Plumbing the Oceans and Lakes for Energy
For a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.
It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.
"This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s.
This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world
As the price of fossil fuels soars, private companies from Hawaii to Japan are racing to build commercial OTEC plants. The trick is to exploit the difference in temperature between seawater near the surface and deep down (see diagram).
First, warm surface water heats a fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia or a mixture of ammonia and water. When this "working fluid" boils, the resulting gas creates enough pressure to drive a turbine that generates power. The gas is then cooled by passing it through cold water pumped up from the ocean depths via massive fibreglass tubes, perhaps 1000 metres long and 27 metres in diameter, that suck up cold water at a rate of 1000 tonnes per second. While the gas condenses back into a liquid that can be used again, the water is returned to the deep ocean. "It's just like a conventional power plant where you burn a fuel like coal to create steam," says Cohen.
Lake Ontario helps Toronto chill out: As governments and private companies around the world look to capitalise on ocean thermal energy, an offshoot of the technology is already up and running. Instead of trying to harness cold, deep water for electricity production, the city of Toronto in Canada uses water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool its buildings. Makai Ocean Engineering of Waimanalo, Hawaii, recently helped construct the city's cold-water air conditioning system that will save 60 megawatts of electricity when it is fully connected to buildings in the city's centre.
The system works by pumping water at a temperature of 4 °C from a depth of 80 metres and then sending it to buildings within the city via three pipes, each 5 kilometres long. The cold water is then used to cool air. Makai is working on a similar cold-water air conditioning system for Honolulu in Hawaii. "Ocean thermal energy is the big prize, but cold-water air conditioning can play a major role in cutting energy needs, and it can do it today," says Reb Bellinger of Makai.
For more on this story from New Scientist go to: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026836.000-plumbing-the-oceans-could-bring-limitless-clean-energy.html?full=true
With thanks for the story to Glen Moore of Wollongong’s Science Centre and Planetarium (http://sciencecentre.uow.edu.au )
The hard and soft sell of Water Savings
Some of the cheapest water savings available to industry aren’t in new technology but come from engaging and motivating staff, heard delegates to the Excellence in Industrial Water conference recently. But engineering solutions still have a role: P&N Beverages spent $15,000 on them at a plant in western Sydney and saves $250,000 a year in water bills.
A strong theme emerged through the 2-day, Waste Management and Environment (WME) Media event. Many speakers, from Chris Stevens of drinks giant Diageo to Nalco sustainability specialist Kevin Shaw to Peter Holt from consultancy Energetics, noted the value of bringing employees on board.
At Diageo Australia they have created Water Watch teams within each facility comprising managers and operators. The team at Diageo’s Huntingwood facility is lead by a shop floor team leader.
Many speakers said the barrier to action is middle management. Amcor’s equivalent, John Newton, agreed, but said it had to start at the top.
“We have KPIs for senior management around water, which is part of their performance appraisal. It is not part of their bonus structure yet, but that will come,” he said. “If senior management of a business has a mark next to their name then that cascades down to the appraisals of middle management, who are the hardest to engage.”
The Conference showed many businesses could make easy savings at good paybacks. P&N Beverages’ David Pryor gave a nuts and bolts address that went through 10 simple steps they introduced that cut water use by 60ML a year. They include water savings nozzles, automation of intermittent use points, removing any hard pipes to drain as they mask water discharge, and reducing mains pressures. The $15,000 in investment cut their annual bill by $290,000. Story sourced from www.EnvironmentalManagementNews.net
Port Kembla developing to service Sydney and NSW
At a recent i3net business breakfast meeting Ray Smith of Port Kembla Port Corporation outlined current and future developments at Port Kembla. Some interesting information to come out of the meeting included:
• Port Kembla is expanding to take up some of the freight duties being moved from Sydney Harbour and will add to the NSW capacity when Port Botany reaches its capacity
• The port already exports bulk commodities such as coal, grain, copper concentrates and steel products as well as importing iron ore for BlueScope Steel.
• The Port has developed capacity to take up to 270,000 cars per annum at 4 berths. Ships from Japan have to be less than 200m long so that they do not pay extra charges – hence the berths are sized to accommodate this size of vessel!
• Car delivery vessels are on a tight 110 day schedule and so have to be in and out of the port in about 12 hours for the port to avoid penalties.
• Pre-delivery inspections and upgrades (eg remove and replace radios) will be conducted at the port after the cars are driven off the ships
• At least 7000 large items of equipment (eg trucks, windmills) and 600 yachts/cruisers are expected to be unloaded at the port per year.
• A bio-diesel plant is proposed for the Port based on 1 million tonnes per annum of soybean imports. Te soybean is used for pig and poultry feed and the bio-diesel pant will be integrated with this market. Some of Port Kemba’s existing grain silos will be used to store the soya bean when the proposal is completed in 2010.
• In the longer term it is proposed to have a container terminal in the outer harbour when Port Botany’s container terminal reaches its capacity (expected around 2020). It is proposed that these containers would be moved on rail which will most likely require the partly completed Maldon-Dombarton rail link to western Sydney to be completed by then.
Photo: Ray Smith addresses the i3net breakfast meeting
Further information including tenders for projects can be found at http://www.kemblaport.com.au. More information on the Illawarra Innovative Industry network (i3net) can be found on www.i3net.com.au
Balanced Scorecard – What is it?
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is often bandied around as a business improvement tool. According to the American Society for Quality (www.asq.org) the BSC is a strategic management tool that views the organization from different perspectives, usually the following:
• Financial: The perspective of your shareholders
• Customer: What your customers experience and perceive
• Business Process: The key processes you use to meet and exceed customer and shareholder requirements
• Learning and Growth: How you foster ongoing change and continuous improvement
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