On Jun 2, 2007, at 7:47 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
If one could convert this into electricity at 5% efficiency, then the system required to do that would easily have a market value (worth) of ~10% of the cost of the nuclear plant itself !
Unfortunately the energy you can get from gas buoyancy is way less than the heat energy to get that buoyancy. Solar towers, for example, run at less than 2% efficiency. That's why I suggested maybe the economic efficiencies observed in solar tower tests in Europe may be due to wind energy, i.e. a venturi effect.
OTOH, sufficiently high towers, or better walls (wind-walls), with foils, specifically designed to capture wind energy, would nicely provide dual duty as a cooling tower or smoke stack for a power plant (and there is a large coming market for such in the US.) They could do heat transfer with high altitude low temperature air, and a coolant brought to the surface for energy extraction with the exhaust heat via Sterling engine. All a matter of cost engineering based on location and wind energy I think.
Regards, Horace Heffner
