Ocean Energy: How OTEC Can Be A Renewable Revolution? Despite High Potential, Investment Is Lacking

Written by Bruno Teles

Published on 05/12/2023 at 17:54

OTEC, ou conversão de energia térmica do oceano (Imagem / Divulgação)

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Let’s Dive [Literally] Into the Idea of Turning the Ocean Into a Giant Battery. Come Along to Understand How the Ocean Can Be the Key to an Endless Source of Renewable Energy.

What if we use the ocean as a power plant? The idea is old, but it’s still in its infancy. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, takes advantage of the temperature difference between the warm surface water and the cold deep water. It’s simple: warm water evaporates a fluid (like ammonia), generating steam that drives a turbine. Then, the cold water from the depths cools the steam, and the cycle starts again. And the best part: it works 24 hours a day!

Giant Challenges, Pipelines, and Costs

But it’s not as easy as it seems. To start, it needs giant pipes to bring the cold water from the ocean’s depths to the surface. And these pipes have to be stable and flexible at the same time to withstand the force of waves and currents. Not to mention that storms can destroy everything, as happened with one of the first plants back in 1930.

The cost of a 100-megawatt OTEC plant can vary between US$ 780 million and US$ 1.5 billion. And there’s also the environmental issue: the process moves an enormous amount of water from the ocean, which may have impacts that we still don’t fully understand.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

The Future of OTEC, Between Hope and Reality

Although OTEC has enormous potential, it still lacks significant investment and research to make this technology take off. Current plants are too small to answer all our questions. And, in the last ten years, progress has been minimal.

So, will the ocean be our next big source of renewable energy? The idea is great, but there’s still a lot of water to flow. For now, OTEC is more promise than reality. But who knows, right? In the world of renewable energy, anything is possible!

Ocean Energy: How OTEC Can Be A Renewable Revolution? Despite High Potential, Investment Is Lacking

Let’s Dive [Literally] Into the Idea of Turning the Ocean Into a Giant Battery. Come Along to Understand How the Ocean Can Be the Key to an Endless Source of Renewable Energy.

Giant Challenges, Pipelines, and Costs

The Future of OTEC, Between Hope and Reality

With billions in loans, China is rebuilding Nigeria’s railway network from scratch, abandoning the British colonial tracks that have turned to scrap and creating a corridor of over 1,300 km to take the load off the roads of Africa’s largest economy.

A British company has installed in the middle of the ocean the world’s first floating platform that generates electricity 24 hours a day from the temperature difference between the surface and the depths of the Atlantic, without relying on wind or sun.

China is building an artificial island in the middle of the sea, covering 20 km², to construct the largest offshore airport in the world, the Dalian Jinzhouwan. This $4.3 billion project is anchored on more than 3,000 pillars embedded in the rock beneath the ocean and is scheduled to open in 2035.

Forget petroleum-based asphalt: a Scottish company transforms 684,000 plastic bottles into one kilometer of road that is 60% more resistant and up to 10 times more durable, and the technology has already started replacing traditional asphalt in more than 30 countries.

A robot named Walter does the work of five bricklayers per hour and can save the construction industry, where the average age of professionals is 46 years and almost no one wants to learn the trade anymore, in the United Kingdom.

Austrian engineers have developed an inflatable concrete technology that transforms flat slabs into domes using only air pressure, eliminating scaffolding and temporary forms, and potentially changing the way bridges, tunnels, and curved roofs are constructed worldwide.

The James Webb telescope spotted a planet 700 light-years from Earth with mornings full of sand clouds and nights with clear skies, the temperature difference between the two hemispheres reaches an impressive 170 degrees.

The coastal El Niño is not the classic El Niño, but it already raises a question in Brazil: can the phenomenon alter rain, heat, and winter?

The commander of the Brazilian Army publicly admitted that the country now perceives real threats in South America, something that, according to him, did not exist in the past, and advocates for the increasing use of drones and technology to secure the borders.

In China, even those who beg on the street already have a QR Code, paper money has practically disappeared from daily life in just ten years, and the entire country has come to live on invisible payments via mobile phones.

