Soundings (3/29/11)

Bucks in the Bay

• Bill Gorman excited about today's speaker, new energy technologies, etc.
• Steve Spitzer missed meetings, traveled all around East Coast, costly dog
• Lesa Boxx thanks everyone who came to Silver Reef last week, and broken ankle!
• Mimi Ferlin hockey bucks, last two weeks in La Paz, read 5 books, proud of husband to win Biz Person of the Year;
• Harte Bressler 61 bucks for birthday;
• Denise B was in Palm Springs and then Vegas, passed her senior in human resources, and daughter and her team is undefeated in tennis this year!

Sergeant at Arms by Denise Bosman
Fines for those not at front table, Lesa for a broken glass and broken ankle, college basketball bucks, Phil X.

Program
Bill Gorman introduced Paul Van Zandt, from Janicki Industries of Sedro-Woolley.  Janicki is a local success story; the company designs and builds high-precision tooling for aerospace, marine, transportation and energy customers.  One project that Janicki is currently working on, jointly with Lockheed Martin, is a technology called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion).

As the world demand for energy grows exponentially, and the environmental cost of fossil fuels become more apparent, the US government (in this case, the defence department) is looking for ways to tap energy sources that are environmnetally safer, more predictable, and less reliant on other countries.  The US defence department has funded much of the R&D work through Lockheed Martin to develope a way to harness energy from sea water.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is a type of solar energy, harnessing the difference in water temps between surface and the deep. Paul explained the Rankine Cycle.  The system requires a large pipe to bring cold seawater from the depths to the surface.  The best places in the world for this are in SE Asia and the Carribean because of the warmth of the surface waters in those places.  Hawaii also has good conditions as well, and has the benefit of having very high power costs. 

History of OTEC: The idea was first suggested in 1881 by French physician Jacque d'Arsonval.  In the 1950's there was a project tried off the coast of Cuba but failed when the pipe ruptured as it was being sunk into the water.  In 1979, a shoreside experimental project was actually built:  A one meter, 2,000 foot pipe was constructed and dropped into the deep water next to Kailua Kona Hawaii (see NELHA). 

Problems:

• You need a very large pipe to make it economical, yet such a large pipe is suseptable to breaking;
• Sea water corrosion, biological growth like seaweed;
• Transporting the energy somehow from the floating, open ocean turbines to the shore where the energy is needed.

OTEC is attractive from the risk perspective:  It releases no bad gases, and if it breaks there is no serious environmental consequences.  But it is hard to capture that energy.  Once you have captured it, potentially the facility could convert the energy to hydrogen or ammonia, which could then be transported to shore for use there.

According to Lockheed Martin engineers, a facility with a 30ft diameter pipe would provide enough energy to power 2500 homes. The pipe would needs to be 2.5 times the height of Empire State Bldg. Janicki figures the best material would be fiberglass, and would need to manufactured in-place somehow. The pipe is what Lockheed tasked Janiki to design and build. Additional benefits from such a OTEC plant: Desalinization, cold water for air conditioning, aquaculture, chilled soil agriculture.

Respectfully submitted,
Stowe Talbot