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.

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’.