Tag Archives: marine
A spokeswoman for Belgium's North Sea Minister, Johan Vande Lanotte, has revealed plans to build an artificial island in the North Sea to store wind energy. The plan is to build a donut-shaped island out of sand 3 kilometres off the Belgian coast near the town of Wenduine. Belgium is aiming to generate 2,300 megawatts of electricity from a network of wind farms in the North Sea. Water would be pumped out of the centre of the island when there was excess energy from the wind farms and let back in through turbines when the wind energy was insufficient. The … Continue Reading
According to a new study by Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, by 2030 all new energy generation could come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production could be converted to renewables, using only technology that is already available and at a similar cost to using fossil fuels. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy. Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent with the remaining 2 percent from wave … Continue Reading
The Florida Institute of Technology is testing a new technology to convert the energy produced by waves into electricity, The so-called Wing Waves work by tapping the elliptical motion of waves 20 to 30 metres beneath the surface and converting it into mechanical energy that can be used to generate power. Each trapezoid-shaped wing of the device is 2.5 metres in height and 5 metres wide. They can sway 30 degrees from side to side and complete the arc in 8 to 10 seconds. An aluminium prototype is now working off the Florida coast. Operational models would be built out … Continue Reading
Back in 2008, we wrote about the discovery by Dr Frank Fish that the bumps on humpback whale flippers gave the whales more power and manouverability (see Frank Fish’s Fin Fans) and the possibility of this being applied to the design of wind turbines. Now the US Navy has taken up the idea. US Naval Academy researchers have shown that underwater turbine blades with bumps are more effective in extracting energy at low speeds. The blades do not degrade performance at high flow speeds or increase the mechanical complexity of the turbine. Naval Academy Professor Mark Murray explained that “We … Continue Reading
Free Flow Power has been granted rights to explore the potential for dozens of turbine locations along the 3,700 kilometre Mississippi Rriver. The company is working on a plan to install hundreds of 40-kilowatt hydrokinetic turbines, each the size of a large jet engine, along the bottom of the River. The project developers say that this could potentially produce more than a gigawatt of electricity – enough to power 250,000 homes. There is currently just one commercial hydrokinetic river turbine in use on the Mississippi – an installation by Texas-based Hydro Green Energy near Hastings, Minnesota. Henry Dormitzer, the company’s … Continue Reading
Independent Natural Resources Inc, has received a permit for a wave powered facility to desalinate water off the coast of Freeport, Texas. The company hopes that the system will be in operation by the end of the year. The facility will be a 25 by 50 metre platform under which there will be 18 of the company’s SEADOG wave pumps. Each pump will send water up through three water wheels connected to a generator. The electricity from the generator will be used to power a reverse osmosis desalination machine. The SEADOG pumps, each of which are about two metres in … Continue Reading
The term "blue energy" refers to salinity gradient power – the energy retrieved from the difference in the salt concentration between seawater and river water. The power is generated using osmosis with ion-specific membranes. Jan Post, at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, has researched the global potential for electric power generated in this way. His research into the practical applicability, techniques and preconditions for large-scale energy generation from salinity gradients, has shown that very high yields are possible. In the laboratory, it is possible to recover more than 80% of the energy from salinity gradients. In practice, the technical feasibility … Continue Reading
Scientists in the Netherlands have previously succeeded in generating electricity at the point where salt and fresh water mix in an estuary using a membrane. Unfortunately, the membranes are expensive and delicate, making the technique costly. Now Doriano Brogioli of the University of Milan Bicocca in Monza, Italy, has published a paper in the Physical Review Letters which takes a different approach that promises to be much cheaper. Two carbon electrodes are placed in the salt water and given an initial electrostatic charge – one positive and the other negative. Positively charged sodium ions are attracted to the negative electrode … Continue Reading
It has been estimated that their is sufficient energy in the world’s ocean currents to meet 3,000 times the current power needs of the the entire world’s population. The difficulty is in harnessing that energy. Turbines and watermills need water flowing at 5 to 6 knots to operate effectively. But most of the ocean currents flow at less than 3 knots. Michael Bernitsas, a professor in the University of Michigan, has now developed a device that works in water flowing at just 2 knots. The machine, called a VIVACE, relies on "vortex induced vibrations". These are undulations that a rounded … Continue Reading
The US Department of Energy has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to construct a thermal piping system to capture the ocean’s absorbed solar heat. The energy produced could be used to generate electricity or to fuel desalination, and according to the company, the process would be harmless to the ocean’s environment. Lockheed Martin plans to create piping wide and long enough to stretch down thousands of feet under the ocean to harness the energy available from the temperature difference between the surface and the deep ocean. The temperature variant is relatively small, so large volumes of water are needed to … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Aussie Researchers Make Efficient Solar Cells from Low-grade SiliconResearchers at the University of New South Wales have found a way to make very high efficiency solar cells out of cheap, low-grade silicon. It has been known for several decades that hydrogen atoms can be introduced into the atomic … Continue Reading → […]
- First Aussie “Hot Rocks” Power Plant Begins ProducingThe first power plant in Australia to produce electricity using an enhanced geothermal ("hot rocks") system has begun producing electricity in the far north-east of South Australia. The one-megawatt Habanero pilot plant near outback Innamincka is operated by Geodynamics. Geodynamics … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted Water
