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Cooling Toronto Using Lake Ontario
An anonymous reader writes "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project. The company says that they have the capacity to air condition 100 office buildings or 8,000 homes - the equivalent of 32 million square feet of building space. They note that the cooling system reduces energy usage, freeing up megawatts from the Ontario's electrical grid, minimizes ozone-depleting refrigerants and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide entering the air."
Will this not cause the lake to warm up? What are the envirnmental effects of this? Have they been considered?
This is the kind of stuff I like to see :)
Ok, it costs a lot of money, but in the long run it has the possibility to save so much more than money: the enviroment.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
but then I had a better question: Can it cool my 64-bit prescott?
(1). What will happen when the lake water will be warmed up? Ok,it will perhaps take a long time,but...
(2). How does the energy required for pumping / distributing the water and maintaining pipelines and machinery compares with electrical conditioneers?
Said that, it looks like a nice idea.-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Cool!!!
First of all, when the world trade centeres existed, they were air conditioned using the waters of the hudson river, so this is an old idea. Secondly, what kind of environmental consequences will happen when the bottom of the lake starts to warm up? The great lakes make up a large part of the weather system in the northeast of the US. If they change, the whole weather pattern could change. I, for one, am skeptical.
But then again, I'm sitting in Hungary, in a room with no air conditioning, on a hot august day, and there's at least 15 big fat room-heaters in this little office. I would kill for some air conditioning.
-Dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Halliburton, Bechtel and General Electric have signed a multi-billion dollar deal to refrigerate the waters of Lake Ontario.
The temperature of the lake has inexplicably begun to rise. Algae blooms, moss growing on surronding trees and Corona beer bottles scattered on the shore have alarmed the Canadian Department of the Interior to take swift, albeit expensive action the save the ecosystem of the lake.
From the diagram, it looks like the cooling water goes into the city water supply where normally the cooling effect would have been lost as the water flowed through the city's water infrastructure. Conceptually it looks like co-generation, but for cooling.
The water will be treated and enter the drinking water supply at normal temperature after it is used to cool buildings. It will just take the place of other water that would enter the drinking water, and be discharged the way it all currently is.
Not that I'm predicting this will happen here, but it's usually best not to heat deep water like that.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
According to the site they use the city water supply
that feeds from the bottom of the lake to cool down
a closed loop system, which is then used to cool down the offices/homes. No warm water is fed back into the lake. So the lake should not heat up at all.
RTFA !
Look at the diagram on http://www.enwave.com/enwave/dlwc/ They warm up the city's drinking water by a few degrees.
A
Here's the BBC's story about it.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
The Toronto Star's coverage has more info about Alec Baldwin's participation in the launch of the Deep Lake Water Cooling system:
When I moved to California, where air conditioners are rare in most places, I first encountered a "chiller" which works (suppossedly) by using "cold" water run through coils instead of coolant. Well, it did not work at all. Then again, we don't have really friggin' cold water here either. :)
Anyhoo, any "saved" Mega-Watts by this project will be sucked up by us, as in the U.S.
I am curious as to where the water from this project goes after it is used. Obviously, the cool water used can only be used once.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Er, how? What does this mean? Cold's just the absence of heat, the only way to "extract" it is to heat something up.
For me, at least, this is what renewables should be about: finding a local source of economical renewable energy, and applying the appropriate technology to make it useful. The key thing, though, is that the methods change depending on what's availible locally.
John St. Pumping Station has obviously found some way of overcoming The Second Law of Thermodynamics as:
'the water's cold will be extracted and used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings'.
Unit for Cold anyone?
From the CBC
/ 17 /enwave_040817.html
No registration required;
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/08
Why are people so anxious to express their concerns about warming the lake? This idea sounds like it would be very beneficial to the environment. Then there could be an issue with warming the lake. If there is, it could be quid pro quo. But of course there is not. I have just read that it has a volume of 1639 km^3. That is a huge amount of heat capacity. If you put in numbers, there is not a way you can warm this lake if you wanted to. Plus, with a surface of 19,009 km^2, I think it will have no problems cooling itself in winter.
We'll all be dead by then, anyway :)
Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project.
How does one "symbolically open" a valve? When one is finished, is the valve really open or only "symbolically" open?
As an aside, the summary by 'an anonymous reader' is completely lifted verbatim from the article itself.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Even if they are not putting the warmed water back into the lake, the removal of cold water will raise the average temperature of the water (as warmer surface water has more of an impact on the overall lake) and will cause the lake to get warmer. We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
I get lots of hits for "fjärrkyla" (sv. "city grid cooling", what ever the term is in English) on Google.
For example Fortum (Energy company in Sweden and Finland).
Try this link</a>.
This, of course, presumes that you have HTML formatting turned on.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
As a grandson of a plumber I can confirm that the water does eventually end up back in the lake. Rule #1 of plumbing ...water flows down hill.
The beauty of this implementation is that the incremental warming of the water may actually further save energy if slightly warmer water comes into water heaters. From a thermodynamic standpoint this looks like a very large geothermal system. The economies of scale may make it quite cost effective too.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
parent not flamebait. more news at 11.
I thought they were strictly water/evaporation based when it came to large scale building cooling? Hence I don't see the claim of reducing refrigerants. Now where are they determining reduction of CO2 into the air? Is this from the power savings?
I know that "real" portable cooling units have no refrigerants (the corp I work for resells some).
I can see the savings from power, but I still don't like the idea of sucking cold water from the bottom of a lake. It would seem to me you could upset the balance and possibly cause the lake to flip thereby releasing tons on CO2 - something which happened in Africa, which did kill a lot of people.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This is one of those things that looks good when you start -- but what happens when everybody starts doing it? What I'd love to see is some info on the volume of water extracted from the lake for this project vs. the volume of water in the lake. This would give geeks like me a much better chance of being able to figure out for ourselves just how much this is going to affect Lake Ontario and how much the basic idea is going to affect the lake as the idea becomes more popular (as I expect it will).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Which means you are transferring heat into the icy cold depths of the lake. Who thought *this* was a good idea - the same people who think shipping garbage out to sea is a winner?
when the average hi in July is 77 degrees farenheit(25 C).
