It's a wildly inefficient turbine; but better designs of turbines are very practical. Including a design Tesla originated that's remarkably similar, functionally, to the Aeoliphile. These too are not necessarily closed cycle. Getting the steam back saves a little energy 'cause the water you're boiling is hotter to start with, but that's a small saving compared to the energy cost to change the phase of water.

The biggest problem with the Aeoliphile was just that it was a poor implementation, a lousy first prototype. Or to put that same case conversely, the real drawback was that there was no sufficiently cheap source of energy (even peat) back then. So there was no obvious reason to mount the learning curve.