Underwater & Salt thermal storage, OTEC, Environmental Blackmail.

Terraformer · 2024-03-19 10:53:20

Calliban wrote:

Can you imagine the mess that an Atlantic storm or a tropical cyclone would make of a floating solar farm? This has always been the problem with wave power. The wave machines take an absolute beating from storm waves. They have to be over-engineered to such an extent that it renders them uneconomical. Offshore wind turbines take a beating in storms, and it limits their fatigue life. But a floating structure that has to move with the waves is going to take an even greater beating. The sea is cruel and does not forgive.

Would a solar farm at sea have to be floating? Presumably we'd be building them near to coasts, so the water should be quite shallow. How much would building them like the Maunsell sea forts, on pillars anchored into flooded pontoon bases, change the costs?

Calliban · 2024-03-20 04:57:36

Terraformer wrote:

Calliban wrote:
Can you imagine the mess that an Atlantic storm or a tropical cyclone would make of a floating solar farm? This has always been the problem with wave power. The wave machines take an absolute beating from storm waves. They have to be over-engineered to such an extent that it renders them uneconomical. Offshore wind turbines take a beating in storms, and it limits their fatigue life. But a floating structure that has to move with the waves is going to take an even greater beating. The sea is cruel and does not forgive.
Would a solar farm at sea have to be floating? Presumably we'd be building them near to coasts, so the water should be quite shallow. How much would building them like the Maunsell sea forts, on pillars anchored into flooded pontoon bases, change the costs?

Unknown. The situation is different to offshore wind, where we have a compact tower supported on a steel pile driven into the sea bed. The blades are a long way above any wave activity. But a solar farm needs to cover the sea surface in order to intercept sunlight arriving at the sea surface. A vertical solar array mounted to a tower might be an option. Or build floating arrays in a lagoon, say, in dogger bank, where they are protected from storm waves.

With offshore wind, the higher windspeeds away from land help compensate for the additional costs of securing the turbine to the sea bed. There don't appear to be any comparable benefits for offshore solar.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-03-20 04:58:48)

Terraformer · 2024-03-20 05:38:01

It's a shame we don't have (afaik) good cost estimates for shallow water flooded pontoon structures. I guess we don't build anywhere near enough for that? The simplicity suggests they should be quite cheap...

Wind farms are different beasts, being very top heavy towers. They need to be strongly anchored to the seabed rather than simply resting on it, else they'd topple lol.

Void · 2024-03-21 07:36:15

Well, this topic has gone quiet, so I will post.

A whole spectrum of methods can be considered, including what has been mentioned. But this is according to local circumstances.

I am very interested in types that can survive in the ocean gyres, and also those that can dwell and help create bodies of water in the internal places of deserts.

I have shown things like this before:

We could consider the polders of the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

These are generally drained by pumping the water out of a created enclosure. This then allowed farming on the "Created" land.

But you could put platforms over them instead and support the platforms with pontoons, or stilts.

The Netherlands is not particularly a great place to get solar but apparently some Europeans try it anyway. It may have strategic value beyond efficient production of power. Capability and Efficiency are two qualities that can be valued.

The solar power platform may help to slow down winds. The ability to have stratified waters, is damaged by waves mixing water.

We generally do not consider that we would like to collect water from the air in the Netherlands. But this illustrates a shallow water installation, so far. If you did want to collect water, you could refrigerate the surface water of this pond, by various means to inhibit evaporation, and to actually condense water on the surface of the pond.

If you could afford it, then you might refrigerate the water on the surface to almost freezing. Then allow the lower water to be at about 4 degC. The lower water would be insulation for the upper water, and turnover would be inhibited. Probably if you are running a system like this in the Netherlands, you would also tap into excess wind power as well.

If your solar panels are sun tracking, then they may be able to position to resist wind storm and hail damage also.

But the idea of doing a condensation process in a moist location would be that you could then sell the condensed water to a location that needs it.

If this process were moved to a desert, then the condensation process could still work, but I think it would not makes sense to have fresh water but to have various gradients of salt water.

You could go in two different directions. You could have a cold surface water and a colder lower water, so that you could store cold from the winter. Or you could have cold upper water and warm or hot bottom water. This could store heat energy from the summer to use in the winter. In both cases you might keep the upper waters cold so as to prohibit evaporation and even to condense water out of the atmosphere.

Even though these desert waters would likely be salty, they could host some "Crops". Using Acetate, you could grow Yeast or Algae.

We have reviewed Acetate before.

It might be possible to 3D print food from this, or you could perhaps be able to feed brine shrimp on it, and the brine shrimp be of some economic value, possibly to feed fish.

If you wanted fresh water in the desert, you could simply distill the water, use it, treat it and then return it to the reservoir for nature to complete the treatment.

Done

Last edited by Void (2024-03-21 08:17:12)

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Re: Underwater & Salt thermal storage, OTEC, Environmental Blackmail.

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