Perhaps the most ambitious and
world changing undertaking of the Celestopea Project, is the
creation of a grid of Ocean Thermal Energy Converters (OTEC's) to
power the world into the 21st century and beyond. OTEC's
take advantage of the perpetual difference between the temperature
at the surface of the tropical oceans and the cooler temperature
3,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface.
This temperature variation is
used to generate completely pollution free electricity from an
inexhaustible renewable source. In fact, each day the 23 million
square miles of tropical ocean absorb an amount of solar energy
equal in heat content to 250 billion barrels of oil.
By way of comparison, all the countries of the world together
consume about 50 million barrels of oil each day. If our worldwide
grid of OTEC's are only able to extract 1/10th of 1% of
the daily solar radiation, they will produce 20 times the daily
amount of electricity currently consumed by the United States.
Although it would seem that a
vast amount of energy would be required to pump large volumes of
water 4,000 vertical feet up from the ocean depths, surprisingly
that is not the case. Water is basically neutral buoyant, so the
OTEC pump merely needs to overcome the difference between the
density of the cold deep ocean water and the warmer surface water,
plus the friction of the pipe. Water pumped up from 4,000 feet
below would only require the energy needed to pump the same volume
of water up 24 feet on the surface. For all of its operational
needs, a 100 megawatt OTEC will consume 41 megawatts, leaving 59
megawatts available for other uses.
Hydrogen and Oxygen are additional fuel
byproducts of OTEC operation. As everyone knows, water is H2O or 2
parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. It's somewhat funny to think
that water is used to put out fires, yet the two elements it is
composed of - hydrogen and oxygen are both highly flammable. These
two elements can be separated from the liquid water by a process
know as electrolysis. Direct solar cell electricity can be used to
accomplish this. The resulting oxygen can be released into the
atmosphere to replenish the atmospheric oxygen content which has
diminished over the millenniums. The hydrogen can be used directly
as fuel for virtually everything gasoline or oil are currently used
for. Hydrogen is such a pollution free fuel that the mayor of
Chicago recently drank from the tailpipe of a hydrogen powered bus
to demonstrate the purity of its emissions. For additional
information on hydrogen as a fuel please hyperlink to
LINKS.
Inexhaustibly renewable,
pollution free energy is merely the beginning of the benefits of
Celestopean OTEC's. Tropical oceans are nearly devoid of life.
Because growing conditions are so ideal, the algae's which are the
base of the food chain, bloom in explosive growths that quickly
consume all nutrients. They then die and fall to the ocean depths
leaving the surface fairly empty of life. The cold, nitrogen and
nutrient-rich water pulled up from the ocean depths will seed a
bloom of new life in the tropical ocean deserts. The resulting micro
algae and phytoplankton growth will nourish a tremendous increase in
many types of fish and higher forms of marine life. The algae will
also be farmed both on the open sea and in large shallow containment
ponds. The combination of tropical sun, perfect water temperature
and nitrogen, nutrient laden water, will produce millions of tons of
high quality protein each year. As additional Celestopean cities and
OTEC's begin to be created in the worlds oceans, the protein
produced from our sea farms will make a significant dent in the
worldwide problem of hunger and malnutrition.
According to the United Nations
Food and Agricultural Organization, an adult person should receive a
minimum of 35 grams of protein every day. Each day, each 100
megawatt OTEC will pump up 6 billion gallons of deep ocean water
rich in nitrogen, the food of phytoplankton. A gallon of seawater
contains 1.7 to 1.8 milligrams of nitrogen. Phytoplankton, one of
the most highly efficient organisms, will convert 78-80% of the
nitrogen into protein. The nitrogen in the daily pumped water of a
single OTEC, will be converted by the phytoplankton into over
8 tons of protein each day, of which 65% will be high
quality protein. If this high quality protein were harvested and
manufactured into a pleasant consumable form, it would be enough to
feed almost 150,000 people each day.
The 40 degree deep ocean water
can be mixed with warm surface water in any proportion to produce
greenhouse and sea farm environments in temperature ranges between
45 - 90 degrees. This allows mini ecosystems to be created that can
grow virtually all fruits and vegetables from any continental
climate. In addition to tropical fish, the sea farms will also
raise many types of cold water fish and shellfish such as salmon,
lobster, abalone, trout, oysters and clams, that would normally not
survive in warm tropical waters.
OTEC's will also be used to
desalinate sea water, to produce completely pure drinking water.
OTEC's set up off the coast of Africa, Australia and the Middle East
can provide copious amounts of fresh water. Not only will this
allow deserts to blossom as roses, but it will also remove scarce
water supplies as a thorn of contention among nations. A 2
megawatt (net) OTEC will produce 4300 cubic meters of desalinated
water each day by condensing the spent steam created in the
electrical generation process on the cold sea water intake pipes.
Many minerals and chemicals can
also be derived as byproducts of OTEC operation from the 57 elements
dissolved in solution in seawater. Besides the fuels hydrogen,
oxygen and methanol, other byproducts include ammonia, salt,
chlorine and eventually gold, platinum and other rare and precious
elements. Past corporate analysis has always shown such ventures to
be unprofitable because of the cost of pumping the large volume of
water necessary to extract significant amounts of minerals. This
main stumbling block is overcome as the OTEC's will already be
pumping vast quantities of water for other purposes. The necessary
mining technology is leaping forward as well. The Japanese have
recently been experimenting with extraction of uranium from seawater
and found pending technology in material sciences is making mining
minerals from seawater feasible.
Based upon the current cost of
component parts and the operations of existing OTEC's at the
University of Hawaii, the cost of building a 100 megawatt OTEC in
1999 US dollars with existing technology, including apparatus for
hydrogen extraction, will range from $157 to $175 million dollars.
The costs should rapidly begin to fall as OTEC's begin to
proliferate around the world. It is such a viable and
environmentally friendly technology that we would expect many other
countries and companies to soon be employing and duplicating it.
The oceans are such a vast
storehouse of energy, food and minerals, they are inexhaustible when
utilized through OTEC technology. Nor will our small pumping
efforts, as enormous as they may seem to us, effect the current
ocean equilibrium. As long as the sun rises and sets each day , the
oceans are an eternally renewable resource when tapped through
OTEC's. The oceans contain about 300 million cubic miles of sea
water, of which 3/4's is nutrient rich at depths greater than 3000
feet. That's equal to 225,000 million cubic miles of water. About
1/10th of 1%, or 225,000 cubic miles of water is replaced
each year by new water down-welling from the ocean surfaces,
particularly the cold oceans near the poles.
Each 100 megawatt OTEC will
pull up 1.9 cubic miles of deep ocean water annually. 10,000 such
OTEC's would only consume 19,000 cubic miles of the energy and
nutrient potential of deep ocean water. That is still less than 10%
of the annual replacement supply, yet, it would be enough to produce
1,000,000 megawatts of electricity and meet the annual protein
requirements of 2 billion people!
For a more thorough explanation of the
history, operation and possibilities of OTEC's please follow the
link to
http://www.nrel.gov/otec/