Beware blue cats moving at
Did I mention it's big?
Plus water turns over automatically at 4C (that's the temperature when water is it's coldest). Lake Ontario is not meromictic and has a natural turnover anyways.
was brother Billy, who was heard commenting "Ooh ooh, I'm an activist too! Look at me! I'm more an activist than my brother! Haven't you seen my documentary about the environment? I fought for Mahi Mahis while Alec was busy having a career! Look at me!
OH GOD! Why did I ever make that movie?! Look at me!"
There is too much worry over this. This is a closed-loop system (think fuel cell vehicles), and overall a very clever idea.
Several energy companies that provide distributed heating (water is heated in powerplants, possibly as byproduct of electricity and pumped to houses where it heats hot water and heating system) provide (or plan to provide) also distributed cooling. Sea water and excess energy of distributed heating (that must be produced also on summertime for hot water) are utilized in that.
Tell you what... NO!
They just heat the drinking water from cooling the buildings, just to put the now warmer drinking water in to the fridge?
HA HA! YOU did and I have the evidence to prove it!
Is this actually saving any money? Sure, it's reducing the energy consumption, but how are the businesses being charged for this new installment (since they will no longer have to heavily rely on AC)? Is the city flipping the bill?
(I know.. RTFA, but it's early yet)
Am I to understand that one car produces 5 tonnes of CO2? What kind of cars are you driving up there? Geez, buy a hybrid or something!
All kidding aside, how do people get away with statements like this?
...if you live on the *other* side of lake Ontario, as I do in Central NY, all you get is shitty weather.
FLR
The new office building created at the Old Ovaltine Egg Farm, called Beaufort Court, uses a similar ground water technique for cooling
Geothermal has been around for a long time. There are closed loop systems that put the condenser coil underground, and open-loop systems that use streams (ideal) and ponds (somewhat less ideal)
The General Motors Technical Center in Warren, MI has been using open-loop cooling for decades, using the large pond on the campus as an open-ended evaporator. The fishes that live in it don't seem to mind.
There's a nice picture here:
http://www.bcausa.com/projects/tax_gm.html
(Pictured is the "Design Dome" the design building to the right, general engineering in the buildings above the pond, and the Cadillac, Chevrolet, Pontiac and mid-lux buildings beyond)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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Would anyone please think of the fish?!?!
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Guess I'm a quibbler, but: (1) Cold water has been used for decades for cooling. The first major mall in the USA, Southdale, in Mpls, has been cooled by cold well water for oh, a bit over half a century. (2)" 8,000 homes - the equivalent of 32 million square feet". I don't know about Ontario, but around here the average home is under 2,000 sq feet, not 4,000. And piping cold water around to every house is unlikely to be cost-effective. (3) "minimizes ozone-depleting refrigerants". In most office buildings there will still be scads of freon used as a intermediate heat-exchange medium. (4) "and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide entering the air." Yeahbut the ability of water to hold CO2 is a strong function of the water temperature... has this been taken into account?
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I live near downtown Toronto... this has been the coolest summer I can remember. Couldn't you wait until next year to turn the stupid valve?
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Acting like a child and keeping the ten millionth post from others. I dedicate this post to $$$$$exyGal
Thank you for playing!
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Lake Ontario being cooled by unused air conditioners from Toronto area. The polluted lake burst into flame this morning, apparently due to a raising temperature over the past few days. Authorities are investigating the cause of the temperature spike. Meanwhile, thousands of unused air conditioners are being utilized to attempt to chill the lake. Water is being cascaded across thousands of air conditioner evaporators, at the cost of megawatts of electricity from the local grid.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
So, all that cool water gets pumped out, absorbs the heat, then goes back..
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
More info:I D=53
http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/water/deep_lake/
Video:
http://www.enwave.com/enwave/news/?s=dlwc&Release
Posted AC cuz I modded here (torstenvl)
postnumber % 1000000 == 0 ?
This appears to be what Cornell U. installed several years ago using Cayuga lake to the same effect.a ult.htm
http://www.utilities.cornell.edu/LSC/def
Yes, or we can stop bashing people trying to make technical processes understandable to Joe Schmoe...
"Understandable" is your primary metric is it? So, if an understandable explanation were made up on the basis of voodoo, tea leaves and chicken entrails, you would consider that to be good enough if it were more understandable than the physical truth?
Are you trying to educate the masses, or just keep them dumb and happy?
Now for the winter months when they need heating, maybe they could harness the hot air coming out of the mouths of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates to heat the city.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Cornell University recently did this with the deep water of Cayuga Lake (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000839.html ). As you can imagine, it caused quite a spirited debate in such a liberal town as Ithaca. In the end it was approved and the University is gauging the environmental effects very carefully(http://www.town.ithaca.ny.us/PEZ%20proje cts/Lake%20Source%20Cooling/lake_source_cooling_mo nitoring_p.htm). So far, there's been little effect. Although some (http://www.cldf.org/tt_981216/chap1.html) might disagree.
I would like to point out to the concept's cheerleaders that there's nothing wrong with asking questions about the fundamental ecological effects of our engineering projects. Those questions should be answered thoroughly and carefully. Yes, global warming appears to be a severe problem, however let's not replace it with a bigger problem by stifling debate and rushing in with an ABCO2 (Anything But Carbon diOxide) attitude that might be more harmful than the disease.
