Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
"You see, I apply cold temperatures to different parts of my body in three bastings. The third is the most complicated - I ice the terminuses of my lymphatic system. My body heals itself. Look at these hands," he says, opening and closing his fists. "I have no joint pain of any kind!"
You're just numbing the pain. Idiot.
That /. would post a story on the awesomeness of water shortly after ThinkGeek begins selling a Water Powered Clock and a Mini Water Dispenser
Stupid planted articles...I'll buy what I want!...oooh...clock...
How Jaded Are You?
Best. Headline. Ever.
Be careful! Dihydrogen Monoxide can be a dangerous thing! Spread the word.
Doesn't pumping up water from the ocean consume lots of energy?
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.
Do you have any idea how much water there is in the ocean? And what the specific heat of water is? By the time we're pulling enough energy to make a difference, we'll have colonies in multiple solar systems.
it's way more awesome than you even know... now where did i put my bong... what? no way! that uses water too! sweeeet!
OTEC? Holy Christ don't tell me that the Arabs are already planning on price-fixing this market before it even gets started!
If this technology is going to be so successful why isn't being tried all over the place?
Because there are only a few islands throughout the world where it's practical. If you have a continental shelf, it ain't gonna work.
The "limitless energy" claim is pure hype, but just ignore that bit.
As you point out, it is also important to evaluate the long term affects of removing significant amounts of cold water from the oceans (disrupting ocean currents, overall water temp. rises, etc). The drinking water generator would also lower the air humidity, which would cause problems if the project was done on a wide scale.
I am sure this technology has applications in some circumstances (perhaps on oil rigs, remote islands, etc), but it is certainly not the solution to all our energy problems. Done on a large scale it would be unsustainable.
I'm still waiting for practical fusion power...
The efficiency of these system is extremely low because the temperature difference is so miniscule. For thermodynamic efficiency purposes temperatures are measured in Kelvin and temperature differences are only a few percent. The maximum efficiency of these plants in an ideal world is only 6%. When you account for the very large amounts of energy needed to pump huge volumes of water, the real efficiency is only 2-3%. This FAQ covers this and other issues.
Yes, you can get energy, but not much.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I've been applying icy cold beverages (usually beer) to the INSIDE of my body for years, and let me tell ya what, after a six'er, let me assure you I'm feeling no joint pain at all. I do tend to have a headache the next day though...
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...
He's 80, so he can't be lasting very long from here on out. I hope he wrote something down then.
This sig no verb.
Lessee, water converts to steam and might break down, but odds are will recondense into... water. So where are we depleting this source? And if it's temperature, remember that heat rises, so by default (and by convection) this water is its own heat sink.
This sig no verb.
Luckily it's pure grade-A horse poop.
Er, no, not really. Granted, this particular guy sounds a few gallons short of a hogshead, but deriving useable energy from cooling things off works exactly the same way as by heating them up - Namely, we can use the transfer of energy from the warmer side to the colder side to perform useful work (such as generating electricity). The absolute temperatures involves don't particularly matter.
So why do virtually all human-created energy extraction technologies use warmer than ambient going to ambient as the two sides? Simple... We humans have enjoyed, at least for the past few millenia, a really easy way to get things hot (ie, fire and a supply of fuel that literally grows on (as?) trees). We have not had a convenient way of making something colder-than-ambient, except very recently (within the past century), and even then only by using the hot-to-ambient conversion to get electricity to do the ambient-to-cold conversion - Sort of trading one for the other, with a net loss in both conversions.
Deep ocean water, however, provides exactly that - A nearly limitless supply of something colder than ambient, with a high enough specific heat that the energy we can extract from the temperature gradient FAR exceeds the energy needed to pump it in the first place.
Imagine the climactic effects, and effects on the oceans ecosystems
Now, here you make a good point. In the short term, or on a small scale, I would tend to say that we couldn't even come close to the natural processes that mix the oceans. But then, people thought the same about burning wood and later oil, until just the past few decades.
