The OTEC Thread Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion

I couldn't find a thread on this technology in a search, so this definitely needs its own thread. This technology truly holds the solution to our planet's energy, environmental, and resource issues. This dismantles the population bomb, right here.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is an energy generation process that utilizes the temperature difference between surface and deep seawater, like a low pressure steam engine. Closed cycle OTECs use a working fluid like ammonia or propylene in a closed system for the heat exchange reaction. Open cycle OTECs use seawater as the working fluid.

The temperature difference between surface and deep seawater at the equator is about 20C, which is more than enough to power this process. OTECs outside of the tropics are viable at this time. Desalinated water is one of the most notable by-products of this process. Nutrient rich deep seawater is another optional by-product of this process.

This is not a new idea. A little history:

Ocean Thermal Difference, the difference between surface and deeper layers as a source of power, has been recognized for more than a century.

In 1881 an American engineer, Campbell, two Italians, Dornig and Boggia and a French physicist, D’Arsonval, proposed a closed cycle Ocean Thermal device. The warm surface water would heat and cause evaporation of a “working fluid (alternative fluids were suggested) which would pass through a turbine, thereafter being condensed by cold water pumped up from deep layers, and again fed into the evaporator.

The first to build practical plants was a pupil of D’Arzonval, the French engineer George Claude, member of L’Academie des Sciences, of the French Society of Civil Engineers. He won the fiftieth anniversary medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He chose the “open cycle system” in which the ocean surface water itself evaporates and drives the turbine, and rejected the “closed cycle”, of which he said in a talk to American engineers 22 October 1930(1.):
“Manifestly, such a solution is burdened by a number of inconveniences, one of them being the extra equipment for and cost of the working fluid and another the necessity of transmitting enormous quantities of heat through the inevitably dirty walls of immense boilers…. The sea water itself contains all that is needed for the direct utilization of such small temperature differences.”

Claude ran a small experimental device before fellow-members of l’Academie des Sciences in Paris, then build a larger plant at OUGREE in Belgium, which, in his words, “Made my virulent opponents hold their tongues.” His one-meter diameter turbine generated 60 kilowatt at 5000 rounds per minute with a total ocean thermal difference of 20 degrees C. This proved the thermodynamic viability. It remained to be seen how the plant would function in the ocean, how pumping cold water form deeper layers would influence neighboring layers and whether foaming would drastically decrease efficiency or break the turbine.

Claude moved his Belgian plant to Cuba. A two feet diameter pipeline would have been sufficient to supply his turbine with the proper amount of steam, but would have caused the cold water to be warmed before arriving at the condenser and would have incurred intolerable friction losses. A pipeline of two-meter diameter was built — and lost in a storm. A second pipeline was also lost. A third pipeline was built and successfully laid. The plant ran for eleven days, producing 22 kw on a turbine much too small for the other components of the plant, but Claude was operating on his own money and that of a few friends, and could not afford a new turbine. The basic function was nevertheless proven and, in the opinion of these resourceful enterprisers, should have been followed by prototypes and commercial plants.

shamcher.wordpress.com...

A little bit later:

1974:

Hawaii establishes Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) at Keahole Point on the Kona coast of Hawaii. Hawaii’s warm surface water and accessibility to deep, cold ocean water make it the ideal location for testing of OTEC technology.

1975:

Lockheed Missiles and Space Company receives a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to study OTEC.

1979:

The State of Hawaii, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Alfa Laval Thermal, Dillingham Corporation and Makai Ocean Engineering collaborate to design, develop, and operate the first successful floating closed-cycle floating OTEC plant, known as Mini-OTEC. Fifty kW of gross electricity is generated without the use of fossil fuels.

1979:

The State of Hawaii, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Alfa Laval Thermal, Dillingham Corporation and Makai Ocean Engineering collaborate to design, develop, and operate the first successful floating closed-cycle floating OTEC plant, known as Mini-OTEC. Fifty kW of gross electricity is generated without the use of fossil fuels.

1983:

TRW and the Department of Energy collaborate on an at-sea Cold Water Pipe (CWP) test in the open ocean near Honolulu, Hawaii.

1993:

NELHA and the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) collaborate on a 210 kW open-cycle OTEC plant producing electricity, cooling, and fresh water, which is also used for growing crops and aquaculture.

otecorporation.com...
This research has continued to the present day, but there's a brief introduction.

The brief history I've posted here is by no means exhaustive. Indeed it only brushes the surface. A lot of institutions have taken a long, serious look at OTEC over the years, including: John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics laboratory, the Carnegie-Mellon University, the Universities of Texas, Hawaii, New Orleans, Florida. Lockheed, Bechtel, TRW, Sea Solar Power, Hydronautics, Batelle, Allied Chemical Corporation, to name only a few(list quoted from shamcher.wordpress.com...). Thousands and thousands of pages of research have been done on the topic.

