Page 694 - Polymer-based Nanocomposites for Energy and Environmental Applications

638 Polymer-based Nanocomposites for Energy and Environmental Applications

24.2 CNT based nanocomposites for wind turbine
applications

In future generations for minimizing the effect of global warming, researchers and
producers have started to interest in renewable and clean energy systems that produced
no greenhouse gas emissions, such as wind energy. Countries, with windy fields, are
playing an active role in conducting innovative ideas in the area of onshore and off-
shore wind energy. According to Global Wind Energy Council report [13], the world
wind energy capacity is 282 GW and achieved growth by 44 GW over every passing
year [4]. In order to provide the enhancement in this area, more energy can be captured
with larger wind turbine blades. As shown in Fig. 24.1, rotor diameter of blades has an
important place for wind capacity. Concurrently, the wind turbine blades have critical
components that are necessary to design and optimize materials to be much stiffer and
strong enough and exhibit better fatigue resistance to perform safely and extend the
lifetime of blade materials under operating conditions. Composite material technol-
ogy is used to make the materials much lighter and stronger. Nanoreinforcers in com-
posite structures exhibited unique and superior features under the name of
nanocomposite materials [14].
CNTs are one of the most attractive candidates for using different kinds of appli-
cation areas as nanofillers that are obtained from one or more layers of graphene in
tubular form with open and/or closed ends [15]. Fig. 24.3 shows the different types
of CNTs [16] that are distinguished by its chiral angels and chiral vectors, which
depend on the cutting of graphene layer. According to unit vectors (a 1 and a 2 ) through
hexagonal lattice with the number of steps, called integers (n and m), chiral vector
C h ¼na 1 +ma 2 is obtained. By using n and m, CNTs can be described in three different
forms such as armchair (if n¼m), zigzag (if m¼0), and chiral (if n6¼m) [14,17].

Fig. 24.3 Structures of CNT (A) armchair, (B) zigzag, and (C) chiral SWNTs with their
chirality.
Courtesy of Ma P-C, Siddiqui NA, Marom G, Kim J-K. Dispersion and functionalization of
carbon nanotubes for polymer-based nanocomposites: a review. Compos A Appl Sci
Manuf 2010;41(10):1345–67.