Combating water shortages, drought and forest fires with wind turbines

In many places, the nat­ur­al water cycle no longer works: Prof. Dr. Clemens Jauch wants to get it mov­ing again — with water-spew­ing rotor blades and a whole lot of wind.

Atmos­pher­ic irri­ga­tion with wind tur­bines — under this title, the wind pro­fes­sor devel­oped the idea dur­ing his research semes­ter of using the rotor blades of wind tur­bines to bring water into the atmos­phere, where it is dis­trib­uted by the wind in the form of water droplets or water vapor. “We are using a tech­ni­cal com­po­nent that we already have, the rotor of wind tur­bines, and the wind, which is also already there,” Jauch explains.

Clemens Jauch wants to pro­duce pre­cip­i­ta­tion. The pro­fes­sor of wind ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy has devel­oped the con­cept for a sys­tem that brings water through the atmos­phere to where it is need­ed as pre­cip­i­ta­tion: to dried-up mead­ows, parched fields or dry forests. To do this, Jauch uses wind tur­bines — and wind. 

At the Insti­tute for Wind Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy (WETI) at Flens­burg Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, Clemens Jauch main­ly research­es and teach­es about feed­ing wind pow­er into the grid or the sys­tem iner­tia of wind tur­bines. But for some time now, the fam­i­ly man has been con­cerned about the increas­ing weath­er extremes as a result of cli­mate change. He looks with con­cern again and again at the dev­as­tat­ing for­est fires in Aus­tralia, on the west coast of the Unit­ed States or most recent­ly in south­ern Europe, which are fueled by extreme drought and strong winds.

“Even in Ger­many it is now too dry. I want to sup­port, strength­en the water cycle.”

- Prof. Dr. Clemens Jauch

Atmos­pher­ic irri­ga­tion with wind tur­bines — under this title, the wind pro­fes­sor devel­oped the idea dur­ing his research semes­ter to bring water into the atmos­phere via the rotor blades of wind tur­bines, where it is dis­trib­uted by the wind in the form of water droplets or water vapor. “We are using a tech­ni­cal com­po­nent that we already have, the rotor of wind tur­bines, and the wind that is also already there,” Jauch explains. Prefer­ably locat­ed at riv­er mouths, water is pumped into the tur­bine’s rotor blades via a pump, where it is emit­ted into the air via noz­zles. Jauch: “Giv­en the cur­rent size of wind tur­bines, we have a water emis­sion area as large as about one and a half soc­cer feath­ers,” Jauch cal­cu­lates. The wind then takes over dis­trib­ut­ing the water through the atmos­phere. It evap­o­rates. Clouds form, and it rains.

Clemens Jauch sees many appli­ca­tions. Over wind tur­bines near the coast, onshore wind can dis­trib­ute the water inland over long dis­tances until it hits moun­tain ranges, for exam­ple, and rains down. “This can increase the amount of pre­cip­i­ta­tion,” Jauch says. But the prin­ci­ple can help not only against droughts and impend­ing des­ic­ca­tion. “You can also use it to build up melt­ing glac­i­ers in Nor­way, for exam­ple.” For Schleswig-Hol­stein, on the oth­er hand, the pro­fes­sor ini­tial­ly sees the appli­ca­tion over short dis­tances or for local irri­ga­tion. This could be use­ful for agri­cul­ture and forestry or against the threat of for­est fires.

Of course, a suit­able loca­tion for the wind tur­bine is impor­tant. Riv­er mouths, for exam­ple, are opti­mal loca­tions, he said. “We don’t take ground­wa­ter, but the tur­bine has to be locat­ed where water is avail­able, for exam­ple at riv­er mouths where fresh water is about to become undrink­able salt water,” Jauch explains. To ensure that the water then reach­es the place where it is actu­al­ly need­ed, the wind direc­tion must of course also be right. Nev­er­the­less, it should be not­ed that this type of water dis­tri­b­u­tion is rather impre­cise com­pared to con­ven­tion­al irri­ga­tion sys­tems. But this is pre­cise­ly the advan­tage of the tech­nol­o­gy: the water is made avail­able to peo­ple, plants and ani­mals in the affect­ed areas with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. Only in this way can the entire ecosys­tem and the ground­wa­ter ben­e­fit sus­tain­ably. In a some­what more elab­o­rate ver­sion, the sys­tem will also be able to be used for desali­nat­ing sea­wa­ter in the future.

Clemens Jauch is con­vinced that his inven­tion works. In many places around the globe. In their mas­ter’s the­ses, stu­dents will now look at var­i­ous aspects such as the tech­ni­cal com­po­nents for the noz­zle sys­tem or the aero­dy­nam­ics of the rotor blades before mov­ing on to con­crete research projects.