POWER February 2016 - 48

TECHNOLOGY
1. Sail-inspired. The curved shape of
the Saphonian body is capable of capturing
twice as much wind energy as a conventional
bladed wind turbine for the same swept area.
Courtesy: Saphon Energy
costs are competitive with the diesel and kerosene
lighting these villages had previously
relied on in addition to being much cleaner.
A Bladeless Wind Converter
Africa's wind innovations have come a long way
since William Kamkwamba, a teenager from
Malawi, made headlines for a wind turbine he
created using a bicyle dynamo and spare parts
from his local junkyard just a decade ago.
Tunisian startup Saphon Energy in Novemregion's
rural population will get electricity
from off-grid renewables by 2030.
Similar developments are under way in
South Asia, where around 200 villages in
India are now powered by renewable microgrids
unconnected to the national grid. An active
business sector serving these needs has
sprung up, with both Indian and western companies
offering solutions from the household
to the village level. Capacities are typically
quite small-powering a few LED lights and
a cell-phone charger in each home-but this
is enough to make an enormous difference
for families with no other options. Electricity
ber 2014 won a collaborative agreement with
Microsoft for a patented bladeless wind converter
known as the Saphonian. Inventor Anis
Aouini's basic idea was to remove the whole
rotating system (including the blades and hub)
and replace it with a sail-shaped body (Figure
1). The curved shape of the Saphonian body is
capable of capturing twice as much wind energy
as a conventionally bladed wind turbine
for the same swept area. The company says
the prototype has come through five versions
and is in the " pre-industrial stage. "
An Ingenious Biomass Gasifier
Rai Singh Dahiya, a farmer from India's arid
western state of Rajasthan, gained fame for
inventing a biomass-based gasifier. The inventor,
who never got a formal education,
won an award from the National Innovation
Foundation (NIF) for the invention, which he
said was conceived in 1982 as he set up a kiln
for baking bricks and observed that burning
wood along with other fuel was producing
gas that was burning more vigorously. A decade
later, after successfully modifying a diesel
engine to operate on propane, he set about
to find out whether it was possible to run an
engine on gas produced by burning wood.
His invention (Figure 2) modifies a conventional
diesel engine by replacing the diesel
injector system with a spark plug and a
fuel pump with a distributor. The unit consists
of a gasifier that is conical in shape, compact
in design, and uniquely surrounded by a water
jacket. Users can feed wood or briquettes
from agricultural residues to the gasifier, and
the unit acts as a 200C furnace to generate
syngas. The syngas is cooled and partially
cleaned by water and again by a filtration
unit made up of sieve grills and cloth.
According to the NIF, the gasifier can process
about 20 kilograms of biowaste to run a
30-hp engine for one hour. " Also, the furnace in
the gasifier unit can be built to different capacities
as per availability of biomass and agricultural
residue. Considering the cost of machine,
fuel-biomass and local labor, this arrangement
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48
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POWER February 2016

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