Our project “Boosting the Performances of Wind Turbines thanks to Microstructure Coating” started with the vision of making large surfaces functional in order to increase the energy efficiency of the wind turbine blades and reduce the CO2 emissions, possible with our innovative printing technique, the Graviton (mimicking “sharkskin” riblets). During these 6 months of learning, research, partnership agreements and technology development we realized that if we want to apply the microstructures to large surfaces, first a coating automation machine is needed with an integrated system that allows to control the layer thickness (crucial to prevent the corrosion in the long time), eliminate overspray (big problem on the coating industry nowadays) and finally, to be able to measure the properties of the coating applied including a report for the customers (essential for companies which need to show their product quality with external audits).We developed the Slash, an automated coating application machine that serves as a minilaboratory in which all influencing parameters (temperature, humidity etc.) are controlled.
Next to saving paint, Qlayers technology will significantly increase the energy output of wind turbines, especially offshore. Having smooth leading edges with chamfered surfaces on the blades can theoretically improve the annual energy production of a turbine with 1,5%. This means 6,5% energy production increase per wind turbine. For a 2 MW wind turbine with an annual energy production of 3.600 MWh per year this results in a total increase in energy production per year of 234 MWh. We expect to coat three blades in one and a half day per printing head. Accordingly, one printing head coats 342 wind turbines per year. In one year, one printing head will increase the annual energy production with more than 80 GWh per year. With 100 printing heads being active for one year, this means an increase in annual energy production of 8.000 GWh.
The biggest problem of the wind turbine industry at this moment is leading edge erosion, which can decrease the annual energy production of an offshore turbine up to 12% when not maintained in a proper way. Ultimately, our Slash can be used for offshore maintenance too, which will enable the industry to deal with leading edge erosion. We can integrate a smaller version of the Slash with a vacuum crawler to do so (see Fig. 24 for conceptual design). By doing this, we expect to increase the full-load hours by 500 per wind turbine (1800 hours full-load in current situation). This means an annual increase in energy production of 299 MWh per turbine, which means 10336 GWh per year when 100 printing systems are active.
As an add-on, the Graviton module will make energy intensive surfaces more efficient in the future. Applying sharkskin microstructures on wind turbines, airplanes, ships and high-speed trains reduces friction with air or water with 3-8%. This translates directly into a higher energy efficiency and noise reduction (-5dB per wind turbine). In this way, we can save up to 8.000 ton CO2 per year per large ship and 4.400 ton CO2 per year per aircraft. For wind turbine blades the microstructures can increase the energy output up to 264 MWh per year per 2MW wind turbine.
