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

[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

[ignorant_coward]

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

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.

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...

Dihydrogen Monoxide

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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?

[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.

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!

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.

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: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.

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.

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...

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.

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