Just a cover story for starting work on the secret volcano lair.
PayPal founder funds 'tornado-driven' power plant
PayPal co-founder Peter Theiss’ Breakout Labs has spun some pin-money in the direction of a Canadian inventor who claims to have a “zero-carbon” electricity generator that works by creating a captive “atmospheric vortex”. Or, in the more hyperbolic language of Breakout Labs, AVEtec, it’s a “tornado” driven generator. …
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Wednesday 19th December 2012 02:04 GMT David Pollard
Flying pigs
The basic introduction on AVE's site reckons it is possible to couple the waste heat from a power station at 50 ºC to the upper troposphere at -21 ºC and thus with a Carnot efficiency of 23% achieve a "Typical Efficiency (Estimated)" for the Vortex Engine of about 20%.
Page 22 http://vortexengine.ca/PPP/AVE_Basic_Introduction.pdf
Good luck with that then.
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Wednesday 19th December 2012 02:22 GMT Sorry that handle is already taken.
Solar Thermal
"Solar thermal" simply describes any system that extracts heat from sunlight for use as an energy source, with or without transport. The CSIRO system uses a "power tower" to collect the solar energy, with air as the working fluid driving a gas turbine engine to generate electricity, but not all solar thermal systems use air as the working fluid, and electricity is not always the end product. A roof-mounted solar hot water system also counts, as a fairly domestic example.
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Wednesday 19th December 2012 10:38 GMT James 36
Re: That technogy already exists.
Its called Combined Heat and Power (CHP) or cogeneration , I worked at an engioneering consultancy that design and project managed them in the for my year out a uni.
Really high thermal efficiency
http://www.epa.gov/chp/basic/methods.html
The "tornado" thing looks abit s**t in comparison as it looks like a complex way to caputure thermal energy whereas CHP just uses the heat to create steam.
There are smaller plats that use diesel engines and make hot water. I think there were some waste gas (animal waste and rubbish genertated methane) powered CHP plants in Europe as well in the early 90's is that green enough
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Wednesday 19th December 2012 23:57 GMT veti
Re: That technogy already exists.
No, CHP is different. That's when you take the heat output and sell it as heat, which is incredibly efficient if you happen to have someone or something nearby that wants a lot of heat.
What the GP was talking about was "combined cycle" generation - you take the waste heat from your primary generation process, and and use it to generate yet more electricity, thus increasing your overall efficiency.
Two entirely different principles, and not entirely compatible with each other (i.e. you can't do both with the same plant, at least not without seriously compromising efficiency).
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