Skip to content
Home » Blogs » Fred Bortz's blog

Forget OPEC. Here comes OTEC. Or does it?

November 21, 2008

Fred Bortz's picture

I'm still on hiatus, but I had to take time to add this to my blog, especially since my old posting on peak oil continues to get enough hits to stay on the most popular list--though it is not as popular as "Old men chasing young women: A good thing."

Today, a daily science news update that I enjoy reading pointed to an upsurge of interest in old-new form of renewable energy: OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion.

That caught my eye, because when I was just beginning to sell my writing in the late 1970s, I learned about a Carnegie Mellon University professor who was researching that technology. The result was "OTEC May Save Us From OPEC," Carnegie-Mellon Alumni News, June 1980.

The brief oil embargoes of the 1970s had alerted us to how sensitive the price of gasoline was at the pump to constrictions in supply. When it surged past $1.00 (horrors!), we consumers in the U.S. began to look seriously at freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, especially from the Middle East.

One promising technological alternative was to take advantage of the temperature gradient between warm surface of the tropical ocean and the much chillier depths. Building a heat engine between the two temperature reservoirs and extracting the energy as electricity seemed simple, at least in principle.

The idea went back to 1881, and nearly a century later the U.S. government finally funded a pilot generator that consisted mainly of sophisticated plumbing. It worked, but the cost of oil stabilized and the urgency faded. In 1995, OTEC faded away completely as oil prices dropped below $20 a barrel.

I don't have to tell anyone who reads this blog and keeps up with the news that the story of OTEC's rise and fall is a cautionary tale. Today, even as crude oil prices are dropping below $50 a barrel, we need to remember how close we are to the prices of nearly $150 a barrel--and rising, which will surely be the consequence of the eventual recovery from the current economic woes.

So I urge you to read "Plumbing the oceans could bring limitless clean energy" in the current issue of New Scientist.

Could the title of my 1980 article finally be coming true after 28 years?

Permalink

Comments

Acidification

November 24, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 13 hours ago
Comment id: 33037

Actually OTEC does transfer water from a great depth up to a the surface. This is the cooling water you need for the system to work. This water contains a higher level of carbondioxide than the surface water would contain and you can get some release into the atmosphere. However, I understand this to be considerably less than by burning fossil fuels, something like 5% in comparison. We have a paper covering this at the OTEC Library called Carbon dioxide release from OTEC cycles.

Re: Acidification

November 24, 2008 by Fred Bortz, 32 weeks 9 hours ago
Comment id: 33038

Thanks for the clarification, Anonymous.

I can understand how that would release CO2 into the atmosphere, but does it also acidify the surface water by a measurable amount? That seemed to be the argument that the other Anonymous poster made.

Also, isn't the problem with acidification more significant at deeper levels, where bleaching of reefs is one consequence? If anything, the slight (probably unmeasurable) warming of the deep ocean would make it less acid down there.

It is always interesting to discuss at the trade-offs in developing a new technology, and to do so in a non-ideological way. The tone of the commentary here is refreshing, in contrast to the acidified tone :) that ideologues like to inject.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

OTEC and ocean acidification

November 23, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 33030

the disolved co2 in deep cold water is more than 3x surface waters. the H2O + CO2 = HCO3 reaction would lower surface water pH.....

Re: OTEC and ocean acidification

November 23, 2008 by Fred Bortz, 32 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 33033

OTEC transfers heat, not water. And the temperature reservoirs are so large that the change in temperature profile would be so minimal as to be unobservable.

Thus I can't see where acidification is a concern.

Am I missing something here?

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

More news about OTEC

November 23, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 33027

If you are interested in following OTEC then you can do so at OTEC News: http://www.otecnews.org/

The engineering research and development that needs to go into creating large floating OTEC platforms seems entierly doable to me. Much harder problems are solved in other areas of engineering. There is no doubt that we need all the electricity we can get either, as the best option for transport seems to be to switch to electric.

OTEC can do more than just produce electricity though. You could easily produce methanol, with an onboard chemical plant, as well as ammonia, both options which are covered in several papers on our site. Methanol can be a replacement fuel, as can ammonia, but ammonia may be best used as part of artificial fertiliser, which is very energy intensive in its production.

