First, some prior art: Atmospheric Vortex Engines [link] use
a source of waste heat to generate an artificial tornado,
and use the movement of air into said tornado to spin
small, horizontal axis turbines, which in turn produce
electricity.
This idea is pretty similar. It will use the waste
heat from
the exhaust from a power plant, and the heat of the power
plant's hot coolant, to produce power -- in other words, it's
a kind of bottoming cycle. And, it produces a tornado to
do it. This halfbaked idea is an improvement on that
halfbaked idea.
In the center of the system, is a short chimney which
expels warm flue gas from the main power plant.
This chimney is surrounded by a rotating ring of vertically
oriented airfoils.
As the flue gas moves up, it will pull some atmospheric air
with it.
This fresh air will move through the turbine blades, which
are angled to give the air rotational momentum. As the
spinning air moves further inwards, conservation of angular
momentum causes it's angular velocity to rise, thus forming
a tornado.
And of course, a torque is applied to the turbine blades,
causing them to rotate in the opposite direction of the
artificial tornado.
This spinning turbine is surrounded by a ring of stationary
airfoils, which are angled to spin the air in the same
direction as the spinning turbine.
The stationary airfoils double as heat exchangers, moving
heat from hot liquid coolant circulating through them into
the air moving around them.