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World's Largest Ocean Thermal Power Plant Planned For China
cylonlover writes "Lockheed Martin has been getting its feet wet in the renewable energy game for some time. In the 1970s it helped build the world's first successful floating Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) system that generated net power, and in 2009 it was awarded a contract to develop an OTEC pilot plant in Hawaii. That project has apparently been canceled but the company has now shifted its OTEC sights westward by teaming up with Hong Kong-based Reignwood Group to co-develop a 10 MW pilot plant that will be built off the coast of southern China."
Will be shot. Because the Chinese don't mess around with niceties.
it's off the coast. who's going to complain? pirates?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
not like we can build this off the coast of Nantucket
To the far east... kinda like making those three lefts...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is ridiculous, the length limit algorithm needs to be updated, these jackoffs are breaking it somehow, I shouldn't have to hold Page Down for 2 seconds to skip past one comment.
Maybe I missed it but the picture gives me a vague impression that waves have something to do with it but I didn't see them mentioned? I suppose the water movement wouldn't be much use though.
This system requires deep water. The deeper the better. Think over a mile deep.
It will likely be quite a distance off shore. And unlike a windmill, it doesn't have to be 300' high.
Because China has such a stellar environmental record.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
They'll find a way to make it out of lead or cadmium I'm sure.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Could OTEC help produce algae for biofuel?
AFAIK nutrients are a serious constraint on the large scale use of algae for biofuel. For pilot plants you can always dump in fertilizer, but on a large scale it might be different, due to the energy required to make that fertilizer and the fact that there is a limited supply of phosphates. Even sewage has its problems, as there is a limited supply (though some contribute much more than others) and it may be better used for agricultural fertilizer (humanure). However, deep ocean water often contains lots of nutrients because dead plankton tend to sink. That's why you get lots of phytoplankton (green water) in parts of the ocean where there are upwellings. Could the deep water that's brought to the surface for OTEC be used to fertilize algae grown for biofuel?
OTEC isn't a serious contender for green energy. It sounds good because it seems to combine romantic elements of green energy: limitless sea water, temperature gradients with huge thermal sinking ability, minimal environmental impact, etc. The truth of the matter is that OTEC has serious fundamental limitations, the worst of which is the fact that economically viable energy output requires enormous amounts of water flow - beyond what is capable with modern technology. Pulling an ultra-high flow water column from deep enough in the ocean to create a good thermal differential from surface water requires enormous pipes, which current materials technology can't deliver - because the tensile strength of even the strongest materials would buckle under the weight of the pipes themselves. Heat exchanges have to be very efficient, and sea life/creatures easily clog up the internals of the heat exchangers, so conformal coatings have to be developed to allow good thermal transfer while preventing the accumulation of bio. Finally, it just can't compete with simple proven solutions like hydro-electric. Look at any company that bids on OTEC and you'll see that the real funding vessels are in conformal coatings, materials technology, and pump technology, among other things. I don't forsee anyone building a viable OTEC plant for the purpose of commercial energy production anytime soon.
This system requires deep water. The deeper the better. Think over a mile deep.
Seawater at that depth is rich in nutrients. Ocean thermal plants could be combined with aquaculture to make them more cost effective. After the water is drawn up and warmed in the heat exchanger, it is released at the surface. The nutrients result in a plankton bloom that can be eaten by fish, shrimp, oysters, etc.
Damn China. Who the hell do those people think they are? A forward project that is not absolutely guaranteed to return a profit, although it may be a key to future energy production. They'll probably blithely say that although this approach might not work, try a few of them and there's a good shot at finding at least one winner. And that winner could be worth a fortune and be essential to our future. Damn China, it acts like mid-20th century America. Any good libertarian or fiscal conservative can tell you how badly this country turned out after they wasted all that government money.
I saw a documentary about using this as the basis for oases in ocean deserts; like a way to build up populations of larger sea creatures.They can also be driven by nothing but wave power.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Back before we became a bunch of short-sighted corporatists who laugh at anything that doesn't turn a profit in one quarter.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I sure that once all the fish are gone, they can also use this to suck up remaining plankton and jellyfish and sell it as Li'l Lisa's patented animal slurry.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well, it can't be any harder than building a working space elevator. At which point we can just beam solar power down. :/
If it works China will use the partnership to steal any useful technology, produce it themselves and out compete Lockheed. See partnerships with high speed train manufacturers and solar cell production.
Because China has such a stellar environmental record.
No, and I can give you a mile long list of serious complaints about the Chinese government, in terms of both their domestic and foreign affairs. But give the devil his due. At least they're trying something here. You know, kind of like the United States once had the guts to do?
because the tensile strength of even the strongest materials would buckle under the weight of the pipes themselves.
Couldn't this be handled by ballasting the pipes along their length to maintain neutral buoyancy?
But yeah, there's lots and lots of problems to solve with this.
I'm reminded of a show involving an aquatic zoo that mostly works off of piped in seawater - they have an enormous crew that's devoted to simply cleaning and maintaining the involved piping, because of the bio accumulation. One method they use is an iron 'pig' that they send through using high pressure to scrape off the collected masses inside the pipes. The forces involved are so much that the 'pigs' don't last long.
I don't read AC A human right
it just can't compete with simple proven solutions like hydro-electric
Unfortunately we have a limited supply of that, and much of it is already tapped.
I don't forsee anyone building a viable OTEC plant for the purpose of commercial energy production anytime soon.
Maybe not, but the only way to really find out, or to seriously improve your component technologies, is to build pilot plants like this.
