Mini-Tornadoes For Generating Electricity 135
cylonlover writes "Tornadoes generally evoke the destructive force of nature at its most awesome. However, what if all that power could be harnessed to produce cheaper and more efficient electricity? This is just what Canadian engineer Louis Michaud proposes to achieve, with an invention dubbed the 'Atmospheric Vortex Engine' (or AVE). It works by introducing warm air into a circular station, whereupon the difference in temperature between this heated air and the atmosphere above creates a vortex – or controlled tornado, which in turn drives multiple wind turbines in order to create electricity. The vortex could be shut down by simply turning off the source of warm air. Michaud's company, AVEtec Energy Corporation, reports that the system produces no carbon emissions, nor requires energy storage to function, and that further to this, the cost of energy generated could potentially be as low as US$0.03 per kilowatt hour."
Warm Air. (Score:3, Interesting)
And where does the power from heating the air come from?
Re:Warm Air. (Score:5, Insightful)
Geo-thermal vents spring to mind, amongst other things, such as using this technique along with the exhaust from a nuclear reactor to increase its power output.
Re:Warm Air. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, let's create controlled tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of nuclear reactors.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Re:Warm Air. (Score:5, Insightful)
What could possibly get wrong when an puny, artificial tornado that will dissipate as soon as it is removed from its source is created in proximity to a reactor sheltered within a dome strong enough to withstand even the strongest natural tornadoes? I'm thinking absolutely nothing.
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if it runs on hot air on a hot day it could once started possible run off of ambient heat then destroy the nuclear plant
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if it runs on hot air on a hot day it could once started possible run off of ambient heat then destroy the nuclear plant
Hot air on a hot day alone is likely not sufficient to produce even a F3 strength tornado; let alone a F5+ supertornado/superburst capable of damaging the plant
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having said that, dust devils (as mentioned in TFA) are probably entirely different to tornadoes, so i'm not sure where this idea that an AVE could produce a tornado came from, but this is slashdot
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so i'm not sure where this idea that an AVE could produce a tornado came from, but this is slashdot
Yeahp.... ambient hot air would likely shut it down, as the differential no longer exist.... and people accuse Microsoft of creating FUD :)
if strong Tornados had such simple requirements to form on their own; there'd be a heck of a lot more natural tornados ravaging the lands.
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Re: Warm Air. (Score:1)
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often is the case with many man-made (and even some natural) disasters that those with the power to prevent such event are warned by those with knowhow (such as engineers) and are routinely ignored in the name of profit margins, bureacracy or politics.... as much a problem today as it was in
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Actually, the engineers knew that that the multiple watertight sections in the Titanic should make it extremely resistant to sinking. The marketing people went around making claims like "unsinkable". Statements like "God himself could not sink this ship" seem to come exclusively from the movie _Titanic_. The engineers also knew that the Titanic didn't have a double hull and that the watertight sections weren't as watertight as they could be since they didn't run all the way to the top like in the original p
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If you read the press releases from when they started building nukes they promised that electricity would be so cheap they might just get rid of meters. That hasn't quite worked out. Turns out they were right about nukes being cleaner than coal, but try to tell that to people who live near Fukushima.
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that risk was probably found favorable by most living nearby compared to living next to a coal-fired plant chugging out dust and pollutants (which would also likely cause significant environmental damage if hit by a tidal wave), not to mention cheaper electricity (money talks after all).
anti-nuclear (same as greenies) are a hypocritical bunch... happy to bad-m
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your statements are too generic to have any credibility.
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Yes, let's create controlled tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of nuclear reactors. What could possibly go wrong?
When the reactor explodes, you simply use the controlled tornado to carry all the stuff away!
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I'm sure I've seen that somewhere before...
