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Harnessing Slow Water Currents For Renewable Energy
Julie188 writes "Slow-moving ocean and river currents could be a new, reliable and affordable alternative energy source. A University of Michigan engineer, Michael Bernitsas, has made a machine that works like a fish to turn potentially destructive vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power. This is is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2.3 miles per hour). Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. Further details and a few brief movies of the technology are available, as well as a video explanation by Professor Bernitsas himself."
I wanna harness the slow water current of my leaky faucet to trickle-charge my laptop; can I do that? If that works, I'll move on to trying to harness my *other* leaky faucet.
I'm not a fluid mechanic, but I wonder what the effects would be of slowing down already slow moving river water. Increased silt deposits? More flooding upstream? Anyone with more knowledge about river flows care to comment?
AccountKiller
That's very interesting and promising that ocean areas can be tapped for energy, I hope that it's not environmentally destructive and that it doesn't provoke international conflict over who gets to use which ocean sectors.
They implemented a global underwater power grid in the SeaQuest television show (from the 90's). There's some interesting technology in that show. It's on Netflix/Roku for immediate viewing.
-m
Replacing petrofuels (and even their waste heat) with this alternative generator would help slow climate change from the eliminated petrofuel waste.
But there's a vast amount of energy already retained in the Earth's oceano-atmospheric system. Vast rivers of undersea currents now store truly huge amounts of energy newly accumulated since industry's byproducts started the Earth retaining more energy. Undersea currents have grown much twistier in their paths around the globe. When that energy cycles through the interconnected systems on its own rhythms, the energy is sometimes transmitted into other media than seawater, that is much more disturbed by it. This is what the El Nino / La Nina cycle is an instance of: energy from heavy sea currents periodically enters the much lighter air, pushing it around much more. That kind of cycle, in a myriad of other such interactions, contributes to larger and more frequent storms.
If we harvested some of that energy from these currents with these new devices, we would be reducing the energy in those currents. The currents would return to their previous less twisty tracks. They would have less energy to transmit to the atmosphere and other climate engines. It would take a very large scale deployment, over a substantial period of time. But the double benefit would be well worth it.
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make install -not war
This technology works the same way as Davinci's "aeolian harp", as immortalized in The Æolian Harp by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
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make install -not war
FTFA: "VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy"
There was a time when creating an acronym that made a real word was considered cute. Those were the days of the "ESPRIT" (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques) and "MUSIC" (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) algorithms.
All that is in the past. These days, acronyms should Google well. Google for VIVACE, MUSIC, or ESPRIT and you'll get page after page of irrelevant sites. Scientists should try to name their projects with unique names, names that will let interested people search the web and *find* their projects.
- for example, groins have been constructed on parts of the Thames to slow the water near the banks, encouraging scour of the main shipping channel
Has there been any ship collisions with those. If so was there a headline like this?
Ship hits Thames in groin.
This device targets ocean currents, not rivers. Ocean currents already have too much energy (by historical comparison), accumulated in twistier undersea currents from the decades and centuries of escalating Greenhouse effects.
River current power is what is captured by hydroelectric dams. Which have their own problems, but we're already stuck with them. More ocean hydroelectric could allow us to release some dams that have too high a cost (environmentally or operationally) to justify their power output. Though application of these generators in rivers might just be a low-impact replacement for dams. However, the dams also deliver irrigation and drinking water, so we're probably stuck with them for the long haul.
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make install -not war
Less flow, less oxygen and less other nutrients (and therefore less life) in the water seem like obvious side-effects.
start by putting bell canada on a raft
then shove there bloated
ideology out to see
should see quite a vibration then
I believe the Aquanator came first.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Why not put these things in the city sewage pipes and harness the power of the flush
Burning oils found in the earth - Yeah I can understand how that'd be bad for the environment
Stealing raw energy from water or air - Couldn't this be even worse for the environment?
Just because it's 'clean' and doesn't create any byproduct doesn't mean the earth is gonna be O.K. with it? Even solar energy, as long as the panels to collect are on earth, are disrupting the natural state of things (better then asphalt though)
Solar panels in space, is the only 'clean' energy that would have no effect besides maybe blocking the view of Sol from far away systems.
$.02
*DrugCheese rants*
Haven't we done enough damage without slowing down the earth's oceans?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'd wondered before if something like the windbelt (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/11/2257228) would work in a small stream or river. You would have the same constant flow over the belt, and I'd guess it would create the same oscillations (though probably not as much). I'm not an engineer, just curious.
I'm on the edge of a good wind zone, so investing in a classic wind generator for my yard would not have a good roi, but something like this would be wonderful, especially since the shapes sound like they might be aesthetically pleasing and perhaps the entire device would be quieter...
I want one in my yard!
Self rectifying water turbine, always turns the same way even if the water flow reverses
http://www.cetusenergy.com.au/action.php
and if you really want fishy like motion then
http://www.biopowersystems.com/biostream.php
The thing is enormous - 50 feet high, generating 300 hp. Full size proto is under construction.
http://images.google.com/images?q=water+mill&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title
Why doesn't anyone use water wheels anymore? They work on gravity alone, not water speed, right? (At least the "water goes into a bucket on the wheel from the top of the wheel" type.)
Are/were they just too inefficient?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
Is there some way Google is going to find that when someone wants to learn about "The"?
Yes: a much better page analysis engine, which could understand a little bit of language structure(*), just enough to be able do detect from the context when "the" is just this very frenquently occuring english word (and doesn't need to be taken into consideration), and when the structure of other words around it tend to say that it is a different word which is important (an acronym).
Note that currently Google is able to somewhat do this already. Type in "who" and you get relevant answers (Wolrd Health Organisation, Dr. Who, the Who, etc.) None of the first answers give "Who" as in the standard english question.
But it doesn't work with "the" :
Google is somewhat able to suggest that I might search for the french "the" (tea), but most of the results are just occurrences of "the" determiner. A couple of them are fixed occurence of it in titles as in the journal "The Lancet", suggesting that Google is somewhat able to realise that there the word has a special meaning (part of a title, should be taken into account).
But google doesn't return anything called "The"
(Some random attempts of mine made me discover that there is for example THE.NET : Texas Higher Education Network)
The very important side-effect of this, is that the same "detect relevance of keyword in a page based on context" would be a perfect additional tool to filter out keyword stuffing as in link farms (it's just a long string of keyword like "big breast lesbian pussy hardcore gay interracial viagra cialis rolex replicat ...") as those don't have context at all as they aren't meaningful sentences.
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(*) : As in "does some pattern recognition like hidden markov model", not as in "is able to understand english in a semantic web".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All of us known that these is a convert of one form into other. Not thing really get generated!
When you wast energy by let the appliance do nothing, you slow down the current, the wind, and harm the environment!
Please stop those stupid thinking! Please do not practice wastful life and yall to protect the environment.
The Green Movement have been the big harm to the world, especially when people start to act to change the environment in the name of protection!
We should not feel guilty by wanting a better life, but we should be careful to use as little as possible. We should not fear about environment change, because what best is to adapt. It is consider harmful when you know a very little but act very bold. That is what we are doing to protect our environment. TO ADAPT to environment change, do not COUNTER change.
Please, stop those words that want to kill us all!