Lake water cooling was pioneered by Cornell University at the end of the 90's, using water from Cayuga lake:
http://www.utilities.cornell.edu/EIS/ExecSummar
This document is a prospectus, but the project is completed and operating as expected.
(1). Annual lake heating is equivalent to 3-4 hours of sunshine once per year (0.1% of total heating)
(2) The project saves 80% of the previous cooling costs.
CV
http://www.utilities.cornell.edu/EIS/ExecSummar
and the water will never reach freezing at the bottom, it'll always be a degree or just afew hundreths of a degree above freezing at the least, never lower than that? why? water in its solid form is lighter than its liquid form, it's one of the few elements that does this, which makes its liquid form rare in the universe. However, by utilizing this, they can cool office buildings and never worry about heating up the lake, unless they pumped the warmer water they used to the very bottom, but even then the water would chill, and would get colder again, because the amount of cold water outweighs the warm water.
hell, if you wanna see a good example, look at the bottom of the ocean where there is no sun, but there are volcanic vents, the water at the bottom of the ocean isnt hot due to that, and that's more constant heat output than any city could produce in a million years.
It's been a while since I've seen that show, so I can't remember if it was a representive of the company or of some environmental agency, but they said that using this system for one year would have the same environmental impact as the sun shining on the lake for an hour and half.
So in other words, you would have to heat up a lot more water then they are to warm up Lake Ontario.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
A warmer lake will lead to more lake effect snows in ... Cleveland.
Wrong lake. Cleveland is on Lake Erie. Perhaps you're thinking of Rochester.
I have a buddy who works for the City of Norfolk, VA. He tells me they use a system like this with water tanks that they cool during off-peak hours of power-usage to save electricity costs. Apparently the system is very efficient, and if it is efficient when we also have to cool the water, something tells me this system should work well.
Rochester, Toronto, and the Thousand Island area of New York are on Lake Ontario.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
If Buffalo gets more snow, call out the army. That worked for Toronto.
(Hey I'm from Hamilton so it is my duty to stick it to Toronto whenever possible.)
We americans like to tease Canadians about that "eh" thing, but I don't think anyone ever said they're not smart.
Go Canada! eh.
BTW, excellent post.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
This is the same thing I do. I don't use AC, I just keep my fridge open and the cold water running all over the house.
I save the environment!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago can tap the cold water reserves of their lakes. Does L.Erie or L.Michigan have cold water like Ontario at the bottom?
But, won't introducing warm water back into the lake add new convection currents that will stir things up, affect the lake's organisms, and add certain cleaning chemicals/pollution?
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
You don't have to guess. Google is your friend. Here is a map. Note: The inlets are just inside the green zone. The deeper part of the lake doesn't seem to be broken up into isolated pockets.
Note: The lake gets a lot deeper.
You really think that you know more than the Engineers that built the system?
They are already taking water out of the lake for drinking. The only difference is instead of pushing very cold water through the ground pipes where it's warmed up by the ground heat, they are using it to cool buildings first instead.
These days those quasi-socialists have it all over us...
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
...like the water in the lakes is now warming up due to the use as a coolant. Millions of fish will be 1.4 degrees warmer now that it's being used to cool those pesky human habitats.
Do I hear anyone screaming "Global Lake Warming"? I'm sure we will soon.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
A similar lake source cooling project was implemented at Cornell while I was there. They tore up half the campus laying 36" pipe down to the nearby lake. Of course this project is much larger (with a larger lake as well), but from what I have heard the Cornell project has been a success despite the hand wringing of the radical environmentalist. The Toronto plan seems to be even better as they are not discharging the water directly back to the lake (as they do in Ithaca) but are processing it for drinking water. more information on the Cornell LSC website http://www.utilities.cornell.edu/LSC/default.htm
IIRC, the CO2 in question was volcanic in origin - not likely to be a problem in Lake Ontario.
And as for the lake-warming scenario (not voiced by parent, but I'll add my $0.02 CDN): Get some freakin' perspective, people! Go to a map or Wikipedia or something and check out the size of Lake Ontario. It should be immediately and intuitively obvious that the impact will be many orders of magnitude too small to matter.
But if you don't believe me, someone has already done the math. It looks good to me, and while IANAL (that's "limnologist"), I started working in limnological field camps before I started school. ("Raised by scientists"... has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Kinda like "raised by wolves".) Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
There is no way that this won't change the ecosystem of the lake. If you extract cool water from the bottom, you're in effect bringing warmer water further down. This will change plant and animal life at different levels of the lake. Whether it will be destructive or not, who knows. Using ground water (or lake water) for cooling is becoming more popular, as it is cheap and appears green. I just wonder if we'll say the same thing in 50 years when we've thrown water system all out of whack. Maybe we won't, I hope not, but I don't think enough studying has been done of the effects.
Everyone who is worried about how this will destroy the lake or whatever should consider that the city will be cooled one way or another. Up till now all the extra heat from these buildings has gone right into the air in the city.. Did anybody make a big deal about how it would kill all the birds and the clouds then?
I think what is important is that this is a more efficient system, less extraneous heat will be generated in the process of cooling than before, thereby decreasing the net heat gain for the entire system.
There can be no 100% efficient exchange of heat energy, but the closer the better.
Even if they are not putting the warmed water back into the lake, the removal of cold water will raise the average temperature of the water (as warmer surface water has more of an impact on the overall lake) and will cause the lake to get warmer. We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
Yeah, the equivelent of eight extra seconds of sunlight hitting the lake will be death to the entire eco-system! Run away, run away! Burn freighters full of fuel and oil instead! (RTFA if you don't get the reference)
Get a grip. YOU have a much bigger impact on the eco-system every day you use heat, airconditioning, refridgeration, eat, sleep, shit, work or play.
