Development of small-scale wind power generation behind livestock exhaust fan

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop a small scale wind power system behind livestock exhaust fan. The wind flow behind the livestock exhaust fan was evaluated through field experiments and simulation works. The field experiments using typical 50-inch fan indicated that the wind flow behind the exhaust fan had a good possibility of power generation with its high and steady wind speeds up to a distance of 2 m. The decline of exhaust fan performance caused by the obstacle was also not significant from a distance of 2 m. The flow profiles of the exhaust fan for the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was created by combining the direction vectors analyzed from tuft visualization test and the flow predicted by the rotating fan modeling. The new several wind turbines were designed by the blade element momentum theory (BEMT) and their aerodynamic performances were tested through the CFD simulation. These simulation works provided an efficient saving of computational time and cost to design a better wind turbine system and the final selection was used to build a prototype.