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//The pump can run off solar in the day, electricity at
night.// |
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Why not power it with the river? |
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Ha, I read that as "River as heat sink". Didn't know where to put my face. |
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This is quite an old idea - it's not widely implemented because not enough people live adjacent to a river. |
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(Interestingly, one of the new, green-energy technologies I saw at a convention was the reverse of this, a heat-pump to suck warmth out of a river to heat your home.) |
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The [link] suggests you might need deeper water and longer pipes, although it does suggest that long pipes are a terrible expense for some reason. |
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Works until you try to implement it on a mass scale; raising
the ambient temperature of a major body of water even
one or two degrees can have devastating ecological
consequences. This happened in my state* (river water was
diverted as both a motive source and a cooling medium )
during the second boom of the industrial revolution, and
vital wildlife stocks such as Atlantic Salmon are only now
fully recovering. Other species, such as the Northern
Softshelled Turtle** did not fare as well. |
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* thermal pollution was just one of many forms of pollution
suffered by Maine's waterways in the last couple of
centuries. |
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** after searching for a link, I have concluded that this may
be a coloquial name. The quest is ongoing. |
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The alternative is ground heat-exchange, relying on
the stable temperature of the ground even a few
metres below the surface. |
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First, [Marked-for-deletion] widely known to exist,
the vast majority of power plants do it. |
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//5 feet, the river is not hot - it is always a cool 50
degrees F.// |
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I question that assertion. The vast majority of
rivers
have large sections of turbulent flow, and are
fairly
well mixed. |
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That is a good wikipedia article. I like the canucks
using domestic clean water so as not to pollute with
heat. |
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I too wonder about the expense. Probably it is the
scale. I envision this as cooling one room, or a boat
cabin. |
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[bungston], you live So Cal... |
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//Why not power it with the river?// |
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Provided that all components resist collapse, it should be possible to draw water from above a small weir, and dump it below. No moving parts. Water is a better heat transfer medium than air, in any case. |
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I was trying to interest a businessman in an
energy-from-sea idea. He told us to look up what
they were doing in Greece, since they had hotels
with need for air conditioning, and all on the
beach. We found a company that was doing sea-
thermal cooling, and were supposed to contact
them the next day. (Can't find it anymore. Giving
similar link to Honolulu Seawater HVAC) |
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It was May 4th 2010. The next morning riots broke
out and mobs burnt down several buildings
including the bank where three people and a yet
unborn baby were murdered. A lot of cooling was
needed... |
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Air is a really inefficient heat transfer medium. Better to pump water through the circuit, and have an air/water cooler in the building. |
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This would be a good way of making a conventional air conditioner much more efficient as it would be rejecting heat to cold water not hot air, at the proce of warming up the river. |
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But, ultimately, what [MechE] said - Widely Known To Exist. |
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It's Green Leatherback Turtles. Not extinct, but extinct in
Maine. |
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