The hydrocarbins the manufacture and use of the computer you typed your comments on probably have a larger impact on global warming than this entire project. The Canadian's approach is the smartest solution to this problem that anyone has come up with in a long time. Is it scalable to every city on the coast of that lake? No (8 seconds of sunlight is one thing, eight days equivelent would be another), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it in order to reduce the consumption of power in other areas.
Nothing is a panacea, but this is a damn sound solution for Toronto, and they get to do it by being there first. Any overall solution to our energy, global warming, etc. problems will involve numerous clever solutions, and this project stands a good chance of being a part of that solution.
And as for impacting the environment: 6 billion people breathing the air impact the environment. If you truly don't want to have an impact, slit your wrists. Oops, your decaying flesh will still have an impact, so you're out of luck there too. Better get used to it, because people do have an effect, and they always will. The impact of this project is benign and minimal, compared to every other public works project out there, including the sewage system in your town you probably make use of multiple times every day.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
COOLING DOWN Toronto? Isn't it cold enough??
Start a project that makes hotter summers in Toronto, then we'll be talking.
"Work is currently in progress to de-gas Lake Nyos. A pipe has been installed in the centre of the lake held in place by a raft attached to the shores by ropes. The pipe reaches 203m deep (the depth of the lake is 210m) and has valves at 0, 100 and 140m depths. When the valve at the surface is opened CO2 rich water from the bottom is released in a large plume from the top of the pipe due to the pressure difference between the deep water and the atmospheric pressure. If the fountain of water becomes too energetic the valves at 100m or 140m can be opened allowing gas-poor water to enter the pipe and mix with the gas-rich water. This reduces the energy of carbon dioxide coming out of solution and releases strain on the pipe."
has anyone considered using that lake as a power plant?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
You can find more infomation here and here
There was an interview on the morning news yesterday with a guy who is a big fan of this technology. The interviewer asked him if this technology could be used in other cities on the Great Lakes. Yes, he said. There were various cities where it could be used. Rochester and Milwaukee were two examples he offered. But, he said, it could not be used in Chicago. Presumably because Chicago doesn't have easy access to a deep cold layer.
Here in Toronto we have always taken our water from deep in the lake too. As you can see from this map the depth drops precipitously just off Toronto Island.
The American fan of this technology was Alec Baldwin, the actor.
The interviewer next asked him if any of those other cities were considering following Toronto's example. He replied that he was flying to Chicago that afternoon to make a presentation.
The usual Air conditioning System uses a heatpump and needs electricity to cool the air (just like a refridgerator). That electricity ends up as heat (outside) as well. So looking at totals it's more efficient to use cold water from the lake for cooling (if available) than to use heat exchangers that run on electricity that just ends up as more heat *and* has to be produced by a powerplant producing even more excess heat.
The concern where the excess heat ends up is valid though, but apparently they use it to warm up drinking water that would've been taken from the lake anyway.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I believe that lake Michegan is even deeper than lake Ontario, so it'd probably work just as well.
Have you ever had an errand in the downtown office area, and walked through a big blast of hot air?
Not only does this save energy. But because those downtown buildings are not using conventional air conditioners for cooling, they are not dumping megawatts of waste heat into the outside air. I read that the use of this technique should reduce the local ambient air temperature on the downtown streets, where it is used, by several degrees.
As a pedestrian I welcome this.
Fools! the lot of you!!! do you not realise that stirring water raises it's temperature!?!?! think of all those boats stirring the water with their propellors!!! IT'S A CATASTROPHE WAITING TO HAPPEN!! i mean come on.. a few 1/10,000 of a degree in water that's being polluted, on a world that is suffering from global warming - yeh that's gonna destroy the world...
You also need to remember this is in Canada. Up here we don't worry too much about things getting to warm. Mother nature does a remarkably good job of keeping everything up here frigid.
My mother is a big wheel on the windmill project (3 HUGE $6,000,000 windmills each to power 100 homes)... the thing is the government mucked around so much with subsidies that is is kind of questionable...
Basically if they bought power from the government and then sold it back to them they could make infinite money...
Buying for more than what you sell it for doesn't make much sense even if it's ecco friendly.
But hey maybe this will pay for itself.
Just 2cents.
I've always wondered why you couldn't use a similar system in a residential area. We have a lake behind our house that's about a mile around and about 8 feet deep on average; couldn't we (at least the immediate lakeshore residents, if not a larger amount of neighbors) use the lake water to augment our air conditioners?
You'd dump warm water back in, but this could be augmented somewhat by holding tanks and underground piping that cooled it back to ground temperature. If the lake was man-made, the environmental effect would be essentially nil, and you'd only have to worry about thermal calculations.
This might not make sense for retrofitting, but what about for new developments? People like lake/park areas, and there's no reason that a cooling pond couldn't be framed in a naturalistic setting.
I suppose it all comes back to commercial viability; it'd take a more expensive air conditioner capable of combining water cooling with electrical compressor cooling, the "community" would be responsible for the cooling pond and piping, and the electrical savings might not matter.
Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago can tap the cold water reserves of their lakes. Does L.Erie or L.Michigan have cold water like Ontario at the bottom?
And Lake Superior is even colder. Fortunately very few people live up there so things tend to stay nice and clean on their own.
Lake Erie is more like flooded river. Not nearly the same thermal mass as Ontario or Michigan.
Why does a city at 43 degrees north latitude need cooling systems at all? How's about think first and then build intelligently - instead of build first and then cool down?
This lake cooling system is a typical example for an environmental improvement of a system that sucks in the first place.
Yes, I was guessing there aren't any major cities on L.Superior or L.Huron.
the hot summer days were pretty harsh, and talk about electricity peak demand due to air conditioners was constant.
so I wondered, why cant the government enact a law that forces every house owner to put solar panels on his roof to help power his/her air conditioner(s)?
it might not be efficient for other applications, but the hottest days are when there are no clouds in the sky, so the solar panels would work best when they are most needed.
granted this has nothing to do with Lake Ontario's cold water, but that solution was thought up due to the strain on the electrical grid... and this is what my idea was all about.
