Analysis of Wind Energy Potential Inside a Tunnel Located on the Highway

Abstract

Society started searching for alternative resources of energy, with more awareness of their responsibility to the environment. Renewable energies (RE) in buildings and cities experience a huge expansion, which raises many challenges to the scientists, researchers, and engineers. RE such as solar and wind energy is a clean and inexhaustible energy, and its technology is developing rapidly. This will lead to good results in significant energy security, climate change mitigation, and economic benefits. It would also reduce environmental pollution such as air pollution caused by burning of fossil fuels. This study mainly focuses on analysis of wind energy potential inside a Gali-Zakho Tunnel in Duhok province in northern Iraq, which is located on the highway that connects the border between Kurdistan-Iraq and Turkey. This work also included investigating the feasibility of generating electrical energy (EE) from wind energy (WE). The idea proposed here is a new technique to generate electrical energy from WE produced due to the vehicles motion in this new Tunnel. The Gali-Zakho Tunnel is designed and constructed of a dual carriageway road with two lanes on each carriageway on the route linking Duhok to Zakho. The total length of the tunnel is 3604 m, and the diameter of each tunnel is 12.4 m. As the automobiles moves on this tunnel, there is a creation of pressure. Therefore lots of impact wind energy is generated due to the wind pressure difference. Due to this pressure, wind flow and create pressure thrust. This wind pressure thrust depends on many factors such as the intensity of the traffic, the size of the automobile, and the speed of the automobiles. For example, when the speed of small automobile was 65 km/h, the wind speed was 6 m/s. This WE can be converted into mechanical energy with the help of small turbines by placing them just nearby this highway sides. Therefore, these small turbines will generate EE. This EE can be used for different applications. This system can be used to produce electricity for the following applications: lighting the tunnel, pumping water and develop a well-maintained irrigation system to nearby area, communications equipment, etc. To fulfill this project, extensive research work on wind flow patterns is required to determine the average velocity of the impact wind created by vehicles running on the highway. Anemometer was used to measure velocity of fluid flow (air) in the surroundings at different orientation. It was found that the impact pressure thrust depends on different factors such as: (a) the intensity/frequency of the vehicles traffic, (b) the speed of the vehicles, (c) the size of the vehicles, (d) velocity of natural wind, (e) distance between the harnessing system and vehicles, and (f) angle of impact.