Savonius helical turbine made of recycled oil drums

I chopped up two old 55 gallon drums to remove the ribs. Then I welded them to a pipe with a helical twist to allow for more even spinning rate rather than a surging pattern as the swept surfaces turn into the wind. The pipe has bearing races tack welded inside of it and those bearing races are riding on two separate "trailer" spindles and bearings. The bigger spindle (and bearing that spins on it) is welded to the stationary (black) pole at the bottom end and the smaller spindle is welded higher up on the black pole. This way the brick-colored blade assembly is simply slipped over the center black pipe until the races inside the blade assembly make contact with the bearings riding on the stationary spindles in the center of the pipe. I've got a fixed magnet motor than I plan on mounting to the stationary (black) pipe and I'm going to use a bendix from a starter motor to mate with the flywheel that is bolted to the bottom of the spinning blade assembly. This should eventually generate electricity from the turbulent winds in my backyard.

POST-TEST NOTES: It took me several months to getting around to hooking up my fixed magnet motor. I found that the winds required to turn the turbine once it's flywheel was engaged to the motor were impractically large gusts. Because I would have to spend a couple hundred dollars more to purchase the electronics necessary to store the power, and because I'm on a student's budget, and because it would require windspeeds upwards of something like 20mph gusts in my backyard, I've put this turbine into the "yard art" category. If I had to build it again, I would use larger drums with a bigger circumference to gain more torque. I wouldn't know where to find large drums with such thin walls as oil barrels. Maybe if I had this turbine in an open or elevated location I could get better laminar winds sweeping over it. In the future I plan on building either large circumference vertical axis turbines or horizontal axis turbines instead.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• VAWT
• barrels
• savonius
• darrieus
• vertical axis
• wind turbine
• turbine
• diy tubine
• watson
• helical
• helix
• fixed magnet
• wind powered
• homemade turbine
• barrel turbine
• drag turbine
• oil drum
• oil drums

[Alanzo1231]

I like it! What are you using for bearing?

[qcages]

@graywackeknifebdr Yeah, but you AREN'T helping by scamming through your website. People are wasting their time trying to figure out free energy. Focus on things like wind,solar, geothermal, and you start making some progress.

[graywackeknifebdr]

The Oil companies are trying their best to stop free energy ideas from spreading to common ppl.

We need to put an end to this corruption ,start generating your own electricity now.

Visit LT-MAGNET-MOTORdotCOM and get the blueprints . Join the Revolution!!

[meesterJos]

Finally a good purpose for those millions and millions of barrels. I bet they can have more power output than the oil that was in those barrels! ;-)

[IamGreed]

Brilliant!

[bananaphonehome]

Very Nice, deserves more views.

[hambonebro3]

Beautiful!

[bg0821]

nice design