Energy Sector Management

In August 1979 near the Hawaiian Islands began working heat-mini-OTES. Testdrive set for three and a half months, it showed sufficient reliability. In continuous clock did not work smoothly, except for minor technical problems that typically arise when testing any new installations. Its total output was an average of 48.7 kW, maximum – 53 kW, 12 kW (maximum 15) gave the installation to an external network to the payload, more precisely – by charging the batteries. The rest was spent on power output of own needs installation. These include the energy expended on the work of three pumps, the losses in the two heat exchangers, turbine and generator of electricity. I

Three pumps were needed to the following:

One – for feeding hot water from the ocean, the second – to swap the cold water from a depth of about 700 m, the third – for pumping the secondary working fluid within the system, ie, from the condenser to the evaporator. As a secondary working fluid is used ammonia, Installing mini-OTES-mounted on a barge. IW her head is placed a long pipe for the intake of cold water. Polyethylene pipe is a pipe 700 m long with an internal diameter of 50 cm pipe was welded on the shore of the 58 sections. The choice of polyethylene due to the fact that he seemed not subject to fouling and therefore corrosion (the creation of 700-meter pipeline was the most difficult dolomite). The pipeline is attached to the bottom of the vessel with the help of a special gate, allowing, if necessary, its quick disconnect. Polyethylene pipe is simultaneously used for the anchoring system pipe to ship. The originality of this solution is no doubt, as the anchor for this production is now emerging more powerful systems OTEG are very serious problem.

For the first time in the history of engineering, installation of mini-OTES able to give the external load utility power, and at the same time covering their own needs. Experience gained from the operation of mini-OTES allowed to quickly build a more powerful heat-OTES-1 and proceed to the design of more powerful systems of this type.

OTES-1 – a floating laboratory: a mini-OTES, it is not intended for commercial electric power generation, although its power reaches 1 MW, ie 20 times more than the mini-OTES. As a secondary working fluid in the OTES-1 is also used ammonia. Feed pump draws water from the surface layer of the ocean with temperatures 27 ° C and chase her through the heater of ammonia, which consists of 6304 titanium tubes with a diameter of 2 cm is – steam boiler plant. Ammonia is sprayed into warm tubes and boils. Ammonia vapor goes to the turbine and rotates it, and from there, completing the work enters the condenser – cooler. Capacitor is also made of thin tubes, cooled water at a temperature slightly more than 4 ° C. There, a pair of ammonia condense and turn back into a liquid, is pumped back into the evaporator. The total length of the tubes in the two heat exchangers (evaporator and condenser) is 140-km.

By installing OTES-1 converted tanker with turboelektricheskim drive. Electric propulsion system allows the tanker with the convenience of using its energy resources during the razlichnyhEksperimentov length drive pumps and other purposes. The plant is expected to test some performance OTES, so that later they can be used to create a prototype. Number of issues to be examined is sufficiently large. These include, for example, the following. What type of heat exchangers will be optimal and what material they should do? Titan – roads, whether it is possible to replace aluminum or something else? How quickly will develop marine organisms, fouling in heat exchangers and other parts of the system and how to deal with them? How will the state of the marine environment powerful facilities of this type? How best to fulfill the pipeline for lifting hoyudnoy water?

The last question is traditional for the constructors of all installations OTES. For OTES-1 was resolved in favor of three parallel poly-ethylene pipes with a diameter of 1 m each, a length of 900 m. The pipes were delivered to the Hawaiian Islands long sections of 27 m and cooked on the beach. Then all three tubes were tied together and stacked on trucks, installed on a special track, coming down directly into the ocean. The total mass of the pipeline reached 450 tons, laying it on the truck was done with a winch. To sustain the lower end of a pipeline near the bottom it took 50 tons of ballast. And to maintain the pipeline in the vertical position of its upper end is surrounded by a floating ring having a buoy is attached to a solid end, with his help the pipeline can be slightly moved. This method of fixing the upper end of the tube to the bottom of the vessel allowed the very fast (2 hours) to make setting the pipe in the ocean. It simply happens and the separation of the pipe of cold water to the vessel, if there is a strong emotion, or for any other reason.

Designers set OTES-1 entered the pipeline between the cold water and ship a new detail, which made the system more reliable. This is a gimbaled pipe to the vessel. With cardan vessel can arbitrarily wallow in a relatively sedentary long pipeline, if the waves are not too large (not more than 2 m). And if the excitement increases, the vessel detach from the pipe and goes into hiding, Latch connector for quick-unification of the vessel with the pipe has been tested yet in si-tem mini-OTES.

By applying the gimbal latch tube and decided to ship the old dispute with the pipe, which had begun with Claude. I must say that, apparently, the pipe still “win” the ship, in the sense that the new stations on the power OTES many tens or hundreds of megawatts are designed without a ship. This is – a grand pipe in the upper part of which is a round the computer room, where all the necessary devices for energy conversion (Fig. 29). The upper end of the cold water pipe located in the ocean at depths of 25-50 m. The machine room is designed around the pipe at a depth of 100 m. It will be installed turbines for ammonia vapors, as well as everything else. The mass of buildings more than 300 tons of pipe-monster, stretches nearly a kilometer into the cold depths of the ocean, and in the upper part of something like a small island. And any vessel, except, of course, the ordinary courts are not required to maintain the system and to communicate with the shore. This curious episode in the modern history of the development of technology transformation heat of the ocean.

At the end of 1986 is scheduled to complete the construction of a new, third in a row, the experimental station OTES, the power which will be within the 40-100 MW. During the construction of this station using the modular principle, it is assembled from separate blocks of 10 MW each. Such an approach would make it easy to increase power to the desired size.