I want to provide some deatils to Tom N's post of Feb 3,03. ""Rotary vane compressor? Are you talking about a whole windmill setup or just the compressor?""
We have two types of air compression systems here. Rotary vane consists of a motor that on the rotating shaft has a flywheel rotor mounted off center in a cylinder. The flywheel has 4 slots and use 4 hard carbon vanes that insert into the slots. As the flywheel rotates the vanes push outward to the cylinder wall and trap air and push it out the outlet; thus rotary vane.
WINDMILL. Almost all windmills generate air by the blades or fan moving a DIAPHRAGM on the end of a shaft up and down. Diaphragm moving up and down with the assistance of a check valve can compresses air.
With each system using the same amount of energy, the rotary vane mechanism produces quite a bit more air volume (but with less pressure) than the diaphragm mechanism.


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