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Air as a soruce of energy

Category: Environment
Responses: 2 (1 in support, 0 neutral, 1 in opposition)
Number of views: 358
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This project is aimed at producing electricity by using the vast heat content of atmosphere. The scheme is basically aimed as producing electricity by extracting heat from atmosphere. In this project, this is done by using mechanical arrangement similar to heat pump. This system is used to squeeze energy from huge volumes of air and to produce temperature difference by which energy can be produced. It is to be noted that fresh water and salt are added bonus to this project, as salty brackish water can be used in this project. This is done by vaporizing water inside an enclosed container named “Evaporator” with the help of a vacuum pump. As the vacuum pump sucks air from the container, the water inside began to evaporate and in this process collects its latent heat of vaporization from water. For that reason, the water inside becomes colder and heat began to flow in from outside. Thus in effect, the latent heat of vaporization of water is collected from outside atmosphere. In the open-cycle OTEC, vapor is produced in the same manner and on experiment it was found that to have vapor flow rate of 1 kg/sec, power needed at the vacuum pump is 3 KW. Whereas, the latent heat embedded in 1 kg of vapor is 2.31 MW. After the vapor is produced, it is heated further with adiabatically compressed, hot air. After heating the vapor in the Boiler, the hot, compressed air is passed through the Evaporator to give up its residue heat to the water inside. The process is the same as that of common heat pumps sold in the market. And finally, the temp. diff. between the Boiler and the Condenser is created by suddenly releasing the compressed air at the Condenser. And thus a system of real efficiency of >50% is created.

pranabjoyoti, Dec 24 2006

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There is a lot of mechanical energy required to operate these pumps and I have a gut feeling that the system would require more energy than it could produce. Also, working with salt water generates all sorts of salt deposit and corrosion problems that works hell with moving parts.

sand, Dec 25 2006

Heat pumps do that now, to supply heat to homes and buisnesses.

classicsat, Dec 25 2006

This whole thing seems a bit dubious, but I have entertained ideas similar to this in the past, so I am willing to give it a look. You need to explain this much more clearly. You should have someone edit your writing at least. What does the "open-cycle OTEC" mean? You state that you produced vapor at a rate of 1kg/sec using 3KW for the vacuum pump. Now, are you saying that a 3 kilowatt pump (that's about 4 horsepower) produced 1 kilogram of vapor per second? Kilograms are a measure of weight. I don't know how you could weigh vapor, but I suppose if you mean that you vaporized 1 kilogram of liquid water then I understand. Trouble is, that means you vaporized 1 liter of water (1 liter of water weighs 1 kg) every second with a 3 kilowatt pump. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that happened. There's no way a little 3kw pump is going to make an entire liter of water evaporate every second. That's 15 gallons of water being vaporized in 1 minute by a vacuum pump with the power of an average lawnmover! I'm guessing there's some mix-up with the measurements, but you need to make sure you sort that kind of stuff out before you post.

You said you used "adiabatically compressed, hot air." I'm not sure what that means, and I even tried looking it up in my chemistry text books. You then bring up a "boiler" that you hadn't previously mentioned. This is different from the "evaporator"? What exactly is boiled in the boiler? You didn't say where the electricity is produced, I assume it would be in a turbo-generator or something between the boiler and condenser.

You are going to have to explain this better before anyone can evaluate it.

Dwane Anderson, Jan 09 2007