Tornado Engines
June 27, 2008 1:32 PM   Subscribe

Atmospheric vortex engines : or, more evocatively, giant, human-controlled tornados.

It's Louis Michaud's idea for cheap, renewable energy. Whether or not it's feasible I don't know, but if our aim is crazy, post-apocalyptic looking power stations, then I think he's on the right track.
posted by louigi (39 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Now we just need Thundercracker and Starscream to guard it while we gather the Energon.
posted by cashman at 1:40 PM on June 27, 2008 [7 favorites]


So a Canadian engineer has a plan to spin up his own twister and extract energy from its tethered tail.

Not in my back yard. What if the thing gets loose?
posted by beagle at 1:44 PM on June 27, 2008


Actually, it doesn't look like a completely crazy idea. I wonder if the cooling tower of a nuclear plant (such as the one in NKorea just blown up) could be repurposed for one of these.
posted by beagle at 1:46 PM on June 27, 2008


There's no way this could possibly go wrong.
posted by ourobouros at 1:48 PM on June 27, 2008 [2 favorites]


I dunno, it looks pretty crazy to me. For one thing, how is he going to keep the temperature outside of the dome that much colder then the temperature outside?
posted by delmoi at 1:49 PM on June 27, 2008


Finally. I've wanted an inland kite hotspot for ages.
posted by cowbellemoo at 1:56 PM on June 27, 2008


This has nowhere near the destructive force of the original human tornado.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:57 PM on June 27, 2008 [6 favorites]


Did they laugh at him at the university? Did they say he was mad? Who's laughing now?
posted by boo_radley at 1:59 PM on June 27, 2008 [3 favorites]


It could be that he's just trying to build a portal to Oz.
posted by quin at 2:14 PM on June 27, 2008


C-C-C-C-Combo breaker!
posted by taursir at 2:14 PM on June 27, 2008


I dunno, it looks pretty crazy to me. For one thing, how is he going to keep the temperature outside of the dome that much colder then the temperature outside?

I think he's constantly heating the air intakes at ground level. He claims that he can use waste heat from a standard steam-driven turbine power plant for this once the vortex is started.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:36 PM on June 27, 2008


Will I be able to use this to load up at Costco? Or is this just for tooling around town with my hippy friends?
posted by everichon at 2:45 PM on June 27, 2008


A large atmospheric vortex engine right next to a power plant would likely depress local real estate values, making the surrounding land ideal for...

trailer parks!
posted by Kabanos at 2:48 PM on June 27, 2008 [3 favorites]


But have you seen the power company spokestornado?
posted by Eideteker at 3:05 PM on June 27, 2008


I never understand the term "waste heat."

There's no such thing as "heat." You have things that are heated, yes, such as air, water, etc, and those things can be a waste by-product of any number of industrial processes. But you can't open up a can of heat, nor can you just hook up your wonder machine to the "heat pipe" and go on your merry way.

"We'll just use the waste heat!" What the fuck are you talking about, exactly? How will you transform the heated waste product (see how I danced around the term?) into the fucking droid you're fucking looking for?

This is why these wonder projects fail. Wonderful ideas that don't work in practice. This is like those yahoos that tell you the Hoover Dam is actually solar energy, see, because the water is deposited as snow on the mountains, see, and oh shut the fuck up and get out of the way because I'm building a goddam turbine here...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:16 PM on June 27, 2008


But you can't open up a can of heat, nor can you just hook up your wonder machine to the "heat pipe" and go on your merry way.

You sure can.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:34 PM on June 27, 2008


You sure can.

Ahem. Same link, next section...

Stirling engine designs require heat exchangers for heat input and for heat output, and these must contain the pressure of the working fluid...

You're still heating something and moving it around. You still have engineering problems. There's no magic "waste heat" pipe.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:39 PM on June 27, 2008


On one hand - cool!

On the other hand, it doesn't matter if this thing is, statistically, five times safer than coal (to pull a number out of my posterior) - it's a TORNADO POWER PLANT, and if you think the NIMBY levels are high on nuke plants, just try to sell them on using a TORNADO instead of coal or gas or anything else. It's like saying 'Oh, yes, we're going to generate earthquakes to get power, but don't worry, they're totally under control.' I don't care what the math says, or what the statistics are or the reality is, that's an extremely unsettling concept for anyone.
posted by Tomorrowful at 3:41 PM on June 27, 2008


You still have engineering problems.

Granted, but it's not like Stirling engines are pie-in-the-sky perpetual motion machines. You can certainly make use of what is otherwise wasted heat from chemical, nuclear, kinetic etc. energy processes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:47 PM on June 27, 2008


"We'll just use the waste heat!" What the fuck are you talking about, exactly? How will you transform the heated waste product (see how I danced around the term?) into the fucking droid you're fucking looking for?

We usually use heat exchangers for that.

In energy generation, "waste heat" is the heat produced by the combustion (or nuclear) process that is not converted to mechanical energy in the turbines. It is typically vented to the environment in a cooling tower.

But yeah, "heat" and "waste heat" are both very well-defined engineering terms.

Where's nicolas léonard sadi carnot when you need him?
posted by mr_roboto at 3:59 PM on June 27, 2008


There's no magic "waste heat" pipe.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. No, it is not magical. It is a pipe, however, and it is heat that would otherwise just be vented to the environment.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:00 PM on June 27, 2008


If it works this is pretty much the holy grail of power generation technology, a way to use relatively low gradient source heat to generate large quantities of output power. The whole point is that it uses waste heat, a thing that certainly does exist in that we've paid money to create it but it's not concentrated enough any more to extract useful work from it, to extract lots more useful work.
posted by localroger at 4:10 PM on June 27, 2008


I always understood that driving on the right in the Northern hemisphere was a natural tornado engine:

Areas of low pressure draw air in across the land, and in the north, geostrophic force makes that air deflect to the right, thus creating an anti clockwise rotation (from above). At it's most intense it's seen as a tornado that feeds intense low pressure below a storm cloud.

