Investigation of Factors Influencing Power Takeoff for a Wind Turbine Installed Inside a High-Rise Building

Abstract

An approach to the development of sustainable buildings was explored in this paper. Sustainable buildings ultimately aim to operate at zero net energy consumption. Therefore, they are an important component in modern urban settings to counteract deteriorating air quality. This paper explored the factors influencing the wind energy exploitable by the turbine installed in channels, or tunnels, that are designed to be embedded into high-rise buildings. The investigation shed light on the design of the tunnel and the estimation of the energy output from the turbine installed in the tunnel with a certain geometry. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques were employed to study the power takeoff of the tunnel turbine under the influence of the wind incident angle, turbulence intensity, and the parameters defining the geometry of the tunnel geometry. It was shown that the wind incident angles and concentration ratios are the two most significant factors affecting the wind power takeoff. In addition, the study showed that there are optimal concentration ratios and locations at which to install a turbine inside the tunnel, which are about 0.6 and 0.33 times the tunnel length.