Yep. 95 F at 10% humidity is more comfortable than 85F at 90% humidity. With the high humidity in the midwest and east coast, you can't compare temps directly with western US. Even so, many (if not most) office buildings are excessively cooled. At some places I've worked, I kept a sweater in my office to put on during work in order to be comfortable, the temperature was so fricken cold. These offices don't need to be chilled to 70F. 78F would be just fine. Most homes I've been in keep their thermostats set at a more reasonable level.
"The Deep Lake Water Cooling system uses cold energy from Lake Ontario to cool buildings in downtown Toronto."
What the heck is cold energy? Is it related to dark matter? I don't remember that from Physics or Thermodynamics.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
"water in its solid form is lighter than its liquid form"
First, it's not lighter, but less dense and thus it "floats" (is displaced by something more dense). This is so because water forms a crystal when freezing and the molecules are actually farther apart than liquid water (to simplify things).
Water at depths doesn't freeze because of the massive pressure it's under. It's an entropy thing, ie it would require more energy to crystallize.
FYI.
the US's (heck, the rest of the world's.)
Apart from very few of the northern states, nobody, and I mean nobody, has access to as much fresh water.
Most people haven't got a clue how big it (the country, never mind the lake) is.
They're idea of huge is actually pretty small. Lake Mead sized. They're not used to thinking of lakes that curve over the horizon (13km or so) before catching sight of the other shore. Most people can't imagine how big 393 cubic MILES of water is.
Now if you really want to awe them, tell these same people that the province of Ontario also borders lake Huron and lake Superior. which bring the size of the heat-sink to multiples of the capacity of lake Ontario.
Then tell them that the north of the province (never mind Quebec or Manitoba,) is dotted with near-countless lakes holding nearly the same quantity of water.
Then watch out. American industry is THIRSTY!
The hubs of industry in the coming century and China (HUGE markets served by the Three Gorges project dams) and Quebec (HUGE energy consuming market t the south served by the La Grande dams)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They could have gone the simpler and more direct route of just building a power plant that used the difference in tempersture between the cold bottom water and the top water to pump up that water and generate electricity.
Simpler? More direct? Let's compare them:
Alternative 1: Want airconditioning? Just use the cold water to do the cooling.
Alternative 2: Use the temperature gradient in the lake to produce electricity and use this electricity to run the air conditioning.
Ahem.
Such plants have been proven to work with ocean water
Proven to work, yes. But not economically. It's very difficult to produce electricity from relatively small temperature gradients and the efficiency is very low. Much higher gradients are available as waste heat from industrial sources and even they are barely practical for producing electricity.
Science fiction authors seem to like this idea, though. Power generation from ocean thermal gradients is featured is many SF works. Don't confuse this with practical and available technology.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
They use "chilling stations" to cool our buildings. No big, deep lake to provide the free heat sink, though. It's ultimately cooled in towers and released to the atmosphere.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Why, again, is it so vital to cool Toronto, one of the coldest cities in N America?
At the ceremony, they had a fake mechanical valve which was connected to nothing, but there just for a visual presentation. At the same time, the engineers opened the real valves, which are actually operated by SCADA computers remote control.
Screw the fish.
even the picture shows (at the top of the page) that they're pulling the water out and DRINKING IT.
They just use the temp of the water intially and use it's cooling properties, then they pump it off to be converted into drinking water.
This isn't going to do anything worse than pulling the water off the top of the lake than the bottom, because this lake is the water source for the city.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
'Nuff said.
My new
Lake Erie and Lake Ontario have about the same surface area. But Lake Ontario is much deeper and so has a greater volume. I have links here to charts showing the temperatures, at various depths across various slices of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
Note that Lake Erie is much warmer. But most of the water in Lake Ontario came from Lake Erie? Why is it so much colder? It cools off in the winter time. It takes water from the Niagara River six years before it flows down the St Lawrence.
If, for the sake of argument, Rochester, Kingston, Hamilton all used deep lake cooling, and they all grew so much that they exhausted the Lake's deep layer, Lake Ontario would still not evaporate, any more than Lake Erie evaporates away to nothing.
Yes, there are deep areas of Lake Ontario that have been at 4 degrees celsius for a long time. How long? Since the last ice age? The glaciers covered the entire Great Lake basin a few tens of thousands of years ago. So that is how long a unique deep lake water ecosystem would have had to evolve.
How much water would the cities have to draw from the deep layer to use up all the cold layer? I don't think you understand how deep the Lake is, and how great its volume. Look at these three maps. West Centre East. So, lets say the deep layer is currently something like half to one third of the volume of the lake. The cities would have to use up the equivalent of the flow of two or three niagaras worth of water in order to drain all the deep cold water.
So long as our winters continue to get cold enough for the lake to cool to 4 degrees the cold layer gets regenerated every winter.
I think it could be argued, if Global warming every gets bad enough that using deep lake cooling exhausts the cold layer in mid-summer that, since we have the infrastructure in place, we use it every summer until it is exhausted. What about the cold deep lake water ecosystem? I am all for preserving interesting, unique ecosystems. But I doubt that a few tens of thousands of years is long enough for it to become interesting and unique.
another example of that wonderfull yankie attitude...ahhh what a breath of smog filled air you are. I take it your sister is also your mother and your wife??
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
For the Heller-challenged:
When Yossarian is in the hospital, he meets the "soldier in white"Changing the jars was no trouble to anyone but the men who watched them changed every hour or so and were baffled by the procedure.
...that it'll make Toronto even a single bit cooler? ;-)
Nobody has even read the article so they're talking out their ass. It's like those 4 philosphers trying to find out how many teeth a horse has by debate instead of just counting the horses teeth!
