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Water cooling a stator for more efficiency

PostPosted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 1:27 pm
by EmeraldIsle
Hi All,

How hot does a stator get? Can it be water cooled?

My idea is to cast some channels in/around the coils and pump cold water through the stator, would this work, and if so wouldn't it improve the efficiency of the generator. I'm not sure exactly how I would make the 'water course' through the stator but I'll figure something out if it would produce a reasonable hike in efficiency.

I guess I'm looking for some brain boxes to tell me the sums and formula I should be looking at, lol Ideas I have! Knowledge I'm lacking!

Let's assume it's a 12 mag 9 coil pma, with twin rotors 1 either side of the stator (the standard home build axial flux genny).

Incidentally just out of my own curiosity and because I'm often accused of being completely mad, what would be the best way to create a stator that would burn up in any strong wind, ie. if I used really thin winding wire, would that do it.

Hope this provokes some thought, I've seen water cooling on industrial stators but not seen it done with the home build type.

Re: Water cooling a stator for more efficiency

PostPosted: Wed Apr 17, 2013 2:48 pm
by windgat
Great question(s)! I don't know how hot the stator gets - I have never monitored it. Of course, there is a neat factor in that the hotter the stator gets, the harder the wind must be blowing, which means the stator is naturally cooled if it is exposed to the wind. Some like Greystoke on this forum will be the oen you need when it comes to formulas and working out the efficiency gain analytically.

My intuitive guess is that it will not be worth the effort for small (< 3kW) turbines.

Also remember that when the wind is blowing hard, efficiency is not usually an issue (due to the cubed formula for the kinetic energy of wind).

To make a stator burn... hmm, an unusual request! How about just a fuse? Or to you really want the thing to combust? I recently retrieved a turbine that burned out, and it may be interesting to see what the insides of that look like when I take it apart!