Follow this blog:: RSS

Powering cities with man-made tornadoes

By Kirsten Korosec | December 18, 2012, 1:43 PM PST

Imagine an energy source that produces zero emissions, can be turned on and off at will, doesn’t require storage and costs as little as three cents per kilowatt hour.

Canadian engineer Louis Michaud believes man-made tornadoes could do just that. Now, he’s building a prototype in partnership with Lambton College thanks largely to a $300,000 grant from Breakout Labs.

Breakout Labs, a fund established by the Thiel Foundation that promotes cutting-edge science and technology ideas, announced earlier this month that it awarded a grant to Michaud’s startup AVEtec, reported Toronto Star reporter Tyler Hamilton.

The Thiel Foundation, started by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, also awarded grant money to General Genomics and Siva Therapeutics.

The science behind AVEtec

Michaud’s technology is called the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which harnesses the physics of tornadoes to produce extremely cheap and clean energy, said Breakout Labs.

As AVEtec describes it:

The Atmospheric Vortex Engines uses low-temperature waste heat to create a tornado-like atmospheric vortex. In contrast with a real tornado, the vortex can’t go anywhere because it is anchored to its heat source. So it’s really more like a dust devil or waterspout, and it serves as a low-cost virtual chimney.

The prototype aims to demonstrate the feasibility and the safety of the atmospheric vortex engine, Michaud said in a statement. (A smaller prototype is pictured to the right.)

“The real prize will be using large-scale AVE to drive turbines, Michaud said in a release. “Using the low temperature waste heat from a 500 megawatt thermal power plant could generate an additional 200 MW of power, increasing capacity by 40 percent and producing perfectly green electricity at less than three cents per kilowatt hour.”

Michaud tested his idea through a computer modeling study and via a four-meter diameter outdoor prototype built in 2009.

The next prototype will be eight meters in diameter and will produce a 40-meter tall vortex with a diameter of 30 centimeters. It will power a one-meter diameter turbine for testing purposes. Michaud said commercialization will become economically viable when the company builds a 40-meter diameter prototype in 2015.

Photo: AVEtec

Start your week smarter with our weekly e-mail newsletter. It's your cheat sheet for good ideas. Get it.

About Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten Korosec is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

If you liked this, don't miss...

Comments

Add Your Opinion

Join the conversation!

Follow via:: RSS

Top
Rated

How does it affect the atmosphere?

I realize that al ot of research has been put into the technology of the atmospheric vortec engine itself. However, has anyone researched its implications? I refuse to believe that a man-made tornado will have no effect whatsoever on the atmosphere. This is a study that is necessary, and there are a lot of hungry doctoral candidates that could use this research towards their defense.

Edited by charlesroig

Updated - 19th Dec

Just
In

The Physics of tornadoes?

Really folks, how does a tube four metres in diameter use the physics of a tornado? A tornado is driven by a huge thunderstorm, and the Coriolis force that simply isn't there unless there's a significant band of the Earth's Latitude involved. Coriolis gives a small rotational force over a very large area, and the pulling in of the air at ground level, by convection sources at the eye, converts the slow rpm angular momentum of a huge mass into the high rpm of the small mass that goes up.

Posted by SmartAlbert

29th Dec

Show:

Please Select

+1 Vote

+ -

I think this already exists in a slightly different setting

If memory serves me correctly, capturing energy in a "smoke stack" to turn a turbine is how Pebble Reactors (a kind of nuclear reactor) work. It's all about convection. Hot air rises. Granted, this seems like a great way to squeeze some additional energy out of a fossil fuel plant and I'm all for that. Perhaps, BreakOut Labs should take a look at existing stack/turbine designs/engineering and get a leg up with their timeline.

Posted by PSFTGURU@...

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

+2 Votes

+ -

How does it affect the atmosphere?

Posted by charlesroig

Updated - 19th Dec

Reply
Flag

+1 Vote

+ -

weather

I was thinking the same thing, Star Trek had weather modification to prevent hurricanes, it was brought up in several stories but they never explained how it worked.

Anyway if (big if) this works, build them in hurricane alley, that would take out some of the energy and prevent twisters from forming in the first place. The electrical power generated of course would eventually return back to the environment as waste heat as it already does so nothing is lost.

If all fossil and nuclear power were replaced by wind power on a TW scale that would also have a considerable effect on local weather too.

Its like if you can't beat em, join them.

Posted by energy_guy

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

-1 Votes

+ -

hurricane vs tornado

Energy_guy, you said do you mean Tornado Alley? Hurricanes form over water. Tornadoes form over land.

Posted by llandau@...

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Both

You are correct, but as I learn more about this it could be both although the practical version is over land, but in principal it could be initiated over water too.