I think everyone can see where this is going -
Let's must build huge cities underground, where the temperature is constant and we don't have to worry about skin cancer, rain, or locusts.
As a wise man once said, Ahem.
Just use the cold water to do the cooling is hardly as simple as it sounds. Look at how many times the cold water goes through a heat exchanger before it is ever really used to cool a building, each time with a loss. Then look at building all of that piping to get the intermediate cooling fluid around an entire city of buildings and back again (This ain't exactly like laying fiber.) And consider the mass and resistance of all that fluid that has to be pumped around the city to get it to the buildings to be cooled. The losses in that (which end up heating the cooling fluid) will make the exiting power lines in Toronto look like super conductors in comparison. And then any building using this has to be completely refitted to use this cooling system, when existing buildings already have normal electricity driven HVAC.
No, just use the cold water to do the cooling isn't as trivial as you make it sound. While the valves may have been turned on, it's far from proven that enough users will really adopt this to make it fly.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A fave writer of mine, John McPhee, years ago wrote a story, "Ice Pond" about an idea along these lines.
It has to do with running water in the winter into a pit to make slushy ice. Keep it covered, and it will last through summer. Put pipes at the bottom and run water through it, and the water will get cold (duh). Use this new 'reserve of cold' to cool buildings. Easy and cheap.
The story is in the books "Table of Contents" and "The Control of Nature". Both are highly recommended.
Where's Robin Hood? We could kinda really use him now.
Given there rasiing the lake temp albiet slightly this will increase the amount of evaporation and as such the rain, all good. But what about the poor ecowarriors who will ask, all the animals it will effect and how this will impact on the lakes ecology. Dont think of the children, think of the hippy beared 40 year old, coz there the ones that talk today not tomorrow :)
http://www.lincolnenergy.com/ does this already (note: I don't work there so I don't know all the ins and outs but I will try to explain what I can figure out from talking to a friend of mine who does)
Canadian climate is harsh. With the exception of the west coast much of Canada experiences hot summers, and cold winters. You probably know that while the surface temperature of the Earth changes quickly the temperature a couple hundred feet down usually stays at the average temperature of the region. Lincoln energy uses a technology they call "GeoThermal Exchange" which uses the Earth's heat to cool down buildings in the summer, and warm them up in the winter. The technology does not require as large a setup as the one described in this article and can be economical for single buildings. To quote from their website:
Sorry. I should have linked the url. Here goes:
www.lincolnenergy.com
The site has a couple of interesting flash movies that explain how geoexchange works.
Instead of air-conditioning a few cubic meters of air during the few hours of the year a Canadian city actually needs air conditioning (j/k), why not do something a little more useful with that temperature differential?
Extrapolating your numbers, I have calculated the following...
1906044444444 kilowatt hours. Ontario has a net power generation capacity of approximately 25,000 MW. So 25,000,000kW into 1.906x10^12 gives you approximately 8.7 years, at current generation, to heat the lake by 1 C.
Perhaps you could 'minister' to the poster's ignorance. :)
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Read this post. Lake Ontario (like most lakes in Canada) mixes once a year in the autumn (turnover, or overturn - I've heard both terms used), usually in the late fall prior to freezeup. The lake is only stratified in the summer, and the only special property held by water at the bottom is a lower temperature in the summer.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
The cold is being extracted from water that will be used for drinking / etc. It's not being pumped back into the lake. They're just doing a heat transfer exercise on water that would have, in the past, given up it's heat in pipes, etc.
God help us if this is the techno-elite. Hours of effort spent reacting to a non-issue.
It just occurred to be that this is a giant evaporative cooler (aka swamp cooler). The same principle has been used in Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, though it was used back in the 20's and 30's. (Sorry for the crappy link. It was the only thing I could find referencing it. I highly recommend taking the technology tour to see it for yourself, and to see his advanced use of electrical wiring in conduit and hydroelectric and solar power generation with battery storage.)
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
While the cooling of the city of Toronto might have no noticable effect on the lake, your prescott will likely cause the lake to mostly boil off.
"Not to mention the lovely chemicals that have graced the shores of Lake Ontario, down by the ol' Xerox and Kodak Plants near my alma mater. Given what we Americans did to the lake, I think Toronto can be given a little leeway for some warm water."
As if defecating wildlife, aboriginal people, and decaying animal & plant material never polutes any eccosystem!
Get Real people!
Yup, we think differently, therefore we *must* be evil...
I don't. So I need to cool it down, which takes either ice, or a refrigerator, or...oops.
Sure, this is hyperbole, but it's something to consider.
ever drain an aquarium?
There is not a whole lot of pumping... there is the initial suck (or pump) to get it started and then it takes care of itself provided you keep it in the right position. Ain't hydraulic cohesion and gravity great?
Maintianing a hose (or a pipe) is much simpler then maintianing an underwater generator with power transmission facilities.
Stage 1: Eastern power grid collapses, leaving Toronto without electricity overnight.
Stage 2: Mega project to use frigid lakewater to eternally reduce the temperature in Toronto buildings.
Stage 3: Alberta shuts off the gas lines.
And then, Operation Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark comes to life!
(This slashdot post brought to you by the Western Canada Concept)
Will it make the fishing better? Where are the warm water return pipes located? I'm gonna get my fishing rod!
Oops that was two questions. If I only get one I'll make it the second question.
Each winter cools the Lake Ontario down, and then in the summer we pull some of that cold water out of the lake to cool out buildings.
Next Winter, the lake cools back down again, repeat...
I live on Grand Island, NY which borers Canada. I wonder if this would work in lake Erie? Lake Erie is much smaller and much shallower than lake Ontario. This seems really cool. I live on the Niagara River(which dumps into Ontario) I wonder if it would be possible or theseable for home owners to do the same thing. My sister lives on a gold corse in FL. Her House has a heatpump that uses one of the waterhazered to cool off the house. This seems like all people with central air that live near a large H2O source should follow Toronto's lead. David Williams
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
Buffalo get's all the lake effect snow. Toronto doesn't get much snow at all except during freakish storms.
