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.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[pHatidic]

Actually Cornell University is cooled by Lake Source Cooling, and Lake Cayuga, while the biggest finger lake and fairly deep, is nothing all that special. Cornell was able to successfully cut its emissions and energy usage by about 90% with this thing, with no ill effects to the lake. I say that because some locals thought that it would kick up sedament which would cause eutrophication, but this never occurred. Also, people were worried that the warm water being dumped near the surface would impact the lake, but measurements showed that you can't even tell the difference in temperature more than 10 feel away. All in all, it was a really good move by the university. My only regret is that my freshman dorm wasn't hooked up to it so I didn't have any AC in the summer!

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[pHatidic]

Also, here is the . The coolest thing about this system is that the loop that goes from the bottom of the lake to the surface and back into the lake is separate from the loop that goes from the LSC plant to the campus and back. Once the water is pumped up from the bottom of the lake, there is a huge series of heat exchangers where the warm water from campus is chilled enough to run the AC. The significance of this is that you only need enough energy to pump the water from the bottom to the surface, not from the bottom to campus. The reason for this is that the campus loop is a closed loop full of water, so by the laws of fluiddynamics when water goes downhill it pushes the watter on the otherside uphill. You only need to expend the minimal amount of energy to overcome friction to keep it running. Truly amazing stuff, I'd highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in Ithaca.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[CoolGopher]

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.

Maybe I've forgotten too much of my highschool physics, but how does this really work? I was under the impression that the "sweat" on cold pipes is the result of the chilling of the surrounding air/material, which lowers its capacity for carrying water, thus in essence extracting it into solid form.

So if the pipes sweat below ground, aren't they simply solidifying water that already is in the ground? If so, that's not what I'd call irrigation...

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[Courageous]

This is a fantastic idea, except for one flaw. This would only work for cities near the coast.

That's a goodly majority of all humanity.

C//

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[Quirk]

The idea has been around a long time but then so has John Craven. Toronto is using the waters of Lake Ontario to provide air conditioning for a big slice of downtown realestate. The big problem with the Great Lakes is the needs of the urban sprawl that circles the Lakes' shores is putting stress on the resource, not to mention the political fray ensuing from many plans to alter the in/out flow of the watershed feeding the lakes. Being Canadian and watching the growing need for water in the US just makes me feel like we're gonna be on top of the quality of life index for a long time to come.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[ergo98]

The same sort of thing exists in Toronto.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[NanoGator]

"Wait till sealevels rise a few tens of metres..."

Yeah, then there'll be no such thing as coastlines anymore.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[ignorant_coward]

Hmmm...what's this feeling? Is that my brain's sarcasm lobe tingling?

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[jcr]

chilling the moisture out of the ground is going to dehydrate that soil, causing things to die.

Only if you're pumping that water off somewhere else. If you just use the pipes to chill the ground, then water from the air condenses on the ground. Upshot: irrigation.

-jcr

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[ajlitt]

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.

The problem is, in costal areas, fresh water for irrigation is scarce, and current desalinization processes are expensive. His cold water system is an inexpensive (almost free) method for generating fresh water, and as such is practical for providing for irrigation as well as potable water.

FYI, pipes sweat because the water (or whatever) fluid flowing through them is colder than the surrounding air, which causes water vapor in the air to condense on the pipes. This is the same principle used in dehumidifiers, though the water is usually an unwanted by-product in that case.

Re:More Efficient Coastal Farming

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, thanks very much. I am really looking forward to reading your link, but for some reason I feel compelled to spend considerable time deciding exaclty which part to click. Heh.

Ha, whatever

[CypherXero]

"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.

Convenient...

[B00yah]

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...

Obligatory Comic Book Guy...

[mindaktiviti]

Best. Headline. Ever.

Dihydrogen Monoxide

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful! Dihydrogen Monoxide can be a dangerous thing! Spread the word.

I see a flaw.

[__aavhli5779]

Doesn't pumping up water from the ocean consume lots of energy?

Re:I see a flaw.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he is counting on inertia, or some more subtle effect I can't think of.

The articale mentions that once the system is primed, it takes very little energy to keep pumping.

Think about it. You're not pumping water up into the air, you're pumping water above other water. Without any pumping, the water will automatically lift the water to, you guessed it, sea level. You only neet to lift it the extra 30 feet to your beach side farm.

Getting the system started probably takes a lot of power as you have to get all the water in your pipe moving fast enough so the water won't warm up by exchanging heat with the outside water, but one it's moving, inertia will help you keep going. You only need to make up for friction, and for the fact that cold water is slightly less dense.

Then again the article mentions that the pipe acts like a siphon, so maybe there is some other effect I can't think of. Maybe the decreased pressure because of the pump makes water freeze and therefore rise? dunno.

Re:I see a flaw.

[peacefinder]

That's what I assumed at first, too. But according to TFA it allegedly sustains itself like a siphon. It's mostly a one-time problem to get the flow started, I guess... then the siphon does most of the work. (Presumably with some level of ongoing pump assistance.)

If true, that is a truly neat hack.

