I caught up again with Dr Peter Ellyard today for another enlightening and invigorating chat about where the world is heading. Every time Peter and I catch up it’s like sticking my fingers in a power socket. I come out of the time with him feeling inspired.
Today we talk about:
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Is it just me or is there jumpy bits at around the 12min mark? It seems to speed up. Oh, was this an energy saving device?
Molly
Love Pete’s Bill Lawry impersonation at about the 20:20 minute mark. Very accurate!
Okay, on a serious point, if we take power out of the ocean currents, wouldn’t that have climate change effects? (question not commment) If my listening to DR Karl to get energy from something, you have to take it from somewhere else and don’t the ocean currents control the weather?
JMTC
Molly
Yeah indeed, the audio seems to be corrupted for a few seconds between the 12min and 12:30min mark. Sorry about that. I just checked and its on the original recording as well. No idea how that happened.
it happened a couple of times during the recording. Really, really weird!
Yea ok the audio is wonky and you are the crazy guy but…
Isn’t this just extraordinary. Peter should be out there telling this to the great unwashed masses (sorry silly me, they’re watching Big Brother) and then if more can grasp this stuff we wouldn’t get caught up in the BS and then move onto the more important stuff. Like I said after Ep1 just awesome stuff and the best of what you have done. More Please More
I have the same question as Molly – what are the effects of the energy systems envisioned by Dr. Ellyard?
My experience and education tells me that there are no free lunches when it comes to energy. If we invest in ways to harvest ocean currents, build a lot more wind turbines, and take advantage of the rather small temperature differences between the ocean surface and the deep ocean isothermal layer, what are the long term effects?
I happen to know a bit about Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Back in my days fresh off a nuclear submarine, I was stationed at the US Naval Academy and did some independent research as a side hobby. (My job as a Company Officer was not very taxing after being an Engineer Officer; I needed some academic challenges.)
My chosen advisor was Dr. Chih “Bob” Wu, one of the guys that literally wrote the book on OTEC – Renewable Energy from the Ocean: A Guide to OTEC. I spent a lot of time with Dr. Wu and learned a lot about the concept.
Here are some of the factors that one needs to consider:
The thermal efficiency is limited by Carnot heat engine efficiency to about 5-7%.
The low thermal efficiency implies very large diameter piping systems to move a large quantity of working fluid.
Using ocean surface temperature as the high temperature in a heat engine cycle requires a working fluid with a low boiling point. I think the proposed fluid at the time was ammonia.
The systems can only be built in places were there is a water depth of more than 1000 feet and a very warm, year round surface temperature near a population center. Bob had only found a few places in the world that qualified.
As we got to know each other better and continued to work on alternative energy systems, I ended up convincing Dr. Wu to write a couple of papers with me on the topic of closed cycle nuclear gas turbines. He thought we really had something, but there was not a single program in the US at the time (1990-1993) that accepted any nuclear proposals for alternative funding research. Like all researchers, Bob needed those grants to keep his work going, so after I moved on, I do not think he spent much time with nuclear focused research.
I would love to have a chat or two with Dr. Ellyard. I think his enthusiasm is fascinating and his general philosophy admirable. His engineering knowledge, however, is a work in progress.
If ocean temperature differences were used to drive underwater turbines, does that actually remove energy?
Even if these technologies are not yet practical, I would like to see some serious efforts put in to close the gaps and learn more about what we might be able to do.
The first light bulbs didn’t seem all that practical either.