They will "extract the coldness" of the water? I think Enwave is in the frontline for the next Nobel prize...
I welcome our new "Toronto Cooling Via Lake Water Overlords"!
love is just extroverted narcissism
I actually got a darkness pump, but it was so noisy I had to buy a silence generator.
RMN
~~~
. . . on a much smaller scale. He's got a 1 acre lake that provides cooling in the summer and heat in the winter for his house (mansion, really). The lake temperature is changed by several degrees (F) but it's relatively small compared to the house. The system is expected to pay for itself in heat savings in less than 10 yrs + provides (almost) free A/C.
I am not a crackpot.
How about writing an e-mail to the article's author, explaining his mistake? I just did that, and in 5 minutes he corrected the article. It now says:
"Brought to the John St. Pumping Station, the lake water is used to cool down other water that will then be used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings."
There. I would probably have mentioned something about "heat exchange", but the current version is not too scary for Joe Below Average and is technically correct.
RMN
~~~
Downstream from Toronto -- to the extent that Lake Ontario can be said to have a "downstream" -- there are several gigawatts' worth of nuclear power plant (Pickering and Darlington).
;-)
Most of the electricity they produce goes to Toronto, in the summer a fair percentage of that is used for cooling Toronto. The nuke plants themselves are cooled by Lake Ontario water (with secondary cooling loops -- a leak in a primary reactor loop won't affect the lake).
Taking into account the (in)efficiencies of air conditioning and the (in)efficiencies of converting nuclear heat to electricity and transmitting that electricity to Toronto, using the lake water directly for cooling is probably several times more efficient and actually lowers the amount of heat dumped into the lake (and the air surrounding the powerlines and airconditioner outlets).
Sounds like a win-win all around, unless we're faced with another ice age
-- Alastair
500 gallons * 6.167 lbm/gallon = 3083 lbm fuel.
3083 lbm fuel * (12 g carbon / 14 g fuel) = 2643 lbm carbon.
2643 lbm carbon * (44 g CO2 / 12 g carbon) = 9689 lbm CO2.
That's close enough to 5 tons (4.5 metric tons) for my taste. Your mileage (pun intended) may vary.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Superior sure does. It is the deepest, largest, and coldest. One little problem... no one lives up there - its too cold and in BFE!
One exception - those huskies.
http://www.michigantech.com/
Cornell built a lake source cooling project in Ithaca, NY using Cayuga lake. Much smaller lake so maybe they won't have the problems that Ithaca now suffers from. Pumping cold water from the bottom and releasing it at the top of the water has caused the phosphor levels to rise more than Cornell ever said it would and they're only operating at half capacity. Algae loves phosphors.
It positivly blooms with lots of phosphors. Causes all kinds of nasty problems. Most ppl who live on the lake are clueless about what Cornell did because the "discussion" about LSC was limited to I-Town, even tho the reprocutions will eventualy affect everyone one the lake (dozens of smaller towns and one larger town, Auburn). I had to explain LSC to the firemen and a sherriff once who had to come down to the lake after someone reported a capsized boat right in front of my old apt. (it was the outlet for the LSC system) LSC stinks. There is cooling technology out the that is very efficiant, non-polluting and green Friendly. That doesn't reak the kind of ecological havoc that Cornell has. They should be ashamed of themselves for pissing in the lake.
You forgot about the zebra mussels in Lake Ontario that will just feed off the algae.
9 &lastnode_id=124
Here's a source:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=52203
Ok, The mathes are not completely correct. First the numbers you used are "clean". The Cp of Water is about 4, but moist air has a Cp of 2. Ok, so now we have a 1 to 2 ratio. But you fail to realize that you cannot have a 1 to 2 ratio because that is ideal. In engineering you would have a heat transfer of maybe 50% if you are lucky. So now we are essentially at 1 to 1.
Ok, so we need 59,000 tons of water to cool 59,000 tons of air. That ratio is most likely on a per hour basis as they did not seem to give a time line. Crunching the numbers we have an additional degree a year of heat added to the lake.
Does not sound like much, but it cumulates and there is a steady state. The problem though is what happens when more companies want to do this? And what happens if you do shift the lake temperature patterns?
I am not saying, dooms day, but there are ramifications. There always are ramifications. I lived a long time in North America and it gets me that they would rather change the environment than change their bad habits.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Buy any commodity in bulk and you'll get a better per-unit rate than if you're buying smaller chunks. It's easier (and thus more profitable) to sell larger chunks of something, particularly once the production cost is fixed.
Those bulk customers are also exchanging a level of service for cheaper rates. In the event of a power outtage higher rate customers like residences get priority for service restoration.
The price that electricity is sold for is only partially tied to the generating cost. There's a lot of overhead in terms of distribution networks, emergency services, customer support and front office stuff that you pay for as well. Large users of electricity use a smaller share of the overhead resources and thus their rates are closer to the generating cost since the overhead costs can be amortized across a much larger amount of kw-hrs.
c'mon, i just had to say it:
do not disturb the water.
Please examine this mod. It is not redundant any more than the parent was.
I was worried for a while there, but apparently the heat output of Toronto is only 1906044444443 kilowatt-hours.
paintball
Is never, under any circumstances, lick your fingers.
I live in a dry area.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
What I like about this project is how it has the same effect of taking 8000 or so vehicals off the streets. So much fuel saved!
... the 3mgp increase he fought against would have saved 3 times the oil the US imports from Iraq ... saving far more oil than could ever be produced by raping and pillaging that world heritage park in Alaska.