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=tornado+reactor+movie&l=1 [lmgtfy.com]
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Yes, let's create controlled tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of nuclear reactors. What could possibly go wrong?
this: http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0281617/ [imdb.com]
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Controlled nuclear reactions in the immediate vicinity of nuclear reactors. What could possibly go wrong? (A lot)
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Sure... but the original argument of $0.03 / kwH. Is very similar to the idea of having a perpetual motion machine, or "harnessing free energy from the vacuum"; with a new label stamped on it.
The use of geothermal heat makes sense, in which case it's just Geothermal power, or "Power produced by tapping exhaust heat" which requires more energy than suggested, and there are already other Geothermal power production methods.... so this is of benefit, only if more efficient, or it can harness exhaust he
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Data Centers! Nothing like reclaiming energy from all those computers.
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I believe the idea is to use industrial waste heat.
This is less efficient than cogeneration, and almost certainly less efficient than preheating, but better than just dumping the heat to the environment since that is 0% efficient.
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But we already do that in the ocean [wikipedia.org] and it does work (even if it isn't that impressive).
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There is an enormous temperature differential, as well as pressure differential, between sea level air and high level atmospheric air. I've often thought that fact could be used to make a very efficient and cheap source of power. The same temperature differential exists in the oceans. Very cold deep, and warmer near the surface. Unlimited free energy if you can harness it.
Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
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Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
Just some ideas: you wouldn't need to catch the rays in anything special (cells or mirrors) because the already existing landscape does it for you, and a simple big tube might be pretty cheap in comparison.
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Congress?
Re: Congress, obviously! (Score:2)
And where does the power from heating the air come from?
Congress! Where else? Studies have shown that multiple tornadoes worth of hot air can at times be generated by even a single congressperson, it's just a matter of finding the right one. Yeah, I lost the link to those studies, but hey, you know it's true.
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I would hope they could use solar power. Otherwise, the energy used to create hot steam would be better off just driving a steam turbine, or just being fed directly into the grid if it electricity.
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Thank You.
I thought this sounded familiar to an Australian idea being floated around a few years back.
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The solar tower could work.
But it isn't a tornado: at best, it's a permanent dust devils.
Tornados are inherently driven by DC electric, viz. an amp or two through a potential of several million volts. The circuit consists of rain laying down charge, the tornado picking it up and returning it to the cloud.
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Tornados are inherently driven by DC electric, viz. an amp or two through a potential of several million volts. The circuit consists of rain laying down charge, the tornado picking it up and returning it to the cloud.
...
...
WHAT???
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Let me google that for you. (Score:2)
FWIW, it also has appeared in Physics 101 texts that tornados have DC currents.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=electric+current+inside+a+tornado [lmgtfy.com]
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This kind of thinking is why people England had to set up Australia as a penal colony. Oh, Mick, you know you shouldn't make things up. We told yer and we told yer. Now say toodles to yer mum, and onto the freighter wit yer. Time fer a new life where yer can't hurt nobody no more.
Hot air (Score:2)
It's over. Long over. Get over it. Sheesh.
Should I still be bitching about England's tea taxes? Hardly. I likes me a nice, smart English wench just fine. They have manners, and they still know how to wear suspenders and a dress without becoming all confused about who they are, unlike most American fems these days.
Anyway, you wanna indulge in angst, there are all kinds of contemporary reasons that actually call for it as they remain unresolved. Australia as a penal colony and England's goal of empire... isn'
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Just like this solar tower.
This turns into a circular argument pretty quickly. If you use a solar tower in Arizona for the hot air where do you get the COLD air?
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From the edges of the green house at the bottom.
It is shaped like an inverted cone. Their air does not need to be cold, only cooler than the air at the top which was heated to make it rise.
The bigger the delta the better, but it does not mean you can't use normal outside temperatures.
No Carbon Emissions? (Score:2)
So the generator has no carbon emissions, but without heat it doesn't work.
So where do they get the heat, and how much better is it to use the heat for this instead of any of the dozen other electrical generation methods? /off to RTFA.
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Ah.
