ENERGY EXTRACTION FROM WASTES IN HIGH RISE BUILDINGS

Abstract

Conserving energy and finding alternate sources of energy has always been a favorite subject among research scholars and the industrialists alike. Converting mechanical energy from falling liquids is a well known field with huge developments in hydro-mechanical equipments like turbines that convert potential energy of fluids to rotational mechanical energy that can be used for generating electricity. In today's world a lot of energy is supplied to a modern city to meet the ever increasing energy requirements and a lot of energy is wasted out of the total energy supplied. In a high rise building a lot of energy is used to pump water for domestic requirements. The waste water is simply dumped to ground level wasting its potential energy. Turbines and pump as turbines (PAT) have been used in some places around the world to harness the energy of waste water but they face a great maintenance challenge for the system is choked, get rusted and further the inconsistent water flow makes their use quite difficult. In the present study, effort has been made to find out a suitable solution that could help east out the difficulties faced in extracting energy from wastes in a high rise building. Also, effort has been made to orient the system in a way that enables to extract energy from rain water as well. The solution is designed and developed using a 3D Modeling platform, which enables to find the material and space requirements helping in studying the cost involved and cost of power generated. A couple of case studies are taken up to simulate different scenarios of annual rainfall and different apartment sizes. It has been found that the effect of rainfall is very small in the total energy extracted. Though the system is able to address the two main challenges of choking and inconsistent water flow, but the cost of energy is found to be on the higher side. The system thus needs to be further refined to bring down the cost of energy. The various results thus obtained and the case studies made are discussed to identify various aspects that need to be addressed.