I think it hasn't been done much yet because of the cost per watt. In most mainland economies, coal or natural gas are cheaper alternatives. This technology is already a viable alternative in island economies that rely on diesel generated electricity. Hawaii recently made its first OTEC grid connection. Deals are being made, and OTECs are being planned and built as I write.
www.lockheedmartin.com...
www.scientificamerican.com...
tidalenergytoday.com...

I think that once this technology matures, the owners of the tech companies that bring this technology to fruition will be tomorrow what the oil and gas tycoons are today. Not to mention the huge resource value of the by-products of this process. All derived from an earth friendly, earth repairing even, technology. I sure would love to get a piece of that action.

What do you say Elon? I can totally point my finger and make this happen! Let's get out there!

Mr. President? You got China building their island out there, we could just build our own island a few hundred miles over and do a bunch of near misses with each others' fighter jets, it'd be great!(Just kidding about that)
Out of room! continued
www.seasolarpower.com...

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

The oil companies today will probably do everything they can to suppress this tech., or buy up the patents so no one actually gets to use them (like automotive manufacturers did back in the day with the electric car)

But if there's a fighting chance for this tech to be used on a grand scale, I will cross my fingers and hope for the best

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

What will be the environmental impact of this technology to the sea and sea life.

That will be a good issue to discuss, while the technology is there and is obviously been tested Is also the issue of how this will affect the oceans.

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

HOST [Hawaii Ocean Science & Technology Park] was the site of the first net energy producing OTEC plant. The park also operated a 250kW plant for 6 years in the 1990’s. More recently, Makai Ocean Engineering completed the construction of a heat exchanger test facility in 2011 and has since received funding to install a 100 kW turbine which will be connected to the HOST Park research campus micro grid. NELHA plans to also host a 1 MW OTEC facility at HOST Park in the near future.

Nelha.hawaii.gov - Administered by the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.

This has been up and running since 1974 doing experiments and demoing tech for OTEC. They are considering it for a desalination station off shore to help provide drinkable water for the islands. Various partners have come and gone include the US Navy and Lockheed. It is still in operation today.

The research is being looked at by countries close to the equator where the surface and deep water temperature difference is greater (like India). There are both open and closed version. I am not sure how I feel about mixing all of the ocean's heat layers up. May not be a great idea in the long run if this is used all around the equator.

Since I just managed to disappear my epic second post I guess I'll just respond to some of my replies, as they address some of the same issues.

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: TheBadCabbie

What will be the environmental impact of this technology to the sea and sea life.

That will be a good issue to discuss, while the technology is there and is obviously been tested Is also the issue of how this will affect the oceans.

With closed cycle OTEC, you have potential issues that the working fluid might cause. If it leaks, that could be an environmental or safety concern, depending on the working fluid. I think Sea Solar Power has settled on propylene as their working fluid of choice. I'm not sure how potentially harmful to the environment it could be, but I'm pretty sure it would be less harmful and toxic than a crude oil spill would be.

Ammonia, on the other hand, though highly toxic, would mix pretty quickly and dilute in seawater and is a functional working fluid. It's highly toxic though, so problematic to work with for sure. Of course, a properly functioning closed cycle OTEC shouldn't leak any working fluid at all. You wouldn't just 'run it anyway' if it had any appreciable leakage. It's like an air conditioning system in that it needs to be sealed to work.

Open cycle eliminates the potential hazard of that working fluid and the complexity of the sealed system. The concern with open cycle is that the deep seawater pumped up for the cool side of your heat exchange will disturb the local ecology if discharged at surface. Over open deep water this is not a concern. If discharged at a depth of 30m the deep water will return to depth with negligible impact.

This concern is also easily mitigated on coastlines with a steep offshore drop off to a depth off 650m or more. You could easily have a shore based open cycle OTEC in Hawaii(and they do!) for instance, because of the steep offshore slope.

A shore based OTEC in California, on the other hand, would be more problematic for this reason (among others) because of the more gradual offshore slope. You wouldn't want to just discharge your deep seawater at shore(or even just a few miles out) because of the algae bloom it would cause.

You wouldn't want a shore based OTEC on a coastline like that anyway. You would most likely gain too much heat in your cold seawater while piping it to shore to be worth the effort. If you did have one though, you would want to pipe your cold water back out to deep water to discharge it, or otherwise plan for/mitigate it.

You could have open cycle OTECs over deep water off the gradual coastlines, piping the water and cabling the power back to shore. That's a lot of pipe and/or cable though. You could produce energy intensive products like ammonia or hydrogen gas and ship it.

I'd run a farm out there if it were me, build me a little city in the middle of that plastic patch. Make me a clean spot out there. Briefly, there's a real potential to use this process to clean and protect the oceans and the planet. I'll elaborate more on that later.

