Life and death of a planet in all reality is it just politics ?
If your worried about global warming this might help cool the planet down a
little and have may additional benefits  its a pity, disgrace, embarrassment this wont happen .........




"If there were a national commitment to the development of the process,
 the first prototype plant could be on station in six years, and that as
 a result of a properly executed step-by-step component and subsystem
development program."



Our oceans are huge 'batteries' that store solar heat. Researchers
are working on systems to convert that heat into electrical
energy. Best of all, scientists say there would be no pollution.


by Franklynn Peterson


     Many scientists concerned with our energy problems say atomic power is not
the long-term answer. They look instead to then ultimate source of energy in
our universe the sun. Though their proposals might have seemed visionary some
years ago, they are regarded seriously today seriously enough for the National
 Science Foundation to fund research studies.



    Several groups of scientists now propose that we exploit sun power by
tapping energy from the oceans. Oceanographers long have been fascinated by
the fact that, throughout our oceans, surface waters have a temperature of
about 80°F. while temperatures half a mile down hover close to the 40° F. mark.



   Engineers and physicists look at such differences of temperature as thermal energy
ripe  for conversion  to  more  convenient forms. That 40° difference represents the
same "storehouse" of potential energy as a 350-foot waterfall. Harness the heat
 differential in the Gulf Stream as it flows through the Florida Straits between
 Miami and the Bahamas, say scientists, and you could produce enough electricity
to equal the total now used in the United States.



   The sun's rays warm the ocean's surface to near 80°F. well beyond the tropics.
 And deep seawater flows in chilly currents from the poles toward the tropics.
There are, many places on the globe where warm surface water and cold depths
 occur within only a few miles of land because of a steeply sloping sea bottom.
 Many such places including some Caribbean islands, the west coasts of North and
 South America and both coasts of Africa—would be ideal sites for thermal
energy power stations.



  Over 40 years ago. Frenchman Georges Claude developed a workable system by
which he turned warm seawater into steam with a vacuum boiler system. Cold water
from the sea bottom condensed the steam. Claude's steam-driven turbine generated 22
kilowatts of electric power at Matanzas Bay in Cuba. But the success was short lived
a tropical storm destroyed the installation.



  Claude had toured the United States in the 1920s to demonstrate his system and
raise money for his venture. One student who sat entranced as Claude connected a
demonstration model to hot and cold water faucets was Donald Othmer, then a graduate
student at the University of Michigan. Along with others, he cheered when Claude's
apparatus produced  sufficient energy to make a light bulb glow.



  Dr. Othmer went on to become an innovative engineer in his own right. His name is
on over 100 patents, and he is now distinguished professor of chemistry at the
Polytechnic Institute of New York.



  During the 1960s, when the need for new energy sources became more apparent, Dr.
Othmer renewed his interest in the Claude process. When a business consortium with
interests in the Caribbean wanted to build a new power plant with desalinated seawater
as a by-product, Dr. Othmer drew up a plan for using thermal energy to power a
generator and distill water.



  The Othmer design survived a feasibility study and engineers on the project expected
to have a thermal power plant by 1973. But political changes on the island chosen for
the site led businessmen to pull out, killing the project. Since then, Dr. Othmer has
interested other investors in his thermal power plans, including a large Japanese
 electric generating equipment concern.



   The concept of using the ocean's thermal energy isn't easy to grasp. It's hard to
 believe  that  80°  water  can  create enough steam to spin a turbine. Keep in mind
 that water boils at 212° F. only at sea level where the pressure is about 15 pounds
 per square inch (p.s.i.). In a household pressure cooker, the steam is trapped inside
 a kettle to create pressures of about 40 p.s.i., which keeps the water from boiling
 until at least 250° is reached.



  Looking at the process from another angle, at the 0.36 p.s.i. vacuum inside a
 Claude Othmer apparatus, water boils at 70° F. The boiling water becomes steam,
the steam drives a turbine, and the turbine drives a generator.



  The huge plant conceived by Othmer would suck up about 200 million pounds of
warm surface seawater every hour. In the 0.36 p.s.i. vacuum, about 1 percent of
the water evaporates, resulting in 2 million pounds of steam. The steam passes
through a 35-foot-wide horizontal turbine and then enters the condenser portion
 of the power plant.



   By the time steam reaches the condenser unit, its temperature is about 52° F. Water
drawn up from 3200 feet beneath the Caribbean Sea is 43° F. and that chilly brine is
circulated through the aluminum-brass condenser in Othmer's plant to cool the steam
back into water, this time minus its salt content.



  Since the boiler and condenser are part of a closed system, the resulting vacuum is
tremendous, making the process nearly self sustaining. An external vacuum pump is
needed mainly for start-ups.



    Dr. Othmer estimates actual efficiency of his system about 2 percent of the potential
thermal energy available. A typical high pressure, high-temperature coal or oil-fired
steam-turbine system operates at substantially more efficient levels, but rising fuel
prices make the higher efficiency units less and less economical.



   "Another consideration is that coal and oil are no longer being made by nature"
says Dr. Othmer. "But the sun continues to warm the upper regions of the oceans, and
the polar caps send currents of very cold water through the depths. Therefore our
supply of thermal power would be continuously replenished."




