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Chinese Developer To Build Ocean-Water Thermal Energy System
the_newsbeagle writes "When you've got a wacky high-tech idea that will cost a lot of money, head to China. Lockheed Martin is the latest company to heed this advice. For decades, Lockheed has investigated ocean thermal energy conversion, in which the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water is leveraged to produce power. Just a few years ago, the company was working with the Navy and discussing a possible OTEC pilot project in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. That idea has since been scrapped, and Lockheed is now partnering with a Chinese resort developer to build the 10-MW pilot plant off the coast of southern China. Lockheed hasn't disclosed the cost of building this plant, but outside experts say it might cost more than $300 million."
The most commonly used heat cycle for OTEC is the Rankine cycle using a low-pressure turbine. Systems may be either closed-cycle or open-cycle.
-- wikipedia
considering the parties involved, it's obvious this is going to be a completely closed-cycle system. i'll wait until someone make and open-cycle version for Linux.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The one in Okinawa Japan was on TV the other day generating 12 KW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion#Japan
We have no idea what this is going to do to the local ecology,
Yes we do. Natural ocean currents produce millions of cubic miles of upwelling every year. This is utterly insignificant by comparison. There would be far more adverse effect on the environment if they didn't do this, because China would otherwise burn coal to generate power. Deep ocean water is very rich in nutrients, so after the heat is exchanged, the warmed deep water can be dispersed on the surface to improve fishing yields.
If someone could supply cold ocean water in large quantities at the surface, it could significantly cut the cost of air conditioning for large hotels and office buildings.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We have no idea what this is going to do to the local ecology,
Yes we do. Natural ocean currents produce millions of cubic miles of upwelling every year. This is utterly insignificant by comparison.
With megawatts continuous power to generate out of a small temperature difference you need to work through a comparably large amount of water. Your assumption of negligibility is no substitute for having seen and verified that it is indeed negligible. Very few things are in the long term, and the effects of these things will be there in medium to long term, especially if it is deemed a "success" (probably ignoring ecological side effects as China is wont to do) and more of these things get built. Simply going ahead and assuming some more is not good enough.
There would be far more adverse effect on the environment if they didn't do this, because China would otherwise burn coal to generate power.
They'll keep on doing that anyway. You didn't think their power consumption is going to go down, did you? More power available means more power consumed.
Deep ocean water is very rich in nutrients, so after the heat is exchanged, the warmed deep water can be dispersed on the surface to improve fishing yields.
Fishing yields? Overconfident much? Nature isn't in the habit of obliging our wishful thinking.
What is more likely going to happen first is an explosion of algae or whichever other small stuff, in quantities enough to kill the fishes instead.
Raise your hand if you think that equalizing the surface and deep ocean temperatures is a good thing to do for this planet?
What's so amazing is that they're equalizing the temperature of the entire 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of ocean water, and only generating 10MW from it! I guess it takes most of the power output of this heat pump to destroy the planet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I visited the energy park on the west side of the big island of Hawaii eight years ago or so. It's quite an interesting place. They have large ~3 foot plastic pipes going down deep into the ocean. They pull up cool water from various depths. They have tenants at the facility trying to make use of that cool water. I remember a solar power plant, and an algae bio-fuel facility (I guess algae likes that kind of water). They also had a company that took the cold salt water, pulled the salt out, and bottled it for very expensive drinking water (it's supposed to be very pure).
Here are the two problems with the demonstration OTEC plant they had decommissioned that I remember the docent telling me about:
1. The salt water just eats everything.
2. The low temperature difference between the deep water and the surface means that you have to build a BIG machine to get net energy out.
I wish them luck. This is not a slam dunk.
Won't someone *please* think of the sea kittens?!
OMG - it's not just the windmills but the trees, mountains, and every fucking building on the planet that does this, so are we all doomed?
Now you cannot possibly be so stupid as to not have picked this up so what is you motivation in writing such bullshit to trick the gullible? Is it a prank or do you just feel like you want to trick kids as a bit of propaganda to help out the oil industry? As someone in the oil and coal industries I can say that we're doing quite well without your "help", so kindly fuck off because you are making us all look bad.
The wind turbine syndrome shit is all a transparent con by some idiots that are annoyed at windmills ruining their view. The instant cure for wind turbine syndrome appears to be getting some sort of financial benefit from windmills.
And you know, when there was only 1 automobile in california, there was no problem with air pollution.
And the whole plastic sea thing in the pacific didn't even really become noticeable until 20 years after we had plastic.
12kw today, 120kw a few years from now, 1200mw in 20 years...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Sadly there's dozens that think they are a renaissance man based on nothing to gut feeling to one that has gone out and got shit done and then understood what has actually happened when they did it. At least electronic ignition has ended the seemingly endless stream of people that tuned an engine to run well at idle and came to the conclusion that they had made an amazing discovery and uncovered a huge conspiracy involving every engineer on the planet. They jumped to that conclusion before understanding that it makes more sense to tune the engine to run best under load if that's what it's going to be doing most of the time it's running.
Anyway, looks like the above poster missed the carefully placed "experience" on the end of "It's the Tom Clancy idea where experts are born by magic instead of becoming so via education, training or experience." If you've seen or done a lot, or even read a lot (that's still education by the dictionary), that's very different to wild guesses from people completely out of their depth which is what I'm going on about. A smart person with broad knowledge hasn't got it in an instant, they've got it via doing stuff, reading about it, seeing it, being told about it or applying what they know to something related.