- Thomas

Just another boondoggle

November 22, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 2 days ago
Comment id: 33015

I used to love all these creative approaches to generating energy. But over the years I noticed that none of them ever seemed to pan out. Eventually what I found was that these research efforts were just another way to get $ from the government without having to actually produce anything useful. Which explains why a company which military company is doing this sort of work.

This article, at least, was unusually honest in that it at least admitted the main problems with the idea:

“… will have to work out issues such as how to connect the floating, bobbing platforms to fixed submarine power lines. Heat exchangers will have to be designed in a way that prevents excessive buildup of algae, barnacles and other marine organisms that could clog the system.”

People have been trying to solve the excessive buildup problem (unsuccessfully) for centuries. I doubt that these guys are going to do any better. Or even try very hard. As long as they can show some supposed progress in some area or other they will continue to get money without actually have to produce anything that works.

Boondoggle or boon?

November 22, 2008 by Fred Bortz, 32 weeks 2 days ago
Comment id: 33016

To Anonymous and other nay-sayers,

Every new technology has its drawbacks, but OTEC's problems look like they can be handled. The biggest question is not finding a solution but finding a cost-effective solution.

The historical pattern, which I hope we see broken for OTEC and other renewable sources of energy, is this: Fossil fuels get cheap and research shuts down until the next price surge. People now recognize that the price of oil will rise when the economy improves, so they are more willing to invest in alternatives that are more expensive at the present time.

Past and present energy "boondoggles" (to the nay-sayers of their time) that "panned out" or are likely to pan out, in part thanks to heavy government investment in research:

  • nuclear fission -- still concerns about waste disposal, safety, and proliferation. The safety issue may be overstated, but it still represents a political obstacle
  • wind -- the fastest growing renewable source worldwide. Government funding more in areas of incentives than research
  • solar -- also growing and becoming cost effective in many applications
  • "clean" coal -- another technology that seems to have no insurmountable problems but cost-effective CO2-capture has not yet been demonstrated

One that hasn't worked, but still attracts researchers:

  • nuclear fusion

The differences between boondoggles and boons are often seen only in retrospect. A lot of entrepreneurs are willing to risk their time and money on OTEC at the moment. If they are right, their payoffs will be substantial and deserved.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

OTEC = electric power which we don't need

November 21, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 32985

According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 9%.

No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The Energy Watch Group (funded by the German Parliament) concludes in a current report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”

"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."

http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=482

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

"...electric power which we don't need" ??

November 21, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 32987

Meltdowns aside, It's reasonable to conclude that electricity will continue to be an essential product 20 years from now. The big shift will be in how it's generated to replace fossil fuel generation. Certainly develop the liquid fuels to replace petroleum, but also bring on OTEC around the world in places like Hawaii, which will be the proving ground in tapping the unlimited potential of stored solar energy in the tropical ocean. Hawaii is more dependent on oil to power its society than any other state; 78 percent of the state's electricity is generated by burning oil. In second place is Florida, with only about 10 percent. Hawaii has everything to gain and lots of negatives to lose by transitioning its electricity generation to solar, wind and OTEC power. This week's announcement about a pilot OTEC plant in Hawaii is big news for a technology that's been searching for a customer for decades. It's time has come.

Look to Hawaii for USA's OTEC Breakthrough

November 21, 2008 by Anonymous, 32 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 32984

OTEC news is popping in the 50th State, and just this week an agreement was announced involving a Lockheed Martin partnership with a Taiwanese institute to build a pilot plant on Oahu.

For more information, visit the Hawaii Energy Options blog and scroll to the November 18th post:

http://hawaiienergyoptions.blogspot.com/



About us

Science Blog was started in August 2002. It lives, breathes and eats press releases from research organizations around the globe. Most of what you read here are press releases from the outfits named in the stories themselves. Got a news story you think belongs here? Let's talk. The other half of the equation is blog posts from readers like you. So if you have an interest in science, please register and join others like you in an ongoing, vibrant dialog about what makes the world tick. Meantime, please take a minute to read our Privacy Policy and Site Disclaimer.