Practical Design and Testing of Wind Driven Water Pumping Systems

Wind energy is that clean, green, available and one of the most economical renewable energy source. Wind driven water pumping systems – windmills – are some of the older machines. Long time ago, windmills have been developed by many cultures to lift water for livestock, land drainage, irrigation and domestic supplies. As found from other wind projects and studies, the most economical and useful application that can be installed in the Jordanian arid regions is the wind pumping system using Windmill. The Windmill is a perfect choice for our region because it doesn’t need high wind speed and the wind torque can be achieved by using large rotors. The windmill converts kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy and then into hydraulic energy into the pump. The 24 blade classic windmills are the most common type of windmills which it is the one that been chosen for the present study. Achieving the goal of this study could be done by the careful design of the rotor, transmission system and the pump. A good pump design will raise the system efficiency. A design is made and all calculations showed a very good pumping output. Then the model is manufactured in the faculty of engineering workshop from local materials. It is designed to be used in a wind speed of about 3.5 m/s at 8 m tower elevation. The goal is to pump 15 m3/day of water to cover the student services building needs. The test after installation showed that the pumping flow rate of 0.2 L/sec has been achieved; this result shows that the designed and manufactured wind pumping system can pump more than the record which allows storage of water.