HSE


See the wood for the trees


Wind turbines, while one of the greenest energy sources available, nevertheless still have an environmental impact. Replacing the steel used in tower construction with wood can generate significantly less carbon dioxide – and when the turbine reaches the end of its lifecycle, the modular segments of these wooden towers can be reused. Andrea Valentino speaks to Erik Dölerud, a senior development engineer at Modvion, and Professor John Hall of the State University of New York at Buffalo, to find out more.


hen William Kamkwamba was 13, his homeland of Malawi was ravaged by famine. Desperate to bolster his village’s meagre supply of water and electricity, he began experimenting with scrap timber, dumped in local construction sites. Combining his wood with bicycle wheels and a second-hand tractor mill, he soon crafted a homemade windmill, sprouting awkwardly between two plain-brick houses. His success, at first, was modest: the windmill barely powered a few lamps. But pretty soon, Kamkwamba used more timber to craft more windmills, eventually generating enough electricity to power his whole community. Clearly, Kamkwamba’s ingenuity is remarkable – a fact recognised by Dartmouth College in New


W World Wind Technology / www.worldwind-technology.com


Hampshire, which offered him a full-ride scholarship to do environmental studies. In a more general way, however, the Malawi experiment is merely the latest example of how wind and wood fit neatly together. They may not have produced electricity, but wooden windmills were wildly popular until the industrial age, with metal replacements only appearing in the 1890s. No wonder. As Kamkwamba surely discovered, wood is light, cheap and plentiful, properties ideally suited to exploiting the wind’s natural bounty. That’s before you consider the fact that timber can easily be recycled, with old towers eminently valuable everywhere from pulp to construction. Yet, as the admission officers at Dartmouth College


37


Modvion


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45