Damm, where are my mod points. The reason the ocean around the Galloglass islands is so rich in sea life is because of one such upwelling. The power in those upwelling's is several orders of magnitude higher than our global energy needs and natural fish stocks are very high where they occur naturally. The waters around natural upwelling's is so productive they could be used to map the global southern ocean fishing fleet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Raise your hand if you think that equalizing the surface and deep ocean temperatures is a good thing to do for this planet?
Now use that hand to pull your head out of your arse. It's anti-science cocksuckers like you that infested Greenpeace and gave environmentalism a bad reputation, fuck off and join the religious nutters, you'll fit right in.
Why, you're right! That's horrible! We must undertake a massive engineering project right now to shut down all convection in the oceans! I never knew what a danger the gulf stream was until you pointed it out.
Seriously, call your travel agent and see if they can get you onto the same continent as a clue.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
$300 million is about what the USA spends per day in Iraq/Afghanistan.
In a week that's over a billion dollars.
Imagine if that money had been spent on something productive instead, like energy research.
No sig today...
"Also a modern jet fighter is a testimony to mankind's ingenuity, not his wisdom."
Yes, including because the same technologies (including the surrounding bureaucracy) if organized differently could likely relieve the resource-related conflict that the jet fighter was invented to solve in other ways. Thus my sig and essay on the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity. Or, as Isaac Asimov had one politician character (Salvor Hardin) say in "Foundation" series, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Or Einstein's point on the need to change our way of thinking to adapt to the change from high technology (unleashing the atom especially, but it applies generally). Or Bucky Fuller's words about how whether it will be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end.
The fact that the US missions to the moon started by President Kennedy were, as you say, funded mainly to prove a military point about ICBMs by the US is sadly a big part of why significant further work on space settlement never happened...
From: http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/john-kennedy-james-webb-robert-seamans-hugh-dryden-jerome-wiesner-fly-me-moon
"President Kennedy: So obviously you wouldn't put it on that priority except for the defense implication..."
Although I guess one could argue some clever engineers took advantage of the military-oriented political dynamic to do something more worthwhile for humanity? While playing catch-up to the Russians who stated explicitely they wanted to build space settlements?
Still, as US$30 a watt, OTEC is going to have trouble competing with less than US$1 a watt solar panels (and falling). Sounds like OTEC's big economic benefit may be improving fishing harvests.
I was under 10 when the moon landings happened, so maybe just a little too young to understand the significance of the initial landing. Somehow, I can't say that affected me as much as seeing sci-fi movies like "Silent Running" though, or various other TV programs (Space 1999, Thunderbirds, Star Trek) even though some of those were no doubt inspired by the spirit of the times. James P. Hogan's scifi novels set in space habitats or huge space ships were a huge inspiration as well (like voyage from yesteryear, two faces of tomorrow).
These days, as the USA descends into what seems to be self-destructive madness as it becomes an obese unhealthy unequal fearful addicted surveillance state, putting cameras in living rooms instead of on the Moon, profiling potential troublemakers to imprison them instead of help them be contributing engineers or whatever, and letting its physical, moral, health, and political infrastructure decay for ideological neoconservative/neoliberal reasons, these days it's kind of hard to remember there was a time that both young kids and politicians in USA seriously aspired to walk on other planets whatever the political justification... It's even hard to remember there was a time when half of Congress passed something like a "basic income" law under Nixon (passed the House, but failed in the Senate in part because some thought it not big enough), or even just that we aspired politically to have bridges and water mains and roads everywhere that were in good shape.
More on China vs. the USA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=0
"Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today."
Still, to be optimistic, the world is waking up globally, including via the internet, and it is overall becoming wealthier and healthier (see Hans Rosling), so the future is still in play even as the USA be
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
While I'm not sure how much energy is represented by the ocean temperature differentials in question (As efficient per square meter as a solar panel?), I'm pretty sure maintenance costs will be prohibitive. The ocean is famous for chewing up what we throw at it. Anything made of metal is probably a significant maintenance cost. Not sure it's possible to do a cement structure of sufficient size, in mid ocean, in deep water.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
OTEC is yrt another technology that Greens lauded and promoted until the instant some contemplates actually building it. Note the venom with which they are greeting this tiny pilot project. THIS, not labor or official regulation, is why anything edgy and cool has to be built in China
It will be utterly insignificant just like increasing CO2 concentration in atmosphere from 0.00034 to 0.00040.
Wrong. If "h" is heat, then this is increasing h. But adding CO2 is increasing the derivative of h, or dh/dt.
Why is this modded down? Chauvinistic Americans don't like hearing the truth that their country is heading down by many important markers?
Is the USA a beacon of freedom, a model for other Nations? Not so much. It spies on its own citizens, does border searches 100 miles from the nearest border, and has incarcerated a larger percentage of its population than any other country on the earth.
Is the USA the economic engine of the world. Yes, it still is, but if it keeps feeding wall street at the expense of main street it'll just be investing in investing. Short term investment is not improving the long term prospects of the USA economy.
Is the "American Dream" alive? Economic mobility in the USA is one half of that in Canada, and one third of Denmark's. Pro-business laws, virtually no real labour protection laws, and a flimsy social safety net all contribute to the USA now not being the best country to get ahead in.
You get the idea. Other countries are catching up. If the USA wants to be a model for other countries it is going to have to reform itself - something that is hard to when it's political suicide to even suggest that the USA is any other than "exceptional".
Anarchists never rule