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Artificial Tornadoes
An anonymous reader writes "This inventor is working on a method of creating artificial tornadoes to generate electricity which he calls the "Atmospheric Vortex Engine". He is claiming that it is possible to create a man-made tornado and use wind turbines to capture the energy from the tornado. On the website there is some video footage of some experimental tornadoes that were generated in a prototype vortex tower in Utah. There seem to be several recent media references to his work including The
Economist and The Guardian.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a renewable energy source, but what happens if one of these tornadoes gets away?"
At the risk of getting a "you must be new here" comment, RTFA
"Heating the air within the wall using a temporary heat source such as steam starts the vortex. The heat to sustain the vortex once established is provided in cooling tower bays located outside of the cylindrical wall and upstream of the deflectors. The continuous heat source for the peripheral heat exchanger can be waste industrial heat or warm seawater. "
It looks like they're trying to recycle energy that has bled off as heat and move it back into a usable form.
What is most interesting is that vortexes are not really understood in common culture and just how inportant thy are in terms of power to many daily facts of life.
/. many years ago that was able to take mostly anything 'cept fat and turn it into dust.
DaVinci studied cadavers and found out that it is the vortexes in blood flow through the years that close the heart valves as blood flows through.
Bumblebees can fly due to the uplifting forces of vortexes on their wind edges.
A pulverizer driven by vortex power was mentioned here on
One of the common effects in nature that has great potential and is right before our eyes is being ignored by most - possibly because they are poorly understood.
This article is an example of someone paying attention to the vortex and finding out what could be done with it for mankind.
Sure sounds like something REALLY interesting to learn about.
and then...
PROFIT!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
The vortex can be sustained by either a specific heat source, like seawater or an area covered by greenhouses [as in the Australian solar tower/solar chimney], or if the atmosphere is sufficiently humid it can be sustained by the inherent instability of the atmosphere. However this instability is not generally always present. This instability is called the CAPE (convective atmospheric potential energy). It is the energy source that feeds thunderstorms. The reason the atmosphere can store energy is that the bottom layer of the atmosphere tends to be heated by the sun. If the air is damp but not at 100% humidity you can get a situation where the air column is stable, but as soon as it is perturbed enough for some of the air to start releasing moisture (when it reaches 100% humidity) the situtation becomes unstable. This is because the air that rises high enough to release moisture, starts getting warmed up when the moisture precipitates and then rises even higher. Theoretically, this could be exploited by a vortex. The vortex is performing the same function as a very tall tower, but hopefully more cheaply. It's like a siphon that siphons gasoline out of your tank. The vortex has lower pressure at the center, much like a siphon. However, it is far from clear whether this idea could be made practical. There are issues like how stable the vortex would be in wind, etc.
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