Session: 08-08-05 Renewable Energy V and Sustainable and Grid-Interactive Buildings

Paper Number: 72201

Start Time: Friday, 01:15 PM

72201 - Performance Study of an Electric Vehicle “Eolo” With a Mounted Aeolian Generator 

The exponential growth in the world of fossil fuels consumption has led to a substantial increase in greenhouse gases. According to the EPA the U.S. transportation sector contributed 28% of America’s total greenhouse gas production for the year of 2018. This shows the desperate need for alternative forms of renewable and clean energy usage in the transportation sector. Overall green energy and renewable energy has been focused on improving the national grid. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that electricity generation has doubled over the last decade. From this, wind generation rose from 55 million MWh in 2008 to 275 million MWh in 2018 (6.5% of total electricity generation in the US) (9).  Naturally the advancements made in large scale would, coupled with the growing concerns of greenhouse gasses created the demand and implementation of alternative green energies in the automotive industry. The positive statistical figures and current technology accessibility have motivated many around the world to attempt to create wind-powered vehicles. Indeed, this issue is already being addressed in some minor ways with the production of hybrid vehicles, including the idea of the South American Wind Powered Electrical Vehicle (EV), Eolo.

This paper will give a brief review over how the engineers behind this pioneering project created the hybrid Electric-Aeolic car, with a primary focus on verifying experimental results with simulations and gaining an in depth understand of how it’s performance varies. The simulations support the theories and tested claims of the Eolo car being 8% more efficient than a conventional EV. Eolo is a car makes use of two Savonius Vertical Axis Wind turbines at the front of the car. It is expected that these turbines have an effect on the drag and lift force.  For this reason, the wind turbine used in the car along the airflow characteristics will be analyzed in depth. For this the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software of ANSYS Fluent, and ANSYS CFX were used to model the vehicle traveling along the road in various speeds. The data gathered from the simulations along with empirical data collected by Eolo Company about their turbine specs would be used to calculate the aerodynamic coefficient of the car, the power required for locomotion, the power generated by the turbines, and the efficiency of the car. These values will be compared against the experimental values and evaluated as to any discrepancies and validation of the experimental results.

Presenting Author: Arturo Garcia Purdue University Northwest

Authors:

Arturo Garcia Purdue University Northwest
Sergio Reyes J. Purdue University Northwest
Xiuling Wang Purdue University Northwest
Javier Roldan Eolo Motors SAS
Mauricio Olaya Corporación Industrial Minuto de Dios