A Texas airport says it will use the power wasted when a jet takes off to charge its fleet of electric service vehicles. Dallas Love Field is helping test turbines made by JetWind Power to capture some of the energy of the jet wash created by jet engines. “This sustainable technology will transform the transportation and energy industries, not just aviation,” said Dr. T. O. Souryal, founder of JetWind Power Corporation. “I’m excited to see what started as a simple concept on an airfield, develop into a renewable energy game changer for businesses and end users.”
The company says its Dallas test proves that useable energy can be recovered from the “wind” created by airplanes. It’s also planning to tap the man-made air currents created by trains and cars. “The fundamental premise of this groundbreaking, patented Energy Capturing Pod (ECP) system is to capture man-made wind, generated from jet, train and auto usage, and to convert it into sustainable and environmentally friendly energy,” the company said.
How is this sited to be able to capture jetwash without creating a runway area obstacle hazard?
…in this case (photo) looks like no additional hazard placed in front of deflector structure
Honestly, this looks like the most expensive packaged form of “wind power” I’ve ever seen for dry land use. If airport management put up solar panel covered long term parking, the it would benefit “green” and the public. Win-win
Not a runway obstacle obstruction issue – as Rich R. stated above since it will be Incorporated into the jet blast deflector units.
There was a French company about a decade ago which built “trees” to be put alongside roads, with the “leafs” being lots of small turbines, which would spin when traffic passed or wind blew. Technology worked, but the amount of power was too small for it to ever be financially viable, and it folded after a couple of years.
Hard fact is that significant power from turbines depends on size of turbines.
But for specific uses, running a freezer or possibly a charger, small units can work — sailors have been using them for years.
I remember the tree-generator scheme. For 90% of the announced schemes that propose extracting energy from odd sources you can conclude on pure intuition that the numbers aren’t going to add up, no detailed analysis needed.
Why don’t they just put a windmill on the roof of the airport vehicles? When they move, the windmill could charge the vehicle and there’d be no need for external power … ever! If any extra power was needed, it could be provided by burning fairy dust in a trunk mounted generator unit. Now THAT would be, “sustainable and environmentally friendly energy.” Genius!
Have the tree huggers gone mad? Methinks so. And what will happen when the climate fanatics start blocking runways like they just did on roads near Burning Man in Nevada?
This “green” thing has gone on long enough !! Give it a rest.
I agree totally. Some would believe obtaining a patent somehow gives an idea of credibility. It does not. Putting a windmill inside of a box and parking it behind another doesn’t seem patentable to me. There’s also a mindset these days that “technology” will solve every problem. It can’t. And of course, there will always be those who will accept every dumb idea that comes along. Some Love Field “administrator” must be one of them.
Technology WILL solve every problem Maybe just not in your lifetime. If you don’t try, you never know, for sure, that it doesn’t work.
I love your idea of a trunk mounted fairy dust powered generator, but unfortunately a “fairy dust” burning generator would not be a sustainable solution, as you have to burn the fairy to create the dust. I would suggest that you redesign to a fairy f–t burning generator, which is extremely sustainable.
I’m “ON” it, Gerry … I’ll get back to you shortly with my design 🙂
FIRST, I have to sell it to the Love Field admin guys as first right of refusal.
Larry, the problem with your argument is that we all don’t live in caves.
You’re right … I live in REALITYVILLE, FlyerDon … not LaLaLand! AND … I’m an engineer so … trying to recapture energy this way is a waste of time.
Train engineer?
The founder lost me when he was quoted using term “game-changer”. This is such an over-used bit of lingo seemingly almost exclusively used by transient corporate types, and it almost certainly never describes anything that ever “changes the game”.
That said, its an interesting concept. If incorporated, it will be nice to know we are helping the environment every time we advance the thrust levers 🙂
I don’t believe it will actually “charge airport vehicles”–that would require a separate power grid. If it ever DOES come to pass, it would likely put power directly into the electrical grid–which would be mandated to purchase the power–which would merely offset the cost of power to those electric vehicles (or be used to power ANYTHING ELSE connected to the grid). As others have pointed out, these “showpiece” items are usually “feel-good” only–the power recovered in this case and sold to the electric grid will probably be a net loss to the airport and the electric power grid–resulting in MORE cost to every consumer of electricity. I don’t believe that many would willingly invest in the concept.
The claim that it would be used just to “charge airport vehicles” was a nice little bon mot, however–a sop to Political Correctness.
Presumably the power generated would be stored in batteries for later use to charge the airport vehicles. It doesn’t necessarily have to feed back into the grid.
Batteries will quadruple the cost and complexity. That’s why there are so few “off grid” systems. It borders on lunacy at this point since cheap and effective have been discarded.
Why don’t you go to Tesla.com/megapack and learn something.
Because I’ve been building off-grid home systems for well over a decade and already know. The smallest one you can buy (at that site) is $2.3 MILLION dollars and then you need installation, maintenance contracts, step-down transformers, etc. So yea, it quadruples the price of simple grid-tied systems. Q.E.D.
Or, maybe, you could go pick up a first year text on thermodynamics and begin to understand all the realities of physics that mean this “game changer” probably won’t be particularly impressive in its capabilities. And, then, maybe you could go pick up a first year text on economics and learn why it is unlikely to be economically viable (without tax-payer provided, politician-mandated subsidies).
I see a system like this in my three toilets in addition to my patented methane retrieval system which automatically shunts the gas to my gas stove and oven. I’m open to interested investment money mailed to Hans M.
Wow, that could be a game changer……
AND … it’s “sustainable!”
How about propeller-topped beanies connected to battery backpacks for all the kids hanging on the fence at Princess Juliana Airport in St Maarten. Their fun riding the jet blast could power all the island’s tourist hangouts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL29ALFaCs
Does attempting to capture tiny amounts of waste energy from an “unsustainable” process really count as “sustainable”. I think not…
I think mini-windmills in front of the mouths of our politicians would yield far more energy…
Skylor
Indeed, Skylor P!
ONLY in the mind of the numbskull(s) who thought this crazy idea up, Skylor. And maybe the investors who think it’s a good idea, too. YOU win the comment fray with your second paragraph.
Hmm, so an airplane is at the threshold producing takeoff thrust for perhaps 10 seconds every takeoff. According to airnav.com, KDAL has on average 351 commercial operations daily. So that’s 3,510 seconds or 58 minutes of useful wind. KDAL has two parallel runways. Assuming they are installed at all four runway ends, these turbines are only going to be operational for 15 minutes every day, or 1.04% of the time.
This project will be an abysmal failure that will never recoup the initial investment.
Love the innovative idea.
Now, if only AVweb could capture a fraction of the hot wind in the Comments section, well… imagine the possibilities.😉😁
There is a fine line between “News” and something so “off the wall” as being ludicrous. This nonsense reminds me of the old Monty Python “Ministry of Silly Walks—or perhaps Fonzi’s “Jumping the Shark.”
Avweb did nobody a favor by reporting this as “news”—and risks sacrificing its OWN credibility by offering “coverage.”
Thanks to the readers that pointed to the fallacies of the proposal