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, cold, air, warm, water and/or conversion:
“Each dawn is clear
Cold air bites the throat.
Thick frost on the pine bough
Leaps from the tree
snapped by the diesel”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
To say as I said then!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects.... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that [my children] should be bred up in it too.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“Here is no water but only rock”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)