That means that they are turning over all of the technology to China. Way to go L-Mart. Not a brain inside of that company.
A byproduct of the process (that at present technology levels produces very little net electricity) is fresh water. If Mr. AC Clarke is correct, look for these to become much more cost efficient in the not too near future.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You're talking point seems to involve a closed system. The open system uses the warm surface water directly. No expensive pipes and there has been some limited successful electrical creation. I think the plant in the plant in Hawaii broke the Japanese record for net electrical generation.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
An average nuclear reactor core (at least here in Canada) generates about 1000 MW
And the NPD reactor only produced 22MW. It's called a prototype. You generally make one before you start scaling something up.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You think someone just pulled a nuclear 1000MW nuclear reactor out of his ass? These are tricky but my no means impossible problems to overcome.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So if we extract the energy from the ocean, we would be cooling the ocean.
insert inflammatory comment here!
Deploy the Rainbow Bridge!
I wonder if plants couldn't be completely submerged to avoid bad weather.
I recall reading a great article about a test site where the cold water was circulated through pipes that cooled soil& irrigated plants via condensation from ambient moisture, making hot volcanic soils viable for many crops that would otherwise be unable to grow. Chilled soil agriculture Fresh water was also produced by air condensers. This tech is not all about electricity, it can directly and indirectly produce other outputs.
I've been wondering for a few years, if OTEC were implemented on a large scale (multiple GW), could this cause localized weather effects?
You'd probably need to implement large scale OTEC in some kind of gulf stream, so that the newly cooled surface water would be carried away and replaced by new warm water. So you'd have a surface plume of colder water maybe tens of km long and wide situated in the center of a large area of warmer water. Could this act as a seed for some kind of major weather event, such as hurricanes, cyclones etc?
Hey! The US is still great! We have over $800 billion a year in annual regulatory burden!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Nothing is really. Everything has consequences. We have to get away from this childish conception that some things don't (eg. the weirdness of calling nuclear "clean" despite the mining, enrichment and fuel rod manufacturing processess using some of the most toxic inorganic chemicals known).
Where on earth did you get that rubbish from? It's not a space elevator, it's in water, and there's solid ground under that water that can be used to support weight.
There's a pile of other things in the above post that are misleading or ignoring even 19th century steamship technology (algal growth on inlets etc).
That will be great - by sucking nutrients out of the deepest parts of the ocean, we'll ensure that humanity causes extinction events at every level of terrestrial life we possibly can!
> That sounds very dangerous, what if that instead causes a large algae growth?
Temporary large-scale algae growth (aka "Blooms") are a problem in small lakes/ponds/rivers. They are *NOT* a problem in oceans. Indeed, deliberate iron fertilization projects have been suggested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization as a means of reducing atmospheric CO2. Algae are plants, and part of the photosynthesis process converts CO2+H2O into sugars.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
10MW seems very small though. How many such power plants can you fit in 1 square km and still produce more than 9MW in power each?
Coal and nuke plants are in hundreds of megawatts or even gigawatts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)#megawatt_.28106_watts.29
I know it needs a much greater difference between "hot" and "cold" ends to generate electricity .. but it's VASTLY simpler (e.g., no moving parts at all)!
I remember (vaguely) reading about this, a prototype plant down on one of Cuba's coasts, built in the 30's (?) by an American professor. It was basically a bunch of scrap iron (old hot water radiators?), cold end hanging down in a nearby handy ocean trench, hot end in some pools of water bulldozed out on the coastline, was just a test but generated 10KW .. presumably forever! (Or until the iron rusted away.)
I think it was in an Analog Science Fact and Fiction article back in the 60's, but can't seem to find it. But it always struck me as a remarkably simple, foolproof way to generate electricity! You can find modules and devices available on the Internet, but with very small output, really only toys. And then these guys, http://tegpower.com/, at a somewhat larger (and expensive) scale.
Odd that you don't hear more about it though, except for the occasional plutonium-powered satellite power supply and that sort of thing.
.. and they have been tried - several times, on several scales - and IF they work at all, they are certainly not the rip-roaring runaway successes that they were talked up to be before the experiments were tried (by, it should be said, some of their more vocal proponents ; people with personal interests in promoting their runaway rip-roaring successes).
These blooms are a nice idea. Why they didn't work isn't clear (to me ; I'm a geologist and my biology starts with the organism's fossilisation), but there are obviously more complex and subtle things going on than the original proponents expected.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Fixed that for you
Of course, injecting some reality may sound like "pissing on the parade", but that doesn't stop it being reality.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
But, where are they going to find such a gradient off the Chinese coast? Without getting into a territorial fight with Indonesia, the Philippines, or Taiwan? (The Gulf of Bohai is far too shallow to consider.)
.
(note) Yes, this should be of concern to people living on coasts facing Hawaii. And here I am sitting on a boat above the Storegga Slide headwall, whose tsunami washed into my home city a few thousand years ago. But the tsunami never got within 10m vertically of my new house, and I assess the odds of a repetition as being around 1% in my lifetime, so I'm cool with these risks. "of concern" does not equal "blind panic".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Oh NOES!! :(
The Attack of the Gaint Shrimp!!!
Now that they finally fixed the Tower of Tokyo after teh last Godzilla attack. It's not fair
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Just injecting reality into your image of "organic debris in the sea = oil" ; you may have been joking, but I see so many nutcases in this line of work that it's hard to tell if someone really believes what they appear to be saying on that subject.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"