Chapters authored
Hydro Power Tower (HYPOT)
Humanity has used the power of falling water for centuries to produce electrical energy, but there have been no significant changes in technology. Marine Energy has received an explosive development. Traditional technologies are passive and have low efficiency. It is not possible to use the effect of falling water in the ocean. The chapter considers the technology, which allows to convert not only the kinetic energy of a moving horizontal flow, but also the potential energy of water hammer in a combination of pressure drop between layers of water that have different hydrodynamic characteristics. This is a high efficiency due to the use of the Pitot-Prandtl tube principle and Bernoulli’s law and in combination with the effect of raising the water of the hydraulic ram. The calculations are based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. It is known that 94% of incoming solar energy is converted into underwater currents and only 6% - on the surface. Therefore, the proposed technology can be highly competitive in relation for example to Orbital Marine Power (OMP) project and another known offshore wind and wave power plants which convert only the kinetic energy of the surface air and sea currents.
Part of the book: Technological Innovations and Advances in Hydropower Engineering
Rain Tower
The rain tower is a prestressed, cable-stayed structure of hyperbolic shape with a steel core, (carbon) cables, and a cheap awning covering. An aero-thermal power plant is built into the tower, supplying electricity to the control system for the processes of condensation, coagulation, and vortex formation. Distinctive features are a supersaturated hot steam generator, a cloud droplet condenser, a spiral solar collector that allows to significantly reduce the required height of the structure due to an ascending vortex, a coagulation control system and matching the generated vortex with an undisturbed atmosphere. It is proposed to use pulses of acoustic shock waves as control actions, radiated by a phased array antenna in the form of a traveling wave. The signal parameters are selected according to the size of the colliding droplets in the vortex. The control device is mounted on the inside of the tower above the turbine of the aero-thermal generator. Impacts can increase the concentration of micro-droplets due to drift in an ascending vortex flow. This increases the likelihood of their collision and coagulation of cloud droplets, which turn into larger raindrops as they grow.
Part of the book: Innovation