(MENAFN- The Peninsula) deepak john |
The Peninsula
The Mechanical Engineering Division of Engineering technology Department at Community College of Qatar (CCQ) recently organised the 'Top Turbine' competition at CCQ Lusail campus.
Students taking part in the competition created innovative designs that generate electricity from wind energy suitable for open and camping places.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the event, Dr. Faysal Eliyan, Assistant Professor, Engineering Technology Department, at CCQ, said,“Today we are conducting competition for the best wind turbine designed by students. The number one criterion is about the generation of maximum power possible with the maximum rotation speed.
“Now a days, people go for camping season in South of Qatar and some other areas where the access to the conventional power sources which has oil and fossil fuels is limited. So, there is a need to get advantage of the huge amount of winds available in the open camping areas for the personal uses of charging any battery operated devices such as mobile phones, cameras and light gadgets,” he added.
The competition was announced in July 2022 and its deadline was on January 19, 2023. The students made technical presentations which were evaluated by a panel of professors and, they made posters that summarised all aspects of the project. Elaborating on the competition, Dr. Eliyan noted that the students designed five different protocols and they will all go to a competition from which we would operate a big fan that generates an artificial wind flow at a specific speed and distance, so that we can measure from the rotation the power.
Shjaa Al Dosari, Khalid Al Yafei, Mohammad Al Naimi, and Hassan Albloshi were the winners of the competition and their project 'Vertical-axis wind turbine with solar cells for powering light gadgets – Winsol' won the 'Top Turbine' cup. The turbine of vertical axis type is designed, constructed and evaluated in-house, in conjunction with solar panels to generate power from wind and solar radiation. The purpose is to supply renewable power to mobile phones and light gadgets in open areas. Power correlated to rotation speed and solar radiation is analysed.
The prototype is commercialised as Winsol in Qatari market as a new power supply solution in areas of no or limited access to conventional electrical supply.
The wind flows and rotates the turbine which is connected to a generator and solar radiation activates the solar panels, thereby generating electricity from the kinetic energy of rotation and from converting solar radiation to electrical energy.
The prototype is made of readily-available light, cheap, eco-friendly materials. Also, it generates power from renewables energy resources. It serves the need for power prototypes that utilise the highly available renewable resources of solar radiation and wind in the Arab countries, especially in the Arabian Gulf.
The other projects included 3D-Printed multi-rotor horizontal wind turbine – ATF; Hyper efficient vertical axis wind turbine for small-scale power charging – MTT; and Savonius type turbine with solar panels for small gadget power charging – Qatar Green Energy Company.