Take two pick-up trucks driving in opposite directions across some god-forsaken mid-west state: As they pass, their opposing wakes create an anti clockwise swirl, thus, if it happens right under looming storm cloud, you've successfully seeded a twister.

In a well ordered society we drive on the left, and if this practice had been adopted more widely across the colonies, it could be argued that North America might have been spared may destructive tornadoes, as opposing vehicles would create a benign counter-geostrophic clockwise swirl.
posted by marvin at 4:14 PM on June 27, 2008


Here's a pretty "magic" cooling pipe: The vortex tube
posted by boo_radley at 4:18 PM on June 27, 2008


There's no way this could possibly go wrong.

No kidding. Do a few innocuous high-altitude atmospheric experiments, and suddenly there are rainbows everywhere...
posted by Kinbote at 4:21 PM on June 27, 2008 [7 favorites]


that woman is a special sort of insane.
posted by boo_radley at 4:59 PM on June 27, 2008


I still dream of Organon.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:10 PM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]


What about the possibility of powering the tornado (excuse me, "Atmspheric Vortex Engine") with geostationary solar mirrors? A quick Google revealed that current photovoltaic cells have an efficiency of 9 to 14%. How does this compare to the wind turbines proposed by Mr. Michaud? Of course, existing power plants add to the (purported) global warming problem. (Personally, I'm still not convinced. See the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age. Man's burning of fossil fuels may be the only thing staving off a return to glaciation.) Relays of such satellites could power these turbines with energy that would have already been destined for Earth, thus providing "free" power (minus the original investment, of course.) Win-win situation? Feel free to criticize this opinion of someone who is too lazy to do the math. :)
posted by Falling_Saint at 5:22 PM on June 27, 2008


I want to know what is oozing out of our tornados. It's delicious!
posted by Kikkoman at 5:23 PM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite]


It is a pipe, however

So, what's in the pipe?

It's not "heat."

It's "heated waste material of some kind that can be used to heat some other material in close proximity via conduction/convection but that will still result in lukewarm waste material."

Saying "we'll just use waste heat from a coal plant" is more than a little hand-waving over the task of creating and maintaining a complex network of exchangers that has to be retro-fitted to a decades-old plant at the cost of millions that might make the project a deal-breaker from a short-term economic standpoint.

I guess my question is more semantical than, err, enginerri-cal. I just hate "hey look, it's magic" pronouncements.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:28 PM on June 27, 2008


Saying "we'll just use waste heat from a coal plant" is more than a little hand-waving over the task of creating and maintaining a complex network of exchangers that has to be retro-fitted to a decades-old plant at the cost of millions that might make the project a deal-breaker from a short-term economic standpoint.

Well, yeah.

But seeing as this is a proposal to build contained tornados, that seems like the least of the technological hurdles.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:30 PM on June 27, 2008


more than a little hand-waving over the task of creating and maintaining a complex network of exchangers that has to be retro-fitted to a decades-old plant at the cost of millions that might make the project a deal-breaker

I was curious as to what other projects are like in terms of $ per megawatt and it really seems quite doable if the guy's estimates are anywhere near accurate. He's claiming $60 M outlay for a 200 MW facility. For comparison, a 209 MW Wind Farm in Texas was approved for $300M. Remember, that's Texas. A 14 MW photovoltaic (solar) facility was rolled out for $100 M. $200 M can buy around 80 MW of geothermal energy. Nuclear, at its cheapest, seems to be around $150 M per 100 MW.

This is just capital costs and isn't going into capacity or power supply strategy, but as a 'is this worth trying' it seems like it's wonderfully viable if the science and engineering check out.
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:59 PM on June 27, 2008


So, what's in the pipe?

It's not "heat."


I have worked in a power plant which recovers waste heat from a gas turbine through a large fancy heat exchanger, and they call it waste heat. I have an engineering degree, and this is valid engineering terminology. To be specific one might say the exhaust carries the waste heat.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:32 PM on June 27, 2008


build contained tornados

In some ways, nothing compared to what's contained in a gas or steam turbine.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:33 PM on June 27, 2008


If they build one of these, the first AVE should be called Caesar.
posted by bryon at 8:50 PM on June 27, 2008


You're still heating something and moving it around. You still have engineering problems. There's no magic "waste heat" pipe.

Waste heat exists, it's just that normally it is wasted for a reason.. Normally, it is too hard to get useful work out of it. Of course 'too hard' may be due to organizational problems rather than technical difficulty; ergo cogeneration.
Looks like the politically correct term for waste heat is 'excess heat' :)
posted by Chuckles at 10:10 PM on June 27, 2008


Meatbomb, I just know that something good is gonna happen.
posted by adipocere at 11:24 PM on June 27, 2008


TheOnlyCoolTim and Cool Papa Bell: Even if I did believe in heat, and I'm on the fence with that one, don't get me started on cool, because that's just where this sketchy heat once was.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:15 AM on June 28, 2008


Meatbomb, I just know that something good is gonna happen.

Put Donald Sutherland on the case!
posted by autodidact at 10:47 AM on June 28, 2008


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