A University of Virginia researcher is planning to test a “smart” lubricant this year that could improve wind turbine efficiency.
Andres Clarens, assistant professor of environmental and water resources engineering, said his lab will test the gas-expanded lubricant using bearings in different temperatures. The oil lubricant, which is mixed with liquid-phase carbon dioxide, was the first runner-up in last year’s ConocoPhillips Energy Prize, netting the lab $75,000 to pay for a graduate student’s salary and lab supplies.
Clarens said he wanted to focus on lubricants for wind turbines because they are growing more popular as energy sources. Researchers have looked into gas-expanded substances in recent years to develop sustainable practices based on green chemistry and engineering.
“We use solvents for a lot of stuff,” Clarens said. “Adding gas lets us use less.”
Paul Allaire, a UVa professor and director of the Rotating Machinery and Controls Laboratory, a UVa-based consortium that works with industry professionals, said about 45 companies are interested in the way gas-expanded lubricants work because they could save 20 percent to 30 percent of a machine’s energy costs.
Allaire said lubricants in large machines such as turbines act like shock absorbers in cars. But instead of shocks, the machines have a piston that reduces vibrations. Allaire said a lot of energy is lost during that process, reducing a machine’s efficiency. Temperature changes can play havoc with the viscosity of lubricants in wind turbines, Clarens said, and adding liquid-phase carbon dioxide to lubricants changes the lubricants’ viscosity to improve the turbine’s efficiency.
“[Environmentalists] say the worst driving you can do is short driving on a cold winter day because your car is really cold and the lubricants are really cold,” Clarens said. “It’s really inefficient and you’re getting low gas mileage. In wind turbines, the same is true but even more so. You slap these wind turbines in off the coast and in the winter, it can be 25 degrees or colder. But in the summer, it can be 200 degrees inside of these things.”
Allaire said the gas-expanded lubricants would be more environmentally friendly. Old oils are dumped into landfills, Allaire said, but the carbon dioxide portion of gas-expanded lubricants would release into the air.
The gas-expanded lubricant has been shown to be more efficient in smaller lab tests than regular lubricants, Clarens said, but a full-scale test is in the works. Allaire said the lab is building a test rig that will use a variety of bearings in both regular oil and a gas-expanded lubricant. The tests will be run in a variety of temperatures and are expected to take a year.
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