[extropy-chat] Anti-hurricane engineering

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Ody777 at comcast.net wrote:
> I’m no engineer, but as I understand it, the Ocean
> Thermal process requires HEATING UP the cold water. 
> There are three steps: 
> 
> (a)  “heat transferred from the warm surface sea
> water causes a working fluid... to turn to vapor.”
> 
> (b)  “The expanding vapor drives a turbine attached
> to a generator which produces electricity.”  
> 
> (c) “Cold sea water passing through a condenser
> containing the vaporized working fluid turns the
> vapor back into a liquid which is then recycled
> through the system.”
> 
> (From
>
http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/otec_hi.html#anchor356606
> .)
> 
> The third step must heat up the cold water.  If
> there were any relatively cooler water left over
> from this process, I assume you’d just want to use
> it for the same purpose, to generate more
> electricity, until it was the same temperature as
> the surface water.  So there wouldn’t be any “cold
> spot” produced.

Ah, but where does that heat come from?  Check step a:
it leeches heat from the warm surface water.  Yes,
the cold water below gets warmer; we don't care about
that.  The heat will eventually come back up, but
until it does, some of the heat near the top - which
would have gone into feeding the hurricane - is no
longer there.