Welcome to NES 2024-25

Our Mission

Welcome to the Norwich Engineering Society, an active forum dedicated to fostering the exchange of ideas and experiences among all those passionate about engineering — past, present, and future.

For over a century, we have focused on the people behind groundbreaking innovations and their visionary concepts. Our mission is to enlighten, support, and develop our members in Norfolk and beyond. We achieve this through unique engagements, dynamic events, informative seminars, and insightful publications.

By championing the diverse disciplines within engineering, we ensure its continued evolution and relevance in an ever-changing world.

Floating windfarms - Oct 7th 2024

Our current Vice-President, Dorian Hindmarsh, opened our 2024 - 2025 season with a well attended talk at the Hethersett Hub; 26 Members in person and 16 online via Zoom. His topic was electricity producing floating wind farms.

Dorian started his talk by pointing out that there were limitations to the current offshore fixed position turbine windfarms in that the deeper the water the more sophisticated the positioning engineering had to be; with, of course, consequential increasing costs. As an aside he pointed out that the UK was extremely lucky to have a significant amount of relatively shallow water on its eastern seaboard; for many countries that have high rocky cliffs, e.g. Norway, this is not the case.

However, it is common knowledge that rocky cliffs tend to be associated with higher winds; hence higher energy flows if the winds can be harnessed. The rest of Dorians talk was taken up with the possibility that turbines mounted on floating platforms might be a cost effective solution. As soon as floating turbines are looked at it is clear that the position of a turbine is not well known in that whatever anchor mechanisms are used the machine moves around because of tide and wave influences. Also it reacts more significantly to the aerodynamic forces produced by the turbine blades. One potential downside of this is that the individual turbines have to be much dispersed. Clearly anchor mechanisms are important as is the problem of getting the produced electrical energy onshore. In the latter case the resulting cables have to be flexible enough to cope with the turbine platform movements; they just cant be buried as is the case with shallow water farms.

# Clearly monitoring and controlling how the energy is produced from a multiple turbine farm is challenging even for fixed position turbines. It becomes an order of magnitude more difficult for floating devices. Dorian concluded his talk by demonstrating some software that goes a long way to coping with these challenges. A lively Q&A followed!

Wind Energy Museum - Aug 23rd 2024

.About 30 Members and guests visited the very interesting, privately run, Wind Energy Museum near Potter Heigham. We must thank Debra, the owner for an excellently organised and informative event. The museum houses of a range of working machines from the very early devices used to drain the Broads to devices that were constructed in the late fifties to act as bore hole pumps in the drier places in the world such as the Australian bush and the near desserts of the USA. The wind was sufficiently strong on our visit day for Debra to get all the devices working.

One of the effects of the recent pandemic is that Debra has had very little help in the way of volunteers to run the museum; particularly in terms of maintenance and general upkeep. The museum, therefore, is only open to pre-arranged group visits such as the NES but, sadly, not the general public. One very interesting part of the museum she was able to open up and get working for us was the workshop associated with the maintenance of the site. This housed all sorts of machines dating from the 1920s; all of which were driven from a common belt drive that, in its early days, was powered by a source. This workshop was set up by the then museum owner in the early 1950s. One interesting wind power source belonging to the museum collection is the working Wind pump at nearby Thurne Staithe that some Members visited after lunch at the nearby Thurne Lion pub.

During our visit, Debra explained her vision to expand the scope of the museum to include modern developments in wind power. This being particularly important as the coast of East Anglia is the location of several of the UKs offshore wind farms. She is currently involved in discussion with several local companies working in this area.

Anglian Waterworks Whitlingham - Jul 23rd 2024

The Anglian Water Whitlingham Works is the main effluent water processing plant for the Greater Norwich Area servicing more than 400,000 customer. Its main objective is reduce the amount of hazardous materials in the input effluent to safe levels before returning the flow to the nearby River Yare. The works are designed to be operational even under extreme conditions. The most important extreme conditions are prolonged heavy rainstorms. Because of the predicted increase of such events due to global warming Whitlingham is currently undergoing a significant upgrade.

Stuart started the tour with a brief history of the plant. He then gave us an overview of how the present plant operated including an outline of the target specifications for the output flows. He informed the group how notional waste products from the cleaning up process could indeed be put to good use. For instance, the methane produced is used, via heat power units, to provide more than enough electrical power to run the whole site; indeed it is regularly pushing power into the National Grid. Another example is that the solid waste can, with very little effort, converted to a compost like material for agricultural use.

Stuart then took the group on a tour of the working site starting with a look at how the inflow is screened for non useful materials such as gravel and cloth like material. The group then looked at the settling beds where the organic solid material suitable for bioprocessing was removed from the effluent. This aterial is used in biodigesters to produce the methane gas used in the heat powerplants. The group was then taken to tanks where microbial action removed the small scale suspended solid materials. The output from this area was then fed into an aerating plant and a final settling plant before the flow was fed back into the Yare.

Summer Social - 28th July 2024

Many Thanks to Donard and Anne Decogan for volunteering to mount our first Summer Social since the ravages of the recent pandemic. As well as the splendid location, overlooking their beautiful gardens, the weather could not have been better; warm and sunny with a gentle breeze. This meant that the whole event was outdoors which was helpful as a significant numbers of Members and their partners attended.

Council would very much like to thank all the attendees who brought food with them that added to the already splendid spread prepared by our hosts. In particular, Stephen Temple ought to be mentioned bringing along a wide selection of Mrs Temple cheeses that were much appreciated by the Members present.

As with previous Socials, an area was set aside for Members to discuss engineering objects or talk about engineering situations they had been involved in or just fun objects such as Tony Meacock and his 10 sec timing test. It was amazing how far out some Members could be especially those who had been involved in high level football refereeing! Another object of interest was one of the A frame supports that Tim Birt had fabricated to use in the construction of a new building for his daughter.

An enjoyable time was had by all who came. Many Thanks again to the Decogans.