Just read this article that talks about using Osmosis to generate power.
I would imagine that it wouldn’t generate a lot of power but the article says it has the potential to generate about 800TW, or half the current power consumption of the EU so it clearly has significant potential and even if it doesn’t generate that much it would make a dent in our power requirements and help meet our green targets.
Yet again, we seem to have completely different methods being found to generate green energy. After the initial pathetic knee jerks, like windmills, we seem to be coming up with completely new ideas which sound promising. Makes you wonder really why windmills are still on the agenda for the UK. Actually it doesn’t, it just shows our politicians are useless at picking winners.
In the meantime scientists, real ones not the global warming scammers, are coming out with new technologies that can also help solve our other global issue, but a real one this time, a shortage of fresh water. Produce power, make fresh water. Two wins in one package.
Yet another real contender for green electrickery.
OK, some of the technology is new like this venture but the Victorians had a lot of designs that could be modified and used today.
At one stage my company were given a project to produce electricity from a small river where we could only get a 1 meter head. We did it by using a design I found in an old magazine of my great grandfather that had been passed down to me. Using that and a special low speed alternator we were able to supply 25 kW – the design requirement was 20 kW. That was 25 years ago and as of 2 years ago it was still working without problems.
If I was given a project like that today I’d use the same design because it just works. Yes, there may be other ways to get the same results but would they do it for so long with little or no high level maintenance and an operator who thought electricity was a god spirit?
I am not averse to modern technology, just people that will not try and think of alternatives be they new ones or modifying old ones. In the above example our turbine replaced a modern pelton turbine and 6 km of pipe that spent most of its short life trying to digest small rocks – they kept on removing the access grid because it kept on clogging up and stopping the flow.
I still wait for someone, to have the funds and not care about what the scientific establishment says, to look at such things as cold fusion and other things that have been ‘proved’ unworkable. As an engineer I work on the premise of ‘if it works use it, they can work out the theory later’.
Reverse osmosis has limits but it does work when time span is not a factor. So ongoing plants would work but it is inefficient.
ivan,
Never just pick the new technology because it is new. The old stuff is some times miles better look at central heating boilers and tiolets.
James,
So we use it where we are not in a rush. How about for my around the world fresh water creation process? No burning fuel and making lots of lovely fresh water.