    A different therma1 system is proposed by J. Hilbert Anderson. In contrast with
 Othmer's system a shoreline installation that Has to draw cool water from several
miles away at sea Anderson has designed a floating power plant.



   Anderson is an old hand at harnessing energy. As a chief engineer for the York Div
Borg-Warner Corp., he designed a line of centrifugal compressors. He became an
engineering consultant in 1963, and in 1969 designed the vapor turbine and other parts
of the Magmamax geothermal hot-water plant at Brady's Hot Springs, Nev. But for
12 years, Anderson and his son James Jr have been concentrating on their own system
 for the harnessing of the ocean's thermal energy.



   Like Prof. Othmer, Anderson encountered the work of Georges Claude before forming
his own concepts. The Andersons think the high vacuums required by the Claude Othmer
process pose a problem. Says Andersen Using such low-pressure steam requires too big
a turbine for the present state of the art.



  To get around that problem, the Andersons have incorporated a propane turbine in
their system. Warm ocean water heats liquid propane to 70° F., causing it to boil
and form propane vapor. Cold ocean water chills the propane to 50°.



   "The resulting system can operate at about 160 p.s.i.," explains Anderson. "Right
now the standard propane turbine systems are operating at 200 p.s.i. with a temperature
spread of 110° to 50° F. So it should be a relatively short step to scale up such a
system for our sea-thermal plant."



   The Andersons plan to float their football field-sized power plant over a source of cold
ocean water some 2000 feet down. Doing this, they save the expense of stringing a
long pipeline along a steeply sloping ocean floor. Interestingly, Georges Claude turned
to such a floating design after his Cuban powerplant was wrecked.



   In the Anderson plant, propane boilers would be located 290 feet beneath the sea,
and condensers 150 feet down. Different pressures at those levels would equalize
pressure within the propane system, resulting in greater operating efficiencies.



   The Andersons prefer their design and, not surprisingly, Dr. Othmer prefers his.
But the rivalry between them is friendly. After talking with the three sea-power
advocates. you come away with the impression they all hope both methods will win
substantial financial backing.



   Another expert in the field is Dr. Clarence Zener of Carnegie-Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. He heads a group of researchers who have been using computer models to pin
down materials requirements, construction costs and net energy production. Like Dr. Othmer,
 he favors Caribbean sites for the initial plants, primarily because this would avoid
 tampering with the Gulf Stream.



    Even though it is thought that thermal power plants would have little effect on the
heat load of the Gulf Stream, Dr. Zener warns there might be political fallout. The
 Gulf Stream is a key factor in the weather of western Europe. Massive thermal plants
off the Florida coast could well give rise to international problems.



    Dr. William E. Heronemus, professor of civil engineering at the University of
Massachusetts, feels certain that thermal plants would not produce "local, regional
or global weather modification or other adverse environmental impact."



  Dr. Heronemus heads a large group it includes the Andersons—that has produced
a detailed study focusing on a huge sea thermal plant. The study was funded by the
National Science Foundation.



  "Our research has concentrated on a grand-scale system to be installed afloat in
the Gulf Stream in a swath about 15 miles wide by 500 miles long," Dr. Heronemus
explains. The system would be made up of many individual plants, each with a net
 output of 400 megawatts. The working fluid in these plants would be propane, not water.



   A side benefit of schemes such as that of Dr. Othmer would be an extensive mariculture operation. When pumps tap the cold brine some two-thirds of a mile beneath the sea's surface, they draw up the nutrient rich water in which so many fish thrive.



 Instead of simply discharging this water after it's used for cooling—it could be fed
to fish in a huge array of mariculture tanks.



   An ongoing experiment on the Caribbean island of St. Croix has proven that mariculture
 is feasible and practical economically. On St. Croix, oysters, clams and scallops are
nurtured in cold water sucked up from the sea. They mature in an average time of
seven months, compared with three to four years under natural, uncontrolled conditions.



   How long would it take to get a sea thermal plant into operation? "All of the
technology  required  for the ocean thermal differences process is quite straight
forward and a usable baseline is close at hand," says Dr. Heronemus.




"If there were a national commitment to the development of the process,
 the first prototype plant could be on station in six years, and that as
 a result of a properly executed step-by-step component and subsystem
development program."




   We should get on with the program, stresses the Massachusetts scientist. In a
lecture to a college audience, he said:



"There is a compelling need for the United States to slow down its energy demand
growth rate, intelligently and deliberately, and to convert to solar energy processes
 as soon as they are economic. The conversion can and should start in the very near future."




 This country does have some major energy problem and to many of us they will perhaps soon
 bring displeasure and even hardship.



    "This country should not, however, permit these problems, which have been long
building, to panic us into shortsighted action such as expanded unregulated proliferation
of nuclear power plants, action whose long term consequence could be grave for our
progeny. This lecture is meant to be a message of hope, a plea for return to the energy
which nature has always intended us to use............solar energy."
                   


     POPULAR MECHANICS  OCT  1974

 
   ( One would tend to think that in over thirty years
     a few if any of the bug's would have been worked out)