Renewable Energy Preheater Tower

Overview

ZAP Engineering has tasked our team with designing a renewable energy system to be implemented onto their cement preheater tower based in Iowa. With high winds coming from the Mississippi River and the roof’s ability to withstand heavy industrial equipment, we decided to install wind turbines on the roof. Moreover, the tower itself has three enclosed sides that presents another opportunity to implement solar panels along those sides. According to computer simulations, these two renewable energy sources complement each other well. In the summer months, the panels overpower the wind turbines in producing energy and in the winter months and at night, when solar power is at a minimum, the wind turbines supply the power needed. Through testing our prototype using a scale model of the preheater tower, we concluded that solar panels should only be installed on the south and east facing walls. Also, the best design configured for this project resembles a wind turbine from a company named Aeromine. They use vertical axis wind turbines surrounded by a shell and a wind funnel component at the turbine’s base to pick up wind blowing up the tower walls.

Objectives

Our objective is to install renewable energy technologies on a cement preheater tower and produce the most amount of electricity without interfering with any cement processing. The team aims to provide ZAP Engineering & Construction Service, Inc. with a solution to reduce their clients’ carbon footprint by implementing a hybrid renewable energy system on their cement preheater tower. This was accomplished by:

Measuring annual energy outputs and power estimates with site specific data provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Creating a 3D system model using SolidWorks

Creating a 3D printed scale model of the tower with our renewable energy technologies installed

Approach

Our team meets weekly with our sponsor to discuss current project status and to continuously implement customer needs throughout the design process.

Concept generation and selection was performed by our team by using established target specifications and ranking each concept design with Pugh concept scoring charts.

Our team performed research on preexisting products and technologies to review possible renewable energy options that could be implemented on the 300-foot preheater tower.

Due to the live case study aspect of this project, plant location and tower specifications were provided by our sponsor. The facility location is in Iowa, so our team did not visit the sponsor or plant location.

The design process consisted of creating CAD models of the preheater tower and wind turbine prototypes. The models were scaled based on customer needs.

One final prototype was fabricated for the Renewable Energy Preheater Tower project.

Testing was conducted for both wind and solar prototypes. Each one had specific testing procedures to accurately simulate wind direction and sun direction.

Our model was validated by comparing the testing results to computer generated energy production. Energy produced was reduced on own model due to its scale, although energy production followed similar results when analyzing the sun path of travel and wind direction.

Outcomes

The solar installation is estimated to generate 500,000 kWh /year and the wind installation is estimated to generate 60,000 kWh/year. Although there is less generated by the wind turbines; they balance out some of the dips in solar generation seen in the winter. This will help to offset some of the intense carbon emissions from this concrete plant.