Check out 'Blind Man's Bluff', which is about the post-WWII craziness that was Cold War submarine espionage. This guy is smart, smart, smart.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
For all you Engineering Types, here is a page with an animation which shows the basis for the technology:
http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/Powersystems.html/
It's not untouched by man. From shipwrecks to dumping of garbage to all the usual pollutants, the deep-ocean is most certainly affected by our presence already. Of course, there's nothing new about this, it's just harder to tell when you can't actually visit most of this stuff in person, and have to send ROVs.
As far as benthic thermal pollution, it already exists in the form of deep ocean thermal vents. Of course these are natural, even though they spew vast amounts of sulphur etc. I would suspect the ecosystem down there would handle this pretty well, since by the time the warm water got back down it would be nearly the same temperature as the surrounding water.
Of course, it would be wise to run a full-scale test for a few years to determine the localized impact on the biosphere,(before widely deploying it) but I wouldn't jump to any conclusions until we see the findings.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Water is way more awesome than most people realize - because of hydrogen bonding -
It is a key component in life; it's solvency and structure are what makes biochemistry work.
It has about the widest range of temperature as a liquid of any simple material - making life possible over the face of the earth.
It is the closest thing to a universal sovent we will ever see.
Since it expands on freezing ice floats - just think what a mess the oceans would be if they were made of something that shrank when it froze, and the ice sank. The planet would have much wider extremes in temperature just because of that small fact.
Wate has an immense heat capacity compared to other liquids... moderating our weather
The beat goes on; it's unique chemistry and physics are whe we live off of every day.
No wonder my girlfriend always tell me to take a cold shower.
Faster growing fruit + unlimited energy + free air-conditioning = multiple orgasms (profit!!!)
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
There are several factors that make up for the inefficiency in power generation:
Places like Saudi Arabia and Chile, which have lots of sun and salt water, but almost no fresh water, should jump on this. Saudi Arabia in particular, which has all the power it needs, could really benefit.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Sort of like the old phrase "no pain, no gain" eh? Well, we all know that beer makes the drinker smarter and I believe the headache problem is the drinker's awareness of the weak brain cells dying off. In the interests of science and a higher IQ, I'm prepared to work through the pain and set my sights on the lofty goals beyond. After a few keggers, I shall be left with only the smartest, most capable neurons and without those inferior, weak brain cells to get in the way, I will undoubtedly be the smartest person I know.
That little headache problem was due to my prematurely stopping the drinking cycle too early, causing pain. Well, friend, I won't make that mistake again. I pledge to you that I will drink, nonstop, from here on.
Slashdot, I salute you!
See http://www.enwave.com/enwave/dlwc/
Anyone who has been to Dubai (I spent a few years there) knows that desalinization in such large capacities is both financially and technically sustainable... Irigation is a no brainer... Creating surplus energy, though ??? That does not sound plausible...
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, there are some other places... for example the Monterey Bay submarine canyon (bigger than the Grand Canyon, all underwater.). Fantastic place for deep-sea ROVs to explore.
The biggest problem that I see is one of location. For a lot of this stuff to work, you need a few different things:
1. Cold, deep water.
2. Warm surface water.
3. Warm, humid air.
So you're limited to equatorial regions with available deep water. The UK won't be using this.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I have never heard of an "ocean engineer," as opposed to chemical engineer or electrical engineer.
Ocean Engineering is a field of civil engineering, which is concerned with construction on coasts or under water. Offshore oil rigs are designed by Ocean Engineers, for example.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The turbine produces electricity to lower the pressure in the chamber. The warm water loses energy when spins the turbine. If the water loses enough energy, there may be some electricity to power other things.
Interesting - this looks like it has the influence of Viktor Schauberger, commonly known as the water wizard, behind it. Blueprints for an ocean water pump is in Living Water.
Submitter deserves a golf clap for getting a Slashdot story accepted with a Fark headline.
Correct. The grandparent poster should read the article and notice that nowhere did it say that the sweat irrigation was to be derived from buried pipes. It even went so far as to describe one of his PVC cold water pipe sweat condensers in detail, noting that it was out in the open.
t ml?pg=3&topic=craven&topic_set=
"Irrigation:
Pipes carrying cold water run beneath fields of crops, sweating freshwater to irrigate plants and chilling their roots, promoting faster crop cycles."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven.h
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.