Thursday, April 22, 2010

A New Hawaiian Island? Could Be, If OASIIS System Comes Our Way

"Megawatt Island" would capture solar energy, store it below.
Earth Day is as good a day to announce new approaches to generating electricity and reducing fossil fuel dependence as any other – maybe even better. GreenFix Energy chose today to distribute a press release on OASIIS, which stands for Oceanic Atmospheric Solar Insulated Incapsulation System.

You have to admit, OASIIS does seem to involve outside-the-box thinking. The basic technology is ocean thermal energy conversion or OTEC, about which we’ve been writing for more than two years. But OASIIS is a new twist on an old idea – incapsulation (sic) of ocean water in a chamber beneath a floating platform that’s 1 to 3 square kilometers in size! The water with its captured solar energy remains in the capsule rather than being dissipated by ocean currents. A video explains the process and the potential for villages, marinas and shopping on these power islands.

There’s nothing in the release to suggest anything more than an intriguing idea at this point – no patent, no financing, no firm plans. In this respect, GreenFix seems to be in the same boat as Deepwater Structures, Inc., which similarly publicized its untested but provocative technology idea a couple months ago.

We’ll be watching both companies to see where they go with their approaches to OTEC. As a cheerleader for the technology, we’re standing behind them – and other peoples’ money – 100 percent and wish them well.

2 comments:

DeepWater said...

Back 28 years ago there was an experiment that proved the concept of Mist Lift OTEC, two-phase flow of water could lift sea water and then drop it down thru a conventional hydroelectric generator. All this was possible without the need for huge heat exchangers or huge steam turbines and it did not require any warm or DEEP cold water circulation pumps.

What is Mist Lift OTEC? It is a way to lift water in the ocean to the height of Niagara Falls and then producing electricity when the water falls back down to the ocean. The proof of the concept was done back in the 80's and it worked! The limitation of the experiment at that time was that it only looked at the mist generator and mist acceleration zone. The acceleration zone was twelve feet high, whereas optimum height of acceleration zone would probably twice that or more. The equipment apparatus was only 12 feet tall. (see attached article "Vapor/Droplet Coupling and the Mist Flow OTEC Cycle") A lager test apparatus is needed to look at and study what is happening higher up in the 'coast and condense zone. This would provide information as to better ways to introduce the cold water pray which would guild the engineering of the actual pilot plant design, thus eliminating costly engineering mistakes in the hull design. The larger test apparatus being suggested would be in the size range of 6 feet in diameter and as tall as 50 feet. With this test we will be able to see and study the FULL process.

Back in the 80's the first test cost around 2 millions dollars, because a lot more was not know. But the second larger test won't need to go thru as many unknown as then. But it will give vital data as to what the "whole" process looks like. There was also a cost estimate done on a mist lift OTEC power plant (attached) which will present what we are wanting to work towards.


Please help fund this approach to providing the world with non-polluting and abundant energy from this FREE fuel.

Stuart Ridgway can be contacted upon request.

Thank you,

Brian Horst PE

Anonymous said...

The article I saw mentioned patent pending technology. Just FYI