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?

[werdnapk]

Hydrothermal events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent) exist in the oceans and pump out water at temperatures very close to, if not, at boiling temperatures. Pumping warm water back into the ocean is not going to make that much of a difference on the oceans.

Re:ocean temperatures?

[Kafka_Canada]

Oceans are big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big they are. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to oceans.

(ref.)

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.

Re:ocean temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Us out here in the east coast know this problem pretty well, and when i was in highschool i was part of a research program that went out onto the ocean water and collected samples.

Turns out the problem is when it rains, the sewage treatment plants reach compacity and dump untreated sewage into the ocean(this is pretty prevalent in the long island sound and would happen anywhere there is sewage treatment facilities and rain).

Overflow spillage happens much closer to shore usually than any pipe they send out and 7 miles seems way excessive as the outflows i visited were at best 3 miles from the plant, most much much closer, like 4 - 8 hundred yards.

The algae bloom and nitrate concentration near these pipes was insane. In fact in the long term this increases algae so much surface algae becomes so thick once vibrant life deeper down gets no light, dies, creates more bacteria and it can become a run away reaction. Eventually the algae bloom can cause massive amounts of fish to die, then mammals and so on.. quite nasty.

But the problem happens without any warm water being added back into the ocean. Likely its just not understanding that its compeltely raw sewage overflowing because the plant cannot handle rain load and sewage load at the same time.

Re:ocean temperatures?

[birge]

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

No, discharging sewage into the ocean can have unintended effects. That's the real problem.

Re:Like all energy sources....

[Omkar]

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.

dude

[thesalodonkey]

it's way more awesome than you even know... now where did i put my bong... what? no way! that uses water too! sweeeet!

Re:Good, but...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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.

very low thermal efficiency

[G4from128k]

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.

Re:very low thermal efficiency

[bcrowell]

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%.
A 2% efficiency isn't a problem. Efficiency tells you the ratio of the energy you can sell to the energy you put in. But if the energy you put in costs zero, then efficiency is an utterly unimportant number.

What's more relevant is to compare the cost of building the plant to the money you can make by running the plant over its planned lifetime. That's the relevant figure of merit for a nuclear power plant, and I think it's the relevant one for an OTEC plant as well.

The problem is that fossil fuels are artificially subsidized. Say I increase my energy use, and use an extra megajoule of energy derived from burning coal or gasoline. Well, I don't pay anything extra for the damage I'm doing with global warming, and I also don't pay enything extra for all the wars in the Middle East that the U.S. keeps getting into.

Amateur.

[JonTurner]

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...

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...

Re:Never dealt with sports injuries, have you?

[lax-goalie]

Well, yes. Yes I have,,,

The poster's exactly right. Applying both ice and heat to an injury manage the circulation to the area.

When you have an acute injury, say, a sprained ankle, you get an inflammatory response -- swelling. That's nature's way of splinting and immobilizing the injury. That problem is that all that swelling later turns to scar tissue, in essence, crippling you afterwards.

What you're trying to do is to use cold to decrease circulation during the acute phase of an injury (to reduce swelling), and to use heat and motion to increase circulation during the chronic phase (to help break up scarring and create new muscle and bone). The rule of thumb is ice for the first three days, then heat, but really, you want to ice as long as there's heat coming off the injury.

Both ice and heat will make you feel better. In my experience, ice is initially less comfortable, but WAY more effective in the end. And, ice combined with Aleve is even better. :-)

As an aside, ultrasound therapy works the same way as heat, albeit in a more focused and comfortable way. You never want to use it acutely, but for things like old hamstring injuries, it's the freaking bomb.

During rehab, (and frankly, if you're playing competitively, you're ALWAYS in rehab) you end up using both heat and cold. Usually, that's heat beforehand (to increase flexibility and circulation) and cold afterwards (to reduce inflamation from the trauma to old injuries). After a while, you just get used to the routine -- although spending a half hour with your balls in an ice whirlpool is never any fun.

No, I'm not a doctor or a physical therapist, but after a broken leg, a blown hamstring, one remaining ligament between two ankles, twenty five years in the cage, and a trip playing in the World Games, you get to know these things...

Re:Like all energy sources....

[dacarr]

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.

Re:This is fantastic!

[pla]

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.

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...

Re:Some of his ideas are nuts

[Altima(BoB)]

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...

Not to mention it'll be damn traumatic for anyone who digs out some of the deep sea's scarier denizens from those pipes...

He Doesn't Have the Half Of It...

[the eric conspiracy]

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.

Cold Shower

[Adam Avangelist]

No wonder my girlfriend always tell me to take a cold shower.

Faster growing fruit + unlimited energy + free air-conditioning = multiple orgasms (profit!!!)

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

But it's not just a power plant

[lheal]

There are several factors that make up for the inefficiency in power generation:

1. the "fuel" is free.
2. the water is used at least twice, which decreases the relative pumping costs
3. power generation is just a positive side effect of supplying fresh water.

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.

Re:Do continue!

[JonTurner]

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!

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

Re:P.H.D.

[jcr]

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