Panemone
Encyclopedia
A panemone windmill is a type of vertical axis wind turbine
Vertical axis wind turbine
Vertical-axis wind turbines are a type of wind turbine where the main rotor shaft is set vertically and the main components are located at the base of the turbine...

. It has a rotating axis positioned vertically, while the wind-catching blades move parallel to the wind. By contrast, the shaft of a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) points into the wind while its blades move at right-angles to the wind's thrust. That is, a panemone primarily uses drag
Drag (physics)
In fluid dynamics, drag refers to forces which act on a solid object in the direction of the relative fluid flow velocity...

 whereas the blades of a HAWT use lift
Lift (force)
A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a surface force on it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction...

.

Historically the earliest known wind machine was made by the Persians and it was the panemone design, consisting of a wall, with slits, surrounding a vertical axle containing four to eight fabric sails. As the wind
Wind
Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...

 blew, the sails would turn the axle
Axle
An axle is a central shaft for a rotating wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to its surroundings, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In the former case, bearings or bushings are provided at the mounting points where the axle...

, which was in turn connected to grain grinders or some form of water transportation device (though little is known of the actual details of such methods).

History

No one knows when people first built windmills to do work. The first instance may have been in China more than 2,000 years ago, but archaeologists have found no definite record of their use there before 1219 AD. The earliest recorded windmill design found was Persian
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 in origin, and was invented around 500–900 AD. This design was the panemone, with vertical lightweight wooden sails attached by horizontal struts to a central vertical shaft. It was first built to pump water, and subsequently modified to grind grain
GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...

 as well.

Operation

The vanes of a panemone are moved by the wind in a circle to turn the drive shaft. To accomplish this they must move with the wind only while on one side of the circle, and move against the wind on the other side. To prevent the vanes moving upwind from being blown back by the wind, one half of the panemone may be shielded, or else the vanes may be attached so that they can turn edge-on to the wind when the wheel is moving them upwind.

Efficiency

Wind-harnessing devices which rely on drag reach their maximum efficiency if the collector is pushed away from the wind. Because the wind panels do no work while returning to the upwind side of the device, the rotor in the Persian panemone design can only take energy from wind striking half the collection area (see diagram).

The panemone is one of the least efficient types of wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...

. Despite this it is also one of the most commonly re-invented and patented forms.

External links

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