 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
|
Sections
|
||||||
|
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: Power from the Sea
|
||||||
|
The Tropical Ocean — the world’s largest — and most efficient solar energy collector and storage medium - represents a vast and yet untapped natural resource which can provide the globe with all of its required energy needs in perpetuity. Inexhaustible Resource Useful energy can be extracted from this thermal heat sink by processes known as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Though the small available temperature difference inherently limits OTEC processes to achieveable heat-to-electricity efficiencies less than 3%, the available resource is large enough to provide more than 10 terawatts (1013 watts) of electricity continuously-without significantly affecting the ocean thermal structure. This amount of energy, about 300 Quads a year, is approximately equal to the total energy consumption for all human activites. None of the other presently investigated terrestrial alternatives to fossil fuel/nuclear energy can even approach the size of this OTEC resource.
|
||||||
|
Quick Links
|
||||||
The Sun warms the surface of the tropical ocean, so that year-round sea surface temperatures exceed 24oC for most of the band between theTropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The deep water in the ocean is cold everywhere, so that a typical tropical temperature profile has a warm surface layer separated from the cold, deep water by a thermocline through which the temperature decreases rapidly with increasing depth. The annual average temperature difference between the surface and 1000 meter depth thus exceeds 20oC throughout the tropical region.
Each day, the solar radiation incident upon, and absorbed by, the tropical ocean is significantly more than 1000 times the current global energy consumption over the same twenty four-hour period. Thus, even anticipating the eventual industrialization of the rest of the planet, we will likely never consume more energy than the natural daily fluctuation of this enormous thermal resource, thereby ensuring an environmentally friendly and sustainable energy economy for all peoples for many generations to come.