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As cool as a clean burning column of fire is, a vortex engine looks like a more practical use of the phenomenon. The idea is to capture the energy of a rising warm air column as in a solar updraft tower, though without needing to construct a tower. It also offers the potential to replace cooling towers, and extract energy from the significant amount of "waste" heat available at thermal or nuclear plants. (That heat need not be wasted, and can also be used for cogeneration. The higher temperature heat produced by advanced reactors like LFTR or other MSRs can also drive industrial processes including desalination, production of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and ammonia, etc.)

Also see the atmospheric vortex engine.

Conventional nuclear plants traditionally need to be derated in hot weather due to the fact that water-cooling means they can end up making water temperatures too high downstream or in the immediate vicinity of the plant (this is a big problem in france)

MSRs don't need water cooling (they're a lot hotter so you can reject heat to atmosphere and still come out a lot more efficient than a conventional plant) so this isn't an issue.

It may be possible to scavenge even more heat from MSRs after Brayton turbines (still under developmed) and steam turbines (well understood) by using an updraft vortex generator (originally a variant on solar chimney design) IF they work. http://vortexengine.ca/AVE_Des...

It's certainly possible to scavenge low-grade heat using stirling engines and this has been done on an experimental basis at power stations.

The more efficient way of using nuclear plants for heating or cooling is to build then closer to demand and then use district heating/cooling(*). MSRs are safe enough this is viable and it's certainly not a new concept - Battersea Power Station in London provided heating to 25,000 people in this manner.

Don't forget that almost all thermal electrical plants only convert 30% of the input heat energy into electricity. There's a LOT of waste energy which could (and should!) be harnessed rather than simply dumping it into the atmosphere or waterways.

(*) Cooling sounds odd from high heat sources but the technology to do this (ammonia bubble pumps) has been around over 200 years. See Solarfrost.com for one company who have put a lot of R&D into making them more efficient.

Look at the prevailing atmospheric vorticity of the area, place a bunch of counter-vorticity-inducing stators around the biggest leak (just a few percent cant on them is sufficient) and light it up. The updraft will pull air in through the stators inducing continuous vorticity that will form a fire tornado miles into the atmosphere, totally oxidizing the methane and anything else that might burn in the gas.

Once the fuel supply is cut off, the vortex may be self-sustaining due to the temperature difference between the ground and the upper troposphere. This is known as an Atmospheric Vortex Engine.

To turn it off, you turn the stators straight in thereby removing the vorticity and the vortex structure dissipates into a normal updraft.

You guys should contact Peter Thiel's Breakout Laboratories that funded a just-completed study of a physical model of a tornado with the potential of generating electricity -- baseload electricity at that -- from ambient heat.

Here are the most recent photographs and short video of that scale model which, at full scale, would be called an Atmospheric Vortex Engine.

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

It is estimated that it would be possible to establish a self-sustaining vortex to demonstrate the feasibility of the process with a station 30 m in diameter under ideal conditions. Learning to control large vortices under less than ideal conditions would be a major engineering challenge. Developing the process will require determination, engineering resources; and cooperation between engineers and atmospheric scientists. There will be difficulties to overcome, but they should be no greater than in other large technical enterprises.

Translation: I can haz millions for R&D?

OTOH, Solar Chimneys can be built today.
So I'm guessing that's why Arizon isn't using an undeveloped technology that may not even be workable.

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

Seems like an interesting idea, replacing the tall tower with an air vortex. But I think the risks have to be researched beforehand. What you create here is a giantic tornado, so how is it guaranteed that this tornado won't suddenly rip off the base and start wandering around?!

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

If they can't figure out how to economically control the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability that Denis Bonnelle has been so worried about, they can give me a call.

The Atmospheric Vortex Engine concept http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml is one way to harvest the heat energy in a large area of ocean surface.

"Mechanical energy is produced when water descends or when warm air rises. The Vortex Engine captures the energy produced when warm air rises by creating an air vortex which acts as a virtual vertical conduit.

The vortex is produced by admitting warm or humid air tangentially into a circular arena. Tangential entries cause the warm moist air to spin as it rises forming an ``anchored vortex''. The vortex engine has the same basis as the proven solar chimney except the physical tube of the solar chimney is replaced with centrifugal force in the vortex."

Basically, these guys propose to create anchored tornadoes and to extract some of the energy using wind turbines around the base.

I'd be in favor of funding more research in this and building a prototype in the gulf of Mexico.

Chris

They use a heat exchanger to warm up in-rushing air (drawn by the chimney effect of the vortex) and cool the water. See slide 10 of the technical description (warning PDF).

Now of course there is the minor problem of having a tornado by the tail near a nuclear reactor

Read http://vortexengine.ca/AVE_FAQ.shtml#control_vorte x_size

• delivers the performance of a $60 million natural draft tower at the cost of a $15 million mechanical draft tower
• eliminates need for fans, saving 1% of the energy produced by a power plant
• eliminates need for tall chimney, saving 2/3 of the capital cost
• replaces conventional cooling towers
• delivers the heat to the upper atmosphere where it radiates into space
• solves problem of re-circulation
• solves problem of fogging

Now of course there is the minor problem of having a tornado by the tail near a nuclear reactor -- but aside from the fact that you can channel hot water quite a distance economically, the hydrodynamic models (computational and scale) indicate that the base of the vortex can, indeed, be contained in a location. The real problem is that this system hasn't been scaled up to a sufficient size -- in an appropriately isolated test area -- to validate the models to the degree required by public safety.

It looks like one Webmaster, Eric Michaud did his job getting the company a little publicity the day after completing an update.

Nice...