Wind Turbines Could Help Capture Carbon Dioxide While Providing Power
upstart writes:
Wind turbines could help capture carbon dioxide while providing power:
Wind turbines could offer a double whammy in the fight against climate change.
Besides harnessing wind to generate clean energy, turbines may help to funnel carbon dioxide to systems that pull the greenhouse gas out of 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. That boosts the amount of CO2 that makes it to machines that can remove it from the atmosphere. The researchers plan to describe their simulations and a wind tunnel test 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 part of the solution could be direct air capture systems that remove some CO2 from the atmosphere (SN: 9/9/22).
But the large amounts of CO2 produced by factories, power plants and cities are often concentrated at heights that put it out of reach of machinery on the ground that can remove it. 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.
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