Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought

Dan writes "Wired has a great article about a guy who thinks we can provide unlimited energy , accelerate crop growth, desalinize and purify drinking water, obtain health benefits and provide air conditioning, all by pumping up water from the depths of the ocean."

Comments

More Efficient Coastal Farming

[coop0030]

This is a fantastic idea, except for one flaw. This would only work for cities near the coast. Where I'm from (Minnesota) I don't see how this could possibly work (Lake Superior is very cold though, that is a possibility).

I like how he irrigates the farms. The sweating of the pipes below ground is a great idea. It seems much more efficient than spraying water everywhere, and having a lot of it evaporate.

He may be a nut (or not, I'm not a good judge of character), but he does have a great way of looking at his environment.

ocean temperatures?

[victorl19]

Wouldnt excessive use of this method perhaps alter ocean temperatures?

Maybe it will turn out like windmills- they take negligible energy out of the wind.

Re:ocean temperatures?

[fireduck]

Pumping warm water back into the ocean is not going to make that much of a difference on the oceans.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. In Huntington Beach, California, for the past several years, the beaches have had to be closed during the summer due to bacterial pollution. The obvious cause was the wastewater treatment plant dumping partially treated sewage 7 miles off shore, and that was somehow coming back onshore. Models, however, demonstrated that this was very unlikely because of water column stratification based on temperature (colder water, more dense, can't come up).

One factor not included in the models was an electrical generator station on the beach that drew in ocean water for cooling. It would discharge the warm water back to the ocean. However, it discharged the warm water at depth. Warm water, being less dense, rose to the surface, creating a nice thermal pump that would carry with it the colder water at that depth, some of which was certainly co-mingled with the discharged sewage. (this wasn't the entire reason for the beach pollution, but certainly was a contributing cause.)

So, yes, discharging warm water back into the ocean can have unintended effects.

Never dealt with sports injuries, have you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, cooling parts of yourself with ice causes the body to react and change bloodflow to the cooled area, usually increasing it markedly. The extra circulation does help healing.

Funny thing is, heat kinda does the same thing, albeit not as effectively. Most folks don't like the ice and go for the heat for injuries, though, because heat "feels better". Icing an injury can actually be painful - drop a sprained ankle into a large bucket of ice and water for ten or twenty minutes and the first minute or so will have you twisting and turning and writhing as your foot hurts like hell from the cold water. The pain does go away though after a minute or two.

Heat won't cause that pain. But heat will increase the internal bleeding from an injury if it's not fully healed yet, making the injury worse. Icing an injury will help stop any internal bleeding.

At least that's what my college football trainer told me one time as I was sitting waist-deep in a whirlpool of ice and water to treat a pulled groin muscle. Talk about having your balls shrivel up...

Some of his ideas are nuts

[Locke2005]

Conventional wisdom is that exposure to cold water causes arthritis, not cures it! Having worked one summer in a fish packing plant, I can attest that people do in fact hurt very much after spending 8 hours working with cold water...

In theory cold-water energy works; anytime you have a temperature differential it can be harnessed to create energy according to the laws of thermodynamics. In practice, I'd question whether the constant pumping and maintenance (saltwater is highly corrosive) wouldn't require more energy than you get out of this system.

One more thing: it's all fun and games until you suck a whale into the input pipe! But seriously, if you pump up nutrient-rich soup from the deep, in a few years your pipe is going to be so clogged up with marine critters that your flow rate is going to tend towards zero...

Aspects of this already in use

[limabone]

There are several office buildings in downtown Toronto that are cooled via cold water pumped from lake Ontario. http://www.enwave.com/enwave/view.asp?/dlwc/energy

Who modded him insightful? Try -1, utter nonsense

[jcr]

Yes and by screwing with the oceans themodynamics we will have finally ruined earth as a livable habitat

Ok, take a deep breath, and try to develop a sense of proportion. Oceans are big. Very, very big. We're talking miles deep, and thousands of miles across.

Ocean thermal plants will work with pipes that are very, very small in proportion. Even 100-meter diameter pipes raising cold water from the deep, will have an effect that's just about immeasurable.

Ocean thermal energy poses no more hazard of disrupting ocean currents, than windmills do of stopping the wind.

-jcr