Terry Blanton wrote:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven_pr.html
"The topic under discussion is Craven's plan to use cold water pumped up from the
deep ocean to provide low-cost and environmentally sustainable power, water, and food to
a new residential and commercial development in the Marianas, a chain of islands some
3,000 miles to the west. "
Uses a "hurricane tower" to create electricity. Why not a Stirling engine?
Good question. But what's a "hurricane tower"? Is it a straightforward
heat engine or something else? Clearly he needs an efficient heat
engine, since he's pretty much dealing with a case of a pure "cold
reservoir" and pure "heat reservoir" which have both been brought to the
same location -- quite different from the situation with solar towers,
for instance, where the energy source is mishmash of the difference in
temperature between hot ground and the air high up along with the
difference in pressure between the lower and upper atmospheres, and
where the two reservoirs are not colocated.
But really, regardless of the engine used to convert the temperature
difference to electricity, using deep sea cold sounds like an absolutely
fabulous idea. It's the only energy source I've heard of that would
actually result in global _cooling_ rather than global warming.
Downside is that it's using "fossil cold" which seems unlimited today
but which might turn out not to be so unlimited if we really started
tapping it heavily. The other obvious problem is that it's not
available except along the coasts in temperate zones.
