Ducted Wind Turbines-A Review

Abstract

Today Wind Energy is a significant source of energy throughout the world. Therefore, it is necessary to develop innovative wind capturing devices that can produce energy in the locations where large conventional horizontal axis wind turbines are too impractical to install and operate. For example, Exploiting the wind energy at low wind velocities is a major predicament in creating a sustainable energy resource from wind. Over the recent decades to augment efficiency of wind turbines many different Ducted Wind Turbines (DWTs) have been designed. The ducted turbine has the ability to accelerate the air flow through a converging intake thereby increasing the power that can be extracted from the air flow. As the wind passes through a converging duct the velocity increases while the pressure decreases. The power extracted has a cubic relationship to wind velocity whereas the relation to pressure is linear. Operation of nozzle, diffuser, and Venturi devices are well known in internal flows to accelerate, decelerate, or affect flows in desirable manner. But some of researchers studies on different types of ducts, turbines or blades to consider the effect of them on accelerating of wind. CFD simulation helped researchers to study the generation of more mass flow through the ducted wind turbines. This paper describes recent works done to develop and test different model of a Ducted Wind Turbine and its integration. The paper will describe the concept of the ducted wind turbine different researchers used and the result reported for development of the mathematical model and comparison with experimental data. According to reviewed papers ducted wind turbines power can be increased by 5 to 6 times in comparison with traditional wind turbine.