Design of a Sustainable Highrise Building Incorporating Building Augmented Wind Turbines

Abstract

In recent years we have seen the alarming conditions of depleting resources. The conventional means of energy production used all around the world have had adverse effects on the environment and continue to do so. Seeing the decline in the environmental conditions United Nations formulated a set of goals called the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The achievement of these goals ensures sustainability in every sector of life. In this project we have focused on the attainment of sustainability in construction sector by targeting SDG 7, 9 and 11 which deal with Affordable and Clean Energy, Industry Innovation and Infrastructure and Sustainable Cities and Communities. With our project we have addressed the negative impacts of conventional means of energy production and provided a way to rectify them. We have analyzed three different models of buildings against wind using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to check the feasibility or Wind Energy Potential at specific points on the building where turbines can be placed. Numerous research papers have addressed the green energy production using wind turbines and what types of turbines have the highest potential. Our project uses Vertical Axis Building Augmented Wind Turbines (VA-BAWT) of the Gorlov Helical design incorporated in a highrise building placed on the positions of highest wind potential identified by CFD Analysis. The original model of the building is based on an existing highrise building in Karachi. The results of our project were very promising however we made two revisions of our original model to optimize the energy generating potential. For the ambient wind velocity of 7 m/s in Karachi, the highest potential out of the three models was found to be 3.71 kW. We also observed that energy generating potential can be significantly increased by incorporating more than one wind turbines in the building.