The national test center for testing large wind mills: a wonderful visit

I got opportunity to visit Det Nationale Testcenter for store Vindmøller (The national test center for large windmills) as part of INFRASTAR 3# training week held at Aalborg University.

This is a test center in northwest part of Denmark 7 kilometres from North Sea in a  place named Østerild. The location is chosen close to seacoast to simulate the conditions at offshore, however the location should be easily/cheaply accessible for technicians for improving the performance of prototypes. These multi-megawatt turbines, if installed at sea, it would be difficult access and to install them. However, on land they can be installed easily by gigantic land cranes specially designed for this purpose at very cheap cost.

To test large wind turbines there is need to atleast 8m/s (~30kmph) wind speed at 100 m height above sea level. Which is available here owing to the flat topography of the area.

This is the only place in the world big enough to test next generation wind turbines. This place can be visited by tourists, school going children. At office of the test center they have very nice prototypes of wind turbines, a lot of videos showing how a wind turbine is installed answering all queries.

Also they placed a small wind testing tunnel for a layman to understand how models of wind turbine are tested in laboratory.

This specific wind turbine in test center is equipped with direct drive technology where gear box is not present and main shaft is directly attached to generator saving a lot of maintainance cost where this industry observe a lot of failures in gearboxes.

However, this direct drive technology comes up with heavy weight of Nacelle putting more load on tower structure. Here concrete tower is used to support the wind turbine to save cost as steel tower would be a costly affair.

I am very happy that I am working as an ESR for INFRASTAR project where I get opportunity to work in Denmark (world leader for wind turbine technology). Keep following my blog for all recent updates.

A visit to Aalborg Portland Company

I am working with concrete industry and have interest in concrete structures, does not mean I look like this :D

However, I was willing to visit Aalborg Portland Company since I moved to Aalborg in November 2016. In addition, I am very close neighbour to Aalborg Portland Company. I always used to wonder about the lake near my house, which I cannot really visit, as it has no public access!

This dream came to reality, when the company itself approached Aalborg University. They had plan to meet interested professionals in concrete research industry at company premises with an offer of lunch!

The idea behind this visit was a win-win situation for both company as well as PhD candidate. Company would like to see potential candidates who would be willing to join company and candidates/ PhD fellows have opportunity to talk to all technical experts in the company and to the HR management along with their expectations.

Now something about Visit, and interesting facts of the company!

·         This company was founded in 19^th century in 1889!

·         This company one of the largest producer of white cement in the world

·         They need white chock for creating this white cement, which is available here in Aalborg in abundance. The lake we see in above map is a man-made lake which is excavated by a gigantic excavator in last 50 years by taking out the chock. They have sufficient chock for next 50 years.

We have been accompanied by an old employee who served the company for more than 50 years, named Bob! You can see him in below picture talking to me J

We have also been taken to control room of the factory where only few people control all daily operations of the company. See below picture.

The quality control department works in Aalborg controlling quality of all other factories worldwide. 

This is the department where all specialists work controlling quality of produced cement.

 Below figure gives flow diagram for a typical white cement production

I would take an opportunity to thank you for reading my blog, stay tuned to INFRASTAR.