... which only a blind dumbass piece of shit fool ever thought was about terrorism ... Thanks to Dubyafucker destroying the relative stability that was there, huge uncertainties have been created in the oil markets, more than doubling the price of oil over the last couple years! just LAST MONTH ALONE you damn americans sent $190BILLION dollars to the middle east buying oil. HALF of that money could have stayed in your pockets, out of the hands of the saudis. ... out of the hands of the Bin Laden family that has a huge involvement in middle east oil.
... paying back the gift a thousand times over.
.. and $100Million from the Province of British Columbia, Canada, who tried to ease the shortage by selling more electricity to California ..WHO NEVER PAID THE DAMN BILL, taking money out of MY pocket!!!
...
And that has the effect of pissing off george W bush!
why?
because everything that motherfucker has done as president has directly or indirectly benefitted his oil industry friends.
dubya fought against increasing the average fuel efficiency of vehicals produced for the US market
dubya sued california to force that state to stop increasing its fuel efficiency plans, so that you send more money to his saudi oil friends.
when dubya announced his hydrogen economy plan, the same bill silently spent 5 times more money on subsidies for the oil industry.
And that Iraq thing
but of course the Bin Laden family gave the Bush family $1.4billion dollars over the last couple decades, buying favour with the powerful american family who has been very happy to respond by sending your brothers and sisters to their deaths to get the oil price up
And that's just oil, lets not forget how right after the election, the electricity shortage in california started, and didn't end until the republicans had won the senate. This 'shortage' has since been revealed to have been totally false, artificially created by friends of the Bush family in the energy industry who intentionally shut down powerplants to reduce supply, to more than double electricity prices. The friends of Bush stole $30 BILLION from the american public through this scam
in conclusion
YAY Toronto! anything that reduces energy consumption, that in effect fights against the most corrupt piece of shit president the USA has ever had is a very very good thing.
Lake Ontario not so great -- Lake Superior could kick its butt without even noticing. ...
... are all INLAND FRESH WATER SEAs. (and Lake Vostok as well)
and lake baikal could take them all on
We should stop calling these things lakes, and stupidly insanely small things seas as well (Sea of Galilea? That's a very very very small lake, smaller than Lake Champlain, smaller than the Great Salt Lake)
Baikal, the 5 Great Lakes, Great Slave, Great Bear, Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods, Arthabaska,
If the Great Salt Lake were in Europe, it'd be called the Great Inland Sea... like the miniscule Salton Sea, which property developers named in California.
just basically heating up the lake? no good can come from this.
Serenity now, insanity later.
plus it gets Darn cold here during the winter and that's gotta reset everything right?
In the "fact sheet" section you will learn that:
How does Deep Lake Water Cooling Work?
Enwave's three intake pipes draw water (4C) from Lake Ontario 5km off shore at a depth of 83 meters below the surface. Naturally cold water makes its way to the City's John Street Pumping Station. There, heat exchangers facilitate the energy transfer between the icy cold lake water and the Enwave closed chilled water supply loop.
The water drawn from the lake continues on its regular route through the John Street Pumping Station for normal distribution into the City potable water supply.
Enwave uses only the coldness from the lake water not the actual water to provide the alternative to conventional air-conditioning.
What are the Environmental benefits?
Compared to conventional chillers, Deep Lake Water Cooling reduces energy usage by 75%. This frees more than 59 megawatts from the Ontario's electrical grid.
Harmful ozone depleting refrigerants, CFC's and HCFC's are reduced.
40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide are removed from the air -- equivalent to taking 8000 cars off the road.
To be clear, no water is exchanged and the cold water from the bottom of the lake isn't sent back there after the heat exchange (chill exchange) it continues to it's way to the pumping station and into the city. This is actually a brilliant idea that should be used as an inspiration to think multisources when thinking energy. Why always oil or electrical? Heat, cold and motion can be generated in a lot of ways...
"Big city draining cold water from big lake means lake will heat up, dis is a bayud t'ing!"
Cheez, Anyone look at the relative sizes?
Ok, to make it simple: Imagine the lake is the size of a bucket. Now imagine the city has the same relative size to the bucket it has to the lake, got it?
Ok the water being extracted is literally a drop in the bucket, net effect; negligible!
And if anyone had paid attention to the article or several previous posts, they were ALREADY extracting the water, had been for years. Now they're just gonna run it through heat exchangers first, to cool buildings, THEN use it like they always have, drinking, washing, water ballooons, whatever. Net change to impact on lake, ZIP!
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
I live in Toronto, and I know that the electricity rate is about 5.5 cents per kWh for businesses. The rate is determined by the Ontario goverment's Ontario Hydro Corporation. It is expected that the rate will go up within a year, but let's estimate 5.5 cents for now.
The CEO's bio, say it cost CDN$175 million to do the project. For the rough estimate, let's assume that it is operating at peak capacity, which it isn't yet. Another assumption is that it is used four months of the year. At a power of 59 MW, it would displace $9.3 million of electricity generation. That would take over 19 years to pay back.
I would imagine there would be a cost for maintenance. However, they may be able to make some profit during cooler months, since as one poster has pointed out, some modern office buildings trap heat in the winter and need air conditioning to compensate for heat sources such as people, lights, and electronics. I don't know what kind of demand that would necessitate.
With such a long payback time, that may be one reason why we don't see more of them. It's exactly the kind of thing the federal government should be investing in instead of Petro Canada (a Canadian oil and gas company.) FWIW, the NDP had a campaign platform to sell off the PC shares for investment in energy efficiency and green technologies like this in the last election: http://www.ndp.ca/ftp/platform/en/greenfound.php
Ontario announces multimillion dollar plan to build precooked fish factory.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Please stop buying our water, Oil, Nuclear Reactors and Electricity.
Thank you.
Continue buying our music, movies, grains, beef and lumber as normal.