Ted Jagusztyn (tedjag)

My experience is 35 years in the HVAC industry. This life focus has taught me that air conditioning is basically using electricity to create a temperature difference. It is also possible to create electricity using a temperature difference in Nature. 

I am fascinated by the oceans and the fact that there are many areas close to shore where deep cold seawater of 4C (39F) can be accessed by "drilling".  I am talking about Horizontal Directional Drilling, the type of drilling used by the oil industry to access oil. Why not use this cold water for air conditioning instead of mechanical cooling?

At the same time I've learned from scientists that the amount of energy that the sun imparts upon the oceans of the earth in a 24 hour period is more than 1000 times greater than we use in that same day. This ocean temperature difference between the depp water and the warm surface water can be used as an energy resource.It is called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion or OTEC.

OTEC was first concieved in the late 1800's by a Frenchman named D'Arsonval. Another Frenchman named Georges Claude made the first OTEC project in Cuba in the 1930's. The first successful OTEC project was the NELHA project in Hawaii. The Toronto Canada Enwave project cools a portion of the city with 4C lake water. The Cornell University Campus is cooled by a 55 milion dollar project utilizing 250 foot deep 4C water of Lake Cayuga. That project has been running since 1998. All these projects layed pipes in the ocean or lake. This process was both risky and costly.
Still while the science of OTEC has been proven, the commercial viability has yet to materialize. Perhaps till now.

To this end we have innovated a Natural District Energy Plant for coastal areas. Islands such as Puerto Rico, and coastal areas such as South Florida or the California coast are candidates for this technology know as "SolAirOTEC".
This is a hybrid alternative energy that combines OTEC with Solar and Wind Power technologies.
The District Energy Plant pictured below has these oppotunities
1) Natural cooling from 39F seawater heat exchanged with a fresh water circuit to provide district cooling for buildings. Eliminates the need for mechanical cooling and about 50% of the building electrical requirement. Janine Benyus might term this "Self Reliant Cooling"
2) Natural Electricity Generation by utilizing the ocean temperature difference boosted by concentrated solar power in a Rankine cycle turbine. Modular electricity plants of 100 megawatts can displace the need for fossile fuel or even nuclear power plants for the coastal communities. "Self Reliant Power" perhaps.
3) Use a portion of the electrical power to split the H2 from H2O and liquify the H2 gas to produce hydrogen fuel for our land, sea and air vehicles. Self Reliant Fuel
4) Desalinate a portion of the clean mineral rich deep seawater for healthy drinking water. This can greatly enhance the availability of drinking water and avert this seemingly imminent crisis
5) Use the mineral rich deep seawater for human health by bathing in the water. This is a science dating back to the ancient Greeks known today as Thalasso Therapy.
6) Return the mineral rich deep water to the upper portion of the ocean emulating natures process of upwelling. This will promote the sealife chain, increase fishing harvests and oceanic carbon absorption
I am interested to network with like-minded people to use the principals of Biominicry to make the various facets of SolAirOTEC commercially viable.

As a start... how about when we drill for the seawater in rock creating 63 inch seawater conduits perhaps as long as 11 kilometers why not use the same process that clams use in making their shells to make the walls of the sewater passageway slippery yet durable. This will eliminate the cost of inserting a pipe.

Look forward to the future.