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from the what-will-don-quixote-make-of-these dept.
It's no longer surprising to encounter 100-foot pinwheels spinning in the breeze as you drive down the highway. But don't get too comfortable with that view. A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless is proposing a radical new way to generate wind energy that will once again upend what you see outside your car window.
Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines: To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity. But it goes about it in an entirely different way.
Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what's known as vorticity, an aerodynamic effect that produces a pattern of spinning vortices. Vorticity has long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers, who actively try to design their way around these whirlpools of wind. And for good reason: With enough wind, vorticity can lead to an oscillating motion in structures, which, in some cases, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, can cause their eventual collapse.
Less efficient than traditional wind turbines, but quiet and don't kill birds.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @07:06PM
Dupe: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7754 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday November 19 2015, @10:08PM
Wow! We've grown up! We're getting dupes! Next thing you know, we'll have M$ Shills and we'll be painting the site GREEN. :)
Joking aside, one of the best things about this site is the total LACK of dupes. This is the first one I can recall, and it was 5 months ago, so I'll let that slide.
Actually visited the old green site today, just to look around. Haven't been back since the Buck Feta days. More comment numbers, but most of them garbage. The comments here are fewer, but better.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2, Informative) by xav on Friday November 20 2015, @01:20AM
Sorry to rain on your parade, but this is not the first dupe.
See https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/23/0314241 [soylentnews.org] and https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/09/14/2112235 [soylentnews.org] (three weeks apart)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 20 2015, @08:59AM
I went back to visit a couple months ago after Dice announced it was selling the place. My impressions were about the same as yours.
I'm OK with Soylent having a smaller user base if the quality is high.
Washington DC delenda est.