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?"

Comments

Conservation of Energy

[quanticle]

Where is the energy for these tornadoes coming from? To be more specific, how much energy is needed to start up one of these things?

Re:Conservation of Energy

[TeacherOfHeroes]

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.

Natural disasters on demand!

[martinultima]

Maybe we should sell this to FEMA and put them in charge of creating all natural disasters in the United States. (You know, they could change their name to the Federal Emergency Making Agency...) That way we'd have hurricanes that could destroy the world, but it would take six to eight weeks before anything actually happened, giving us plenty of time to actually prepare for the disaster when it finally did arrive.

Great for Electricity but...

[PlayfullyClever]

Wind, Hydro, Nuclear... great for electricity but does nothing about Gas and Oil.

Until electric cars become efficient enough to run all day on a single charge with half a day of stored energy still available, petrol is the energy source we need to replace.

I'm betting on Biodiesel. It's still more expensive to refine than crude oil but that gap is closing fast. With current subsidies you can actually buy biodiesel for cheaper than Gasoline...

Re:Great for Electricity but...

[maswan]

And every time someone comes up with the idea of electric cars, I usually see here the argument that there is no point, because "electricty is made by burning oil anyway"...

The fact that fossil fuels are being burnt to generate electricity should give you a hint that better ways to generate electricity is really needed.

Well, that or people getting happy about having a nuclear power plant in their back yard.

Re:Great for Electricity but...

[FLEB]

Well, that or people getting happy about having a nuclear power plant in their back yard.

If better safety controls and protocols were applied, I would be. Maybe I just don't know enough about it, but I think a lot of the problem with nuclear power is the same sort of mistaken impression as flying-vs-driving, or microwaves-vs-stovetop. With nuclear, the damage in the case of a failure can be much more catastrophic, and the risk factors are strange and scary, but the net ecological damage versus something like coal or fossil fuels is actually less, provided nothing goes Chernobyl or TMI. Of course there is the risk of a Chernobyl or TMI, but if people could actually work on the problem, solutions could be found. Me? I'd rather have nuclear now than wind, water, or solar that's always just over the horizon.

Vortexes

[azav]

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.

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 /. many years ago that was able to take mostly anything 'cept fat and turn it into dust.

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!

Re:Vortexes

[Council]

As a physics major, this is one of my favorite passages in any book:

There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, at least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who going to be responsible for making bridges that won't fall down or airplanes that won't suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don't want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits ground. That's all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.

-- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

This begs for the...

[KDR_11k]

... obligatory demanding of ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Seriously, what evil overlord would miss such an opportunity?

"What happens if..."

[heatdeath]

"What happens if one of these tornados gets away?"

This question is about as ignorant as "what happens if a nuclear reactor blows up?" A vortex created and sustained by the energy from the tower wouldn't be able to escape - if it did, it would have no energy source to sustain itself.

Re:"What happens if..."

[modecx]

Oh sure, you can say that all naively--until the tornados from various towers, fed up with their oppression, form a union and combine into one giant-ass tornado that's hell-bent on giving you the Judy Garland treatment!

Fear the artificial vortices!

Re:Ummm, so about that second law of thermodynamic

[0xC0FFEE]

You're missing the idea. The idea is that a tornado is a natural mechanism for evacuating large quantities of energy contained in warm water. Since warm water contains a lot of energy, it could be possible to invest just a little more energy to provoke a tornado and harness the wind power. Also, warm water is heated up by the sun and not by other non-renouvelable energies. It might actually be more efficient than heating water to boiling point (as is done in nuclear/thermal plants) since water is such a good heat capacitor that the difference between warming a little and boiling is huge.

So, hopefully the laws of the universe are respected. But what you missed is the 2nd law of business: A good deal is when you reap the benefits of other's investments.

Energy source for vortex

[the_povinator]

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.

Energy from placement of trailer parks..

[DiGG3r]

The proper placement of tin can single and double wides should act as a catalyst for the formation of tornandos.