The heat required to get the mini-tornado started would be provided by a temporary heat source, such as a heater, or steam. However, AVEtec states that once the vortex is thus established, the continuous heat could then be provided by a more sustainable source – such as waste industrial heat or warm seawater.
Seems a little hand-wavey, and I'd still like to see how "potential" this 3 cents per kilowatt hour prediction is.
But the idea of parking one over a geothermal vent or floating them on the ocea
Re:No Carbon Emissions? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need a geothermal vent. A large number of mirrors and a receiver filled with molten salts is itself already a proven technology. Concentrated solar thermal chimneys are actually part of the basis of this design, and they've been generating megawatts for decades in sunnier parts of the world.
We should have been using this technology already, but skewed money comparisons that ignore pollution and military expenditures make oil *seem* cheaper than these, which it really isn't overall.
http://www.csp-world.com/tags/khi-solar-one [csp-world.com]
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How do military expenditures make oil seem cheaper. Last I checked, Republicans in Congress was rebuking the Navy for their investments in alternative energy sources. Turns out the Navy is big on those since it means they wouldn't have to rely on oil. So far, the Navy has been able to tell Congressional Republicans to shove it up their stove pipes.
Re:No Carbon Emissions? (Score:4, Informative)
Because you pay for the cost of keeping oil supply under control not at the gas pump, but through taxes, yet you pay for it all the same, because other energy supplies would not oblige the military to defend the interests of oil companies.
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because other energy supplies would not oblige the military to defend the interests of oil companies.
And what would we blame that spending on next? US military spending exists at the level it's at due to wildly successful, political rent seeking, not handouts to petroleum-based industries.
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Three cents (Score:2)
Three cents for a kilowatt hour, and that's *without* externalized costs like oil spills, oil wars, blown up mountains, and polluted air and water. You could even use concentrated solar thermal heat to drive this thing.
Anyone who says renewables aren't ready isn't paying attention.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
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No.
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Dude. It's the End Of The World Today.
Let's be excellent to each other just today :)
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Ted? Ted, is that you? Bill?
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Even if I doubt global warming, I was always thinking, that the hotter it is, the more energy we have, the more power to us (skpping the floods of some coastal regions). I wasn't however sure how to exploit this energy. Well, perhaps AVE is the answer...
Coastal flooding is the least of our problems if global warming gets out of control.
The real kick in the balls would be changing weather patterns fucking over our agricultural industry.
Floods will displace people, but if the breadbasket dries out, everyone goes hungry, including the displaced.
I guess you could use AVE to desalinate water and irrigate the entire country, but that would be the kind of infrastructure project beyond the means of private industry and our current political environment would not b
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Coastal flooding is the least of our problems if global warming gets out of control.
The real kick in the balls would be changing weather patterns fucking over our agricultural industry.
Worst US drought in decades deepens to cover 60 percent of lower 48 states [nbcnews.com]
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How hot it is matters not one bit, the limit to how much energy you can extract is the temperature difference. Your doubt of global warming seems likely cause by a lack of basic scientific understanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot's_theorem_(thermodynamics) [wikipedia.org]
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Apparently, Polish schools are as bad as US schools at teaching thermodynamic principles (though I would hope not).
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Either way it would reduce reliance on fossil fuel. If you have a coal burning power plant making X megawatts and you can get another Y megawatts for "free" that means either less peaking plants need to be run or X can be reduced by some amount by burning less fuel.
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Either way it would reduce reliance on fossil fuel.
