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:
““Warm in December, cold in June, you say?”
“I don’t suppose the water’s changed at all.
You and I know enough to know it’s warm
Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.
But all the fun’s in how you say a thing.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“With his mother gaunt and lean
In the valley warm and green,
Full of baby wonderment,
Blinking out of silly eyes
At a hundred mysteries;”
—Ralph Hodgson (c. 1871–1962)
“You cannot go into the same water twice.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)