Read the paper at "vortexengineer" new_presentation.pdf

It strikes me these people have pretty much figured out how to control the weather by understanding what nature does. The atmosphere's water vapor is essentially the working fluid of a heat pipe that takes 2/3 of the surface energy to the troposphere. In doing so storms, tornadoes and hurricanes drive this distributed heat pipe and some of that mechanical energy can be captured by the engine holding one end of the heat pipe or tornado.

Posted by energy_guy

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

+1 Vote

+ -

solar chimneys

This looks like a smarter version of the solar chimney. It wasn't practical before because the structure had a massive collector funnel cover a huge land area to feed a tall chimney and the test cases only worked at 3% eff. This wouldn't be needed if the heat is fed from an exhaust heat stream.

see wikipedia "solar chimney power plant", several have been built

Normally it takes very high grade heat to get 40% conversion eff, and the eff of low grade heat conversion is close to zero, so this vortex effect must be quite impressive if it works. Since all chimneys have used this effect for thousands of years, it must work.

see "vortexengine.ca" and get the "tesla_excerpt.pdf", it is a great read

Just checking "LLNL energy graph", and the US electrical power is 88% thermal, so there is a lot of low grade waste heat available, and industry has about half as much again.

It would be interesting to see David MacKay's take on this, he cuts through physics with a sharp knife. See "energy with out the hot air",

Seems Louis Michaud and Nazere are like the Alvin Weinberg, Robert Bussard of this energy source,.

Posted by energy_guy

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

What about distributed small scale implementation?

Who says they have to scale this up to be cost effective? At times scaling up can introduce complexities that add to cost to setup and operate with little real return for the additional expected performance.

For example, the added complexity required to bring the heat together from multiple heat sources in a power plant or factory is likely to introduce thermal inefficiencies or disproportional costs required to limt heat loss as a result of connecting a larger scale unit.

This solution might be more cost effective and thermal efficient if installed on a smaller scale closer to the heat source.

What you looking for is cost effective power. Not necessarily the most power possible.

Once implemented in a cost effective manner, natural market forces will drive efficiency to squeeze the most power possible out of the setup while remaining cost effective.

Posted by Hates Idiots

Updated - 26th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

40% conversion

Good stuff, energy_guy. Indeed, doesn't thermodynamic theory say that to convert 40% of your heat energy to mechanical work, you need (T_high - T_low)/T_low, in Kelvin, to equal 0.4 ?
So if your T_low is 372K (boiling water), you need T_high to be 520 K, which is 476 degrees Fahrenheit.

Posted by SmartAlbert

29th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

possible applications

The industry that could benefit from use of waste heat are metal manufacturing plants or any operation that utilizes ovens.

Posted by ken_r_mer

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Dynamic chimney

Louis Michaud's dynamic chimney is a promising idea. Instead of pushing the heat into the atmosphere through a conventional chimney, it is screwed in by a vortex. Think of the difference between hammering a nail and driving a screw. A coherent vortex acts as a superhighway for heat flux to the heat sink in the cool upper atmosphere, and convective heat flux draws in more warm air, which does work turning turbines and makes electricity. This way hot air can reach higher, instead of being dissipated in the warm lower atmosphere. This eliminates the need for a tall stack. Surely DOE and EPRI are all over this, since it has been published for years. So what do they think?

Posted by Wilmot McCutchen

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Waste heat

Could this be used as a modification of existing cooling towers of nuke. power plants? It would use a resource that's being wasted. It could increase the end efficiency of the plants.

Posted by garyfizer@...

19th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Waste heat- response

"It could increase the end efficiency of (nuclear) plants."
Possibly so. However, the standard thermodynamic model of the Carnot cycle very simply predicts that the higher the ratio of the source to sink absolute temperatures, the better is your thermodynamic efficiency. So because the Generation IV nuclear breeder designs have very high temperatures for the working fluid of the reactor, they are intrinsically more efficient than fossil carbon fuel. But in any case, the uranium in the IFR and the thorium in the LTFR are used about 200 times as efficiently as Generation II, because the only "waste" is the fission products. So the cost of the electricity is governed by the cost of capital, including the cost of waiting for the courts to defeat the objections of the "environmentalists" who are too ignorant to compare a hundred tons of fission products with thousands of tons of acid gases and millions of tons of CO2.
Mr. McCutchen's free air vortex sounds awfully like the eye of a hurricane, which is maintained by an enormous drifting circular weather pattern. How do we start the vortex?

Posted by SmartAlbert

29th Dec

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

The Physics of tornadoes?

Posted by SmartAlbert

29th Dec

Reply
Flag

Join the SmartPlanet community and join the conversation! Signing up is fast and free. Don't wait -- we want to hear your opinion!