Feasibility Study of the Incorporation of Wind Turbines at Jet Blast Deflectors

Abstract

Airports require vast amounts of energy to power their operations. They operate around the clock: 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Given this, they have a huge ability to save energy. Airport operators have a global goal of reducing their CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050. To minimize the electrical energy usage at airports, the airports could take some initiatives such as the installation of wind turbines. Installation of wind turbines at airports would be beneficial as there is a lot of wind blowing in and around airports because of the landings and take offs of aircraft. During engine run-ups, aircraft exhaust huge amount of high velocity wind. Erecting small wind turbines at key locations could yield great results as there are many aircraft which fly from all the airports every day. Unlike many other thesis methodologies, this research does not involve any participants, surveys, interviews or tests for the data collection process. All the data required for the analysis will be composed by performing extensive desk research. The main procedure of this research is taking the jet blast velocity profiles of different aircraft and the numbers of landings will be used to know how much wind is generated by the aircraft. The jet blast from the aircraft is used to rotate the turbines that in turn generate power that can be used for other airport electricity purposes. The power generated by the turbines will be calculated by computing average wind flow rate at the blast fence. Findings from this research will be beneficial for airport operators as well as to governmental organizations associated with aviation in finding a way to minimize the cost cuttings by saving electrical energy given out from the wind turbines and working collectively for the betterment of the environment.