Enercon's E-Ship Uses "Sailing Rotors" To Cut Fuel Costs 30 Percent
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 08. 5.08
Enercon is one of Europe's biggest wind turbine manufacturers, and these days, with turbine demand vastly outstripping supply (wind developers must line up two years in advance to order their turbines) Enercon is extremely busy. So the company is building its own turbine-delivery ship...with four huge Greek-looking pillars similar to the ones on this older schooner to assist the diesel engine and cut fuel use about 30 percent. While the 30 percent improvement is not earth-shaking, it's still a great step forward in an industry - transport shipping - that has far lagged behind in cleaning up its act, controlling CO2 and other polluting emissions.
Sailing rotors use wind to deliver wind turbines
Instead of a huge parasail like the Beluga Skysail, Enercon's E-Ship 1 currently being assembled in Germany will have four giant 27-meter-high, 4-meter-in-diameter cylindrical towers positioned two fore and two aft. These towers, called Flettner rotors, were named after a German inventor, Anton Flettner, who developed marine propulsion systems back in the '20s.
High diesel prices help unearth Flettner rotors
During wind flow, the rotors spin to create lift force (10-14 times that of a trapezoid-shaped sail) through what is called the Magnus Effect. Enercon said it expected with the addition of the four rotors to achieve fuel savings of 30%–40% compared to a conventional diesel powered vessel of the same size. Enercon says the Flettner rotors were well tested back in the 1920s but never gained wide use because of the cheap price of fuel. Seems fitting that wind turbines will be delivered by a ship cutting its fuel use through wind technology. The E-Ship 1 is scheduled to launch by the end of 2008. Via ::Enercon
Read about Beluga Skysail:
Beluga Group Signs Contract For Sky Sail Power
Go Fly A Kite (And Sail A Ship)
And another kind of windmill sailboat design:
Windmill Sailboat: Sailing Against The Wind
And read about container ship pollution:
Shipping's CO2 Record Not So Shipshape After All
How is a 30% reduction in fuel use not earth shattering? Or do you mean it cuts pollution 30%?
If you were like me when you first read this, you probably said, What the heck?!? How do four pillars sticking in to the sky move a ship? Wouldn't the additional wind resistance make it less efficient?
After a little research, I figured out how this works, so here goes:
When a tall rotating pillar (called a Flettner rotor) enters a stream of wind, it creates force perpendicular to the direction of the wind. This is called the Magnus effect. This works almost in the same way as the wing of an airplane, where wind moving left to right over the wing creates lift that pulls up. The ship aligns itself perpendicular to the wind, and the "lift" generated on the spinning Flettner rotors will pull the ship forward. So, the ship will get the most benefit from the rotors when it sails perpendicular to the wind, and they will be useless going directly into the wind or with the wind (there may be a slight benefit here). Although the rotors are useless sailing directly into the wind, it can tack closer to the wind that with traditional sails, providing a benefit over a wider range.
While moving a large ship requires engines of 1000s of horsepower, rotating the pillars appears to require very little, thus the benefit. On Flettner's initial test ship, he rotated 15m pillars with 50hp engines, so I imagine the 27m Enercon ship pillars will require slightly larger ones, but still much smaller than the standard engine.
The article says this won't be the primary source of power, but will be used to augment the standard diesel engines, similar to the way the kites are starting to be used on ships today to improve fuel efficiency.
You know....this was something I was wondering about the other day. If this system works as well as they say it does...why can't it be used on cars?
My thoughts were that you could put an electric generator hooked to a small windmill type device..such as this...and use it to help power cars...boats...etc. This would be great if they would run with it...especially with the technology that we have now days vs. what they had in the 1920's. Wouldn't that be great.
Flettner gave up on his rotors because they were not as efficient as the propeller.
I have a hard time thinking they would now be more efficient than a truly zero energy cost device like kite sails.
Flettner gave up on his rotors because they were not as efficient as the propeller.
I have a hard time thinking they would now be more efficient than a truly zero energy cost device like kite sails.
An interesting article.
This has been done more recently. Look at the Cousteau ship Alcyone.
http://www.cousteau.org/en/cousteau_world/our_ships/alcyone.php
Check this out: A small sailing boat with a flettner rotor. They use solar panels to deliver the energy the rotor needs.
http://www.multihull.de/news/2006/flettnerproa.jpg