Brazil will harvest a record crop of up to 357 million tons of grains, but it does not have the capacity to store a large part of it. The storage deficit has reached the highest level in history and is equivalent to almost the entire production of Argentina.

Scientists considered detonating 213 nuclear bombs in the Sahara to create an artificial sea the size of El Salvador, with each explosion being a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and the goal was to generate more energy than Egypt’s largest hydroelectric plant.

Ocean Energy: How OTEC Can Be A Renewable Revolution? Despite High Potential, Investment Is Lacking

Let’s Dive [Literally] Into the Idea of Turning the Ocean Into a Giant Battery. Come Along to Understand How the Ocean Can Be the Key to an Endless Source of Renewable Energy.

Giant Challenges, Pipelines, and Costs

The Future of OTEC, Between Hope and Reality

With billions in loans, China is rebuilding Nigeria’s railway network from scratch, abandoning the British colonial tracks that have turned to scrap and creating a corridor of over 1,300 km to take the load off the roads of Africa’s largest economy.

A British company has installed in the middle of the ocean the world’s first floating platform that generates electricity 24 hours a day from the temperature difference between the surface and the depths of the Atlantic, without relying on wind or sun.

China is building an artificial island in the middle of the sea, covering 20 km², to construct the largest offshore airport in the world, the Dalian Jinzhouwan. This $4.3 billion project is anchored on more than 3,000 pillars embedded in the rock beneath the ocean and is scheduled to open in 2035.

Forget petroleum-based asphalt: a Scottish company transforms 684,000 plastic bottles into one kilometer of road that is 60% more resistant and up to 10 times more durable, and the technology has already started replacing traditional asphalt in more than 30 countries.

A robot named Walter does the work of five bricklayers per hour and can save the construction industry, where the average age of professionals is 46 years and almost no one wants to learn the trade anymore, in the United Kingdom.

Austrian engineers have developed an inflatable concrete technology that transforms flat slabs into domes using only air pressure, eliminating scaffolding and temporary forms, and potentially changing the way bridges, tunnels, and curved roofs are constructed worldwide.

The James Webb telescope spotted a planet 700 light-years from Earth with mornings full of sand clouds and nights with clear skies, the temperature difference between the two hemispheres reaches an impressive 170 degrees.

At 4,400 meters of altitude in the Himalayas, where the air is so thin it makes breathing difficult, India’s state oil company drilled a thousand meters of rock to reach a 240-degree subsoil and set up the country’s first geothermal plant.

An “invisible” plant can transform rivers meeting the sea into electricity 24 hours a day: French startup uses nanotechnology to extract energy from the salt difference between fresh and saltwater, without sun, wind, dam, or fuel.

An “invisible” plant can transform rivers meeting the sea into electricity 24 hours a day: French startup uses nanotechnology to extract energy from the salt difference between fresh and saltwater, without sun, wind, dam, or fuel.

Scientists develop a low-cost alternative to generate green hydrogen on a large scale using an innovative chemical process; discovery could revolutionize energy infrastructure, heavy industry, and sustainable transportation systems around the world.

Forget common renewable energy: HydroWing prepares a 10 MW project in Indonesia to transform ocean currents into predictable electricity, using turbines installed on the seabed in a region where the funnel effect between islands increases tidal potential.

The coastal El Niño is not the classic El Niño, but it already raises a question in Brazil: can the phenomenon alter rain, heat, and winter?

The commander of the Brazilian Army publicly admitted that the country now perceives real threats in South America, something that, according to him, did not exist in the past, and advocates for the increasing use of drones and technology to secure the borders.

In China, even those who beg on the street already have a QR Code, paper money has practically disappeared from daily life in just ten years, and the entire country has come to live on invisible payments via mobile phones.

Brazil will harvest a record crop of up to 357 million tons of grains, but it does not have the capacity to store a large part of it. The storage deficit has reached the highest level in history and is equivalent to almost the entire production of Argentina.

Scientists considered detonating 213 nuclear bombs in the Sahara to create an artificial sea the size of El Salvador, with each explosion being a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and the goal was to generate more energy than Egypt’s largest hydroelectric plant.