Development & research of double loop thermosyphon air-air cooler for wind power generator

Abstract

Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.

Wind energy is well recognized as the nearest commercialized renewable energy technologies besides the water resource, it has high priority by governments, is developing rapidly worldwide. In the field of wind power, single megawatt wind power unit is becoming the mainstream of technology development and market demand [1]. On the one hand it is needed to optimize the generator structure to reduce heat generation [2], more importantly, efficient cooling system is needed to protect the generator [3]. Air-water cooled and air-air cooled are the main cooling mode for wind power generator coolers. For the air cooled type, most of the current application has simple smooth tube bundle structure, it is larger in size and heavier in weight, it has higher energy consumption and sometimes unable to meet the cooling requirements during hot summer. Lightweight design is the trends, a new type thermosyphon air cooled heat exchanger is developed, compared with the conventional one, preliminary studies indicate that it is about 29% smaller in size, 13.4% lighter in weight, 16.3% saved in energy consumption and 14.6% improved in cooling capacity.