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.
-- goldbb, Feb 26 2018

Vortex Engine https://en.wikipedi.../wiki/Vortex_engine
[Insert Prior Art here] [goldbb, Feb 26 2018]

random, halfbakery