Cold Air/warm Water Conversion
In winter in coastal Arctic locations, seawater can be 40 °C (72 °F) warmer than ambient air temperature. Closed-cycle systems could exploit the air-water temperature difference. Eliminating seawater extraction pipes might make a system based on this concept less expensive than OTEC. This technology is due to H. Barjot, who suggested butane as cryogen, because of its boiling point of −0.5 °C (31.1 °F) and its non-solubility in water. Assuming a level of efficiency of realistic 4%, calculations show that the amount of energy generated with one cubic meter water at a temperature of 2 °C (36 °F) in a place with an air temperature of −22 °C (−8 °F) equals the amount of energy generated by letting this cubic meter water run through a hydroelectric plant of 4000 feet (1,200 m) height.
Barjot Polar Power Plants could be located on islands in the polar region or designed as swimming barges or platforms attached to the ice cap. The weather station Myggbuka at Greenlands east coast for example, which is only 2,100 km away from Glasgow, detects monthly mean temperatures below −15 °C (5 °F) during 6 winter months in the year.
Read more about this topic: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
Famous quotes containing the words cold, air, warm, water and/or conversion:
“Old age grows cold to love.”
—Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70–19 B.C.)
“It so happened that, a few weeks later, “Old Ernie” [Ernest Hemingway] himself was using my room in New York as a hide-out from literary columnists and reporters during one of his rare stopover visits between Africa and Key West. On such all-too-rare occasions he lends an air of virility to my dainty apartment which I miss sorely after he has gone and all the furniture has been repaired.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)