New Vortex Tower Experiment

Here are some drawings that I made showing how to focus the sun's energies into a vortex tower using a ring of mirrors. At the center of the vortex tower is a column of black material that can absorb the heat. It will heat up to a high temperature and create a high velocity vortex. A wind turbine is placed above the vortex to convert the energy to electricity. This may or may not be as efficient as a sterling engine, but would not be as difficult to design because it does not depend on materials that can withstand high temperatures other than the core in the center. The result would be better reliability and longer life.

Vortex Tower with Mirrors to focus Sun's energy

Atmospheric Vortex Tower

Some of you have been asking about what happened to the atmospheric vortex tower that we constructed in the summer of 2005. I started this blog to help respond to those inquiries. The vortex tower was filmed in November of 2005 by channel 2 news from Salt Lake City. Greenhouses were built in the summer of 2006 and it was shown that a sustained atmospheric vortex (dust devel type) could be generated. I wrote up plans for a new larger version with modifications to take better advantage of wind amplification and solar collection. I've decided not to do it all with my own funding at this point and as soon as I get some proposals written, I hope to get funding and continue with this research. In the meantime, I'm busy building a VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine) in my garage and still designing microprocessors at Intel.
Tom

Photo of a Dust Devil Generator

We generated dust devils in this tower in the summer of 2006

The thermometer pegged at about 140 degrees F. this was very hot work.