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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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
Did no one RTFA???
You've already extracted from the exact same source of water for decades, for use as drinking water. This just raises the temperature of your drinking water by about 10C, with a net "gain" derived from reducing AC costs to the city.
So yes, you can technically say that removing water from the coldest part of the lake raises the average temperature. But to turn that into "we should not be doing this" ignores the reality of the situation. This results in less energy consumption overall, a good result no matter how you look at the situation.
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.
No, the point is that environmentalists don't want alternative fuels or alternative practices. They want less technology. Less tech = less electric used. I'll probably get modded as troll or funny, but I'm serious. Wind energy is touted - until someone wants to use it (New England wind-farm fight).
What's the alternative here? Apparently there is none, so we better just not cool those homes.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
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.
Run the numbers for burning gasoline and you'll find out.
1 Imperial gallon of petrol ~8lbs. Stoichiometric combustion requires 14.7:1 air:fuel ratio by mass, so burning that gallon in travel requires about 118lbs of air. Estimate about how much fuel you burn in a year, multiply by 118 (or 95 for US gallons) - and suddenly five tonnes of CO2 as a byproduct is eminently feasible.
Example: SUV driven 18000 miles/year at, say, 15mpg US: 114,000lbs of air consumed, representing nearly 24,000lbs of oxygen to be bound up in combustion products. That's TWELVE tons of shit right there...
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
This is the ying and the yang of every decision. There is a side effect to everything.
The question is whether this kind of pollution is better than the carbon dioxide/refrigerant chemicals/coal power plant pollution. It is likely the answer is "yes".
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.
As with any change, there will be winner and losers. In this case, I think the extra heat could make far more winners than losers.
I used to work at a coal fired power plant, the outflow channel (where we dumped warm (but clean!) water) was a haven for fish. Everytime I went past the channel outside the plant, there were always people fishing. Employees could fish closer to the outlet and they would. I watched them and most didn't even bother baiting the hook there were so many fish! Large fish for that area of the bay.
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.
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.
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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.
I actually got a darkness pump, but it was so noisy I had to buy a silence generator.
RMN
~~~