Modern Windmills

Most valuable renewable energy source, wind, is almost exclusively used to generate electricity. We should thing beyond that. In the old times windmills were used to grind wheat to form flour. This design should be adapted to modern times.

All developed nations need to keep producing and for that they need constant supply of raw materials. Mining and recycling from the landfills should be thought over. I propose staged grinding of the ores and the landfills to separate them into their elementary molecular forms. As the grinder produces smaller particles, they will be separated using X-ray fluorescence (XRF). Depending on the composition, the grinding will be further conducted using mechanical grinders or ultrasonic crushers. The particles with high purity (XRF reading), will be dumbed into sperate containers for further processing by different facilities. As a result, considerable portion of the ore purification process will be conducted using the energy of the wind on location. No consumable chemicals will be used and no heating that produce toxic gasses. This know-how is also important for space mining where you have limited resources.

Wind turbines require a lot of raw materials to be manufactured of which some of them are exported from limited suppliers. Windmills on the other hand can be manufactured using the local resources. They output raw materials that can be used to build more windmills which is a self-sustaining system.