DEPTHS OF OCEAN EXPECTED TO SUPPLY WORLD’S FUTURE POWER

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6801, 3 January 1929, Page 9

DEPTHS OF OCEAN EXPECTED TO SUPPLY WORLD’S FUTURE POWER

VACUUM DEVICE TO TEST COMMERCIAL POSSIBILITIES. Believing the future source of industrial power to lie either in the sun or the sea. Georges Claude, whose various inventions arc estimated to be capitalised at £40,000,000 has chosen the latter a 3 the most promising. Speaking before students and professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, Dr. Claude described in detail his latest invention,- whereby- ho uses the temperature variance between the ocean’s surface and its depths to make steam, and by it electricity. - Dr. Claude, discoverer of liquid air and of the gas used in the present neon signs, came to Boston from Pittsburg and the International Coal Conference. . .He left ' almost immediately, bound- for . Havana, Cuba, where installation of his' “power-from-the-sca” machine will be attempted on a commercial scale. In prefacing the account of his latest works. Dr. Claude said that existing supplies of coal and oil could hardly be expected to last for moro than three centuries. Tho idea of drawing power from the sea, curiously enough, camo to him while in the Sahara Desert, studying the possibilities on polar heat, he added. .

Ocean Power Plant Designed. ■ “Water ordinarily boils ‘at 100-d. centigrade, ’ ’ said Dr. Claude. “But wlien the atmospheric pressure upon it it lowered, this boiling point can be brought down to 60 or 70d. In a vacuum, water boils easily. “Starting, with this fact, well known for years, the continuing on with the knowledge that in tropic seas the surface temperature of the water is often 80d., while the temperature on the bottom remains at 40d., the outlines of an ocean power plant were formed.” Dr. Claude’s description was filled with terms and figures hardly understandable by the layman. Reduced to its simplest terms, the plan calls for a vacuum boiler, filled with distilled water. This boiler by its 'contact with the surface water would bring its contents to an equal temperature. Then, in the presence of a yacuum the distilled water would boil, generating. Next to this boiler, Dr. Claude would have another, filled with the comparatively cold water pumped from the ocean depths. Such a boiler would play tho role of a condenser. Steam from the vacuum tank would, by its nature, rush towaru thj cold water of the adjoining boilor. Turned Generator Rapidly; Thus, all that remained was to insert the fans of a huge generator in the steam line, where the vapour rushed from the vacuum to the condensing iftilcr. In this way without the use of other heats than the natural ocean temperature, Dr. Claude found that his electrical generator not only turned, but turned fast. “I have estimated,” said Dr. Claude, “that the steam can be made to strike the generator blades with a force equivalent to that of water falling 300 feet.” Dr. Claude asserted that in his original plant at Ougrecm, Belgium, with which he had tested t,h» theory, he had moved a generator at 0000 revolutions a minute, even though working with water whose temperature difference was only 18 degrees. A site near Havana has been chosen as the logical plac'e for industrial installation, he said, and the difficulties to be encountered in working out the plan in the open sea will now be tested.