I'm all for reducing emissions but I find it difficult in the extreme to believe a modified exhaust pipe can extract significant amounts of electricity from the heat that leaks out of a coal plant. Coal plants are already designed to use the heat as efficiently as possible. The laws of thermodynamics say that nature will never allow you to use 100% of that heat, the laws of economics say it probably not worth the capital expenditure to suck any of the residual energy from the exhaust pipe. There's nothing n
Wait... I've seen this episode... (Score:1)
Energy from nothing... (Score:4, Funny)
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"Money can't buy love, but it sure can buy you a yacht to pull up next to it" ...I think that was a Van Halen member, not sure. :)
All I wanna know is (Score:2)
This is an old idea ... (Score:5, Informative)
Google "Tornado Turbine" and look for the January 1977 issue of Popular Science. This idea has been around for a long, long time. Back then, the idea was to take advantage of solar heating of the tower to drive the vortex. I've seen similar ideas that were supposed to take advantage of natural pressure / temperature differentials along cliffs and mountains, etc. None have ever been made to work in any practical way.
When someone fails to check the prior art and starts trumpeting about his or her re-invention of the wheel, then you can just about discount the claims from the start. Why should anyone trust the opinion of an engineer who can't even be bothered to do any background research?
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Everything in its path would not be fried at all with those plans that use microwaves to transmit power from space. The amount of energy per square meter is held low enough to ensure that. Then a very large(in area coverd) antenna grid is used to relieve this. Are you afraid of being burned to death by your cell phone?
THE MORE YOU KNOW .::::'*
Sometimes old ideas suddenly become practical. (Score:2)
an old idea from decades ago when all manner of weird and quirky ideas was bandied about from solar panels in orbit many miles square beaming microwave energy back to a receiver on earth (except any living thing in its path would be fried!),
Except that:
- Things wouldn't be fried, microwave-oven style, because microwave oven makers picked a frequency that is strongly absorbed by water (to heat food) while space-solar people picked on that passes through water very well (to not waste power heating clo
Link (Score:5, Informative)
Wind (Score:2)
Whats next? Bremsstrahlung? (Score:1)
Next we will be ionizing the air and letting it pass between some plates to generate electricity directly. (no moving parts)
Use the generated power to heat the air (Score:1)
Brilliant !
Low quality Heat Sources (Score:2)
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This is basically a cooling tower, that's also capable of recycling some of the waste heat.
But ... (Score:5, Funny)
If you tap the energy of tornadoes to generate power, it will reduce their remaining energy. Tap enough energy and they might become nearly extinct. If this happens, mobile homes, with no remaining natural predators, will multiply out of control.
High cost (Score:2)
The company proposing this says the cost could potentially eventually be as low as $0.03 per kilowatt hour. Translation: it costs way more than that.
Meanwhile, the next province over from where the company is based in Sarnia, Ontario... HydroQuebec is charging $0.05 per kilowatt hour, today, for real-world use.
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We already get all of our power from hydro, and there's still lots of untapped capacity. I don't think not being able to buy any is a risk anytime soon.
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My point is that whenever you see somebody come up with what seems like some new way of generating power and cites some "could be as low as" cost, it invariably ends up costing far more. And since they're not even claiming substantial cost savings over what we're already using for all of our power (in Quebec, anyhow), it's of questionable utility.
sounds like the syfy channel movie of the week (Score:2)
sounds like the syfy channel movie of the week
Hot air! (Score:1)
Airplanes? (Score:2)
Begs the question: what happens when a plane flies through? Does it get shredded to pieces?
Not new (Score:1)
Sounds Like a Gas Turbine Only Less Efficient (Score:1)
WtPHq ?
Industrial Waste Heat (Score:1)
Slapping one of these generators on any other industrial heat source could help power the plant itself, but could prove challenging to connect to the grid.
I wonder what it sounds like.
Well, I suppose doing it backwards is good enough (Score:1)
Interesting (Score:1)
Ferret
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Re:Rain shadow creator? (Score:4, Informative)
It's all self contained, it's not like its using 'real' thunderstorms out in the 'wild'. It won't effect the outside world at all realistically.
Self-contained you say... Won't affect, eh? TFA quote:
the vortex could be 50 m in diameter at its base and extend up to the tropopause
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So you're right it does go outside and up, but I'm still guessing the actual wind speeds aren't going to be anywhere an actual tornado and not likely to seriously effect the local climate. But probably worth of some study.