, however, the goal of this project is to design a wind turbine that can be used in cities. In particular, the turbines will use the wind draft created by vehicles on the highway to generate electricity. The idea is to offset the amount of pollution created by burning fossil fuels by introducing a potential source of clean energy.
Even though one traffic turbine may not provide sufficient electricity, a collective of turbines at a specific distance along the guardrails has the potential to generate a large amount of energy that can be used to light the highway, advertisement screen and other public amenities or even to earn profits by selling the power back to the grid.