The headline of a story in the December 9 issue of the daily news(?)paper immediately caught my eye so it had to be read. The headline read, “Sails make a comeback as shipping tries to go green,” and carried the byline of Kelvin Chan of Associated Press. As all too often happens, the headline was somewhat misleading in that the subject is anything but “sails” in the canvas sense.
After two paragraphs making issue about ao-called greenhouse gasses effecting ‘climate change, the second paragraph includes the statement that EU aircraft company Airbus is backing a tech company “pitching futuristic sails to help cargo ships harness the free and endless supply of wind power.”
The writer simply cannot resist the politically correct idea that CO2 emissions from burning of fuel is a “particularly dirty form of fossil fuels.”
It turns out that Norsepower, a Finland-based manufacturing company, has a true turbine wind power source and is beginning tests of the idea on the tanker Maersk Pelican. A. P. Moller-Maersk, the “world’s biggest container shipping company has pledged to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050.” Actually, it would appear that carbon emissions by oil-powered steam ships are in the form of carbon particle smoke rather than CO2, which is invisible, odorless, and not a “greenhouse gas” as has been claimed by the PC-, anti-fuel crowd.
This has meant to me a confirmation of several past claims that the massive windmill power generators are not turbines as claimed by those pushing them for massive government tax breaks and grants to build more of these “bird killers.” Multiple reports received be me have stated that at any one time, approximately half of those are inoperatable due to mechanical breakdowns or wind speed restrictions. Beginning several decades ago, there have been reports of “true turbines” being used for power generation.
The ones seen in the reports were able to self regulate themselves so as to maintain a constant rotation speed, mandated for AC (alternating current) generation, the most used here.
The story does not go at all into the processes by which the wind energy is transported to the ships propulsion propellers, so the reader is left with suppositions about how this works. It would seem to me that these shipboard turbine-generators would feed to electric motors driving the propellers, and supplying the electric power for whole ship, with a large battery back-up source. Of course, the turbines could still operate in port, if there was any wind, while at sea under way the ship speed would be sufficient to keep them operating in calm wind conditions.
In the accompanying story, two turbines are shown which appear to be three-to-five feet in diameter and 20-to-40 feet tall.
Compare that size to the windmill generators in the fields taking up large spaces of land.
It would be very refreshing to read about or see in video one or more stories about private industry going that route for land use generation.
The turbines are enlarged versions of the ventilation turbans on roofs to use wind power to suck the air out of attics or businesses. Those usually are fixed sizes and so the rotation speed depends on the wind speed.
In any event, this story came as a breath of fresh air that someone in the world is beginning to try something else, without a government funding and for their own financial benefit. As an aside, electric power provides reversible motors rather than needing transmissions, as with diesel or gas turbine engines.