I think closed cycle systems are more viable in shallower water than open cycle, and more viable at higher latitudes.

I must admit to more ignorance on this topic than I would like. It's been a fascination of mine, a back burner project/pipe dream that I've had for years. I wish I had more time to work on it.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

At Keahole Point the cold water is being used for various, commercially active, aquaculture projects.

Abalone grown in Hawaii.
Not to mention the Spirulina.

friendsofnelha.org...

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: TheBadCabbie

The oil companies today will probably do everything they can to suppress this tech., or buy up the patents so no one actually gets to use them (like automotive manufacturers did back in the day with the electric car)

But if there's a fighting chance for this tech to be used on a grand scale, I will cross my fingers and hope for the best

Entrenched energy industries may well play a role in why this technology has not been developed, but on the surface the cost per watt is still pretty high. By my rough calculations of a few years ago from memory, it's like $2 to $3 per watt versus whatever coal, gas, and oil cost us(probably $.50 to $1.00 per watt).

In other words, if I tapped one of the ready to go companies for 1,000 MW of production, by the time we spent that $3 billion the cost would come down to $2-3 million per megawatt. Versus probably $750,000 or less for a coal or natural gas plant. Not sure how nuclear stacks up cost wise. No radioactive waste from OTEC though.

It hasn't been widely produced, so there has been little opportunity for the cost of production to come down. Deep water oil rig equipment in some cases is easily adapted for OTEC, interestingly enough. Also you're certainly not the only one crossing your fingers. Lockheed Martin is supposed to be building the world's largest OTEC for China (10 MW) right now. I think they scored that back in 2012. They've had developed concepts ready to go for some time now, and they're not the only ones. There are at least a dozen firms with this technology on the drawing board ready to go for interested parties. Sea Solar Power is another notable US firm that has been ready to go with their design for at least a decade. The family at Sea Solar Power has been working with OTEC for decades.
www.seasolarpower.com...

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

If you do the math on the amount of heat stored in those layers, and have a look at the research data that's accumulated over the decades, I think you'll agree that properly done there is little negative environmental impact.

You can't discharge deep water at surface over shallows without potential bio-contamination, so you just don't do that. Closed cycle doesn't really move seawater around like open cycle does. It's all a large underwater construction where the working fluid does all the moving around as I understand it. Anyhow, you're talking about an essentially inexhaustible source of solar energy stored in that surface seawater by today's standards.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

At Keahole Point the cold water is being used for various, commercially active, aquaculture projects.

Abalone grown in Hawaii.
Not to mention the Spirulina.

friendsofnelha.org...

Yup. Lot of money to be made from some of that stuff. Aquaculture in general (fish farming) is the most efficient means of livestock production there is. Unless you're going insects or worms or something. I think the fish have even them beat.

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

You can't discharge deep water at surface over shallows without potential bio-contamination, so you just don't do that.

I wonder how well deep (really deep) sea biota would survive under surface conditions.

Hasn't it been done at Keahole for years? Have any impacts been observed?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: TheBadCabbie

You can't discharge deep water at surface over shallows without potential bio-contamination, so you just don't do that.

I wonder how well deep (really deep) sea biota would survive under surface conditions.

Hasn't it been done at Keahole for years? Have any impacts been observed?

Deep seawater discharged in a shallow pond will naturally bloom algae I think. I think it lends itself fairly readily to Spirulina production, though I'm not sure what other species naturally bloom with that type of discharge. I know NOAA has some interesting rules on how OTEC water is supposed to be treated too, so that is something to consider.

Deep seawater is very nitrogen rich, making it a better growth medium for sea flora than surface seawater. It's lower temperature can also be used to advantage. A properly grown algaeculture can serve as a feedstock for higher links in the foodchain.

Discharged offshore in an area that is too shallow, it can disturb the native ecology and potentially cause a hazard to that ecology. I don't think NELHA has screwed it up, but I could be wrong. Properly done it should pose a negligible risk of negative environmental impact.

Of course the potential for environmental cleanup using this technology is yuge. Widespread mariculture could end ocean feedstock depletion. Algae and other crops could be farmed for energy. OTECs could remove plastic from the seawater they process. Also produces distilled water as a by-product.

originally posted by: Phage

Hasn't it been done at Keahole for years?

To more directly answer you and the readers about this question, here's some info from the NELHA's website:

The State of Hawaii has invested over $100 million since 1974 to create HOST Park, a unique outdoor demonstration site for emerging renewable and ocean based technologies. Three sets of pipelines deliver deep sea water from up to 3000 ft depth as well as pristine sea surface water. Solar insolation is among the highest for coastal areas in the United States. The innovative green economic development park is administered by NELHA, a State of Hawaii agency administratively attached to DBEDT. After three decades, NELHA is well on track to fulfilling its mission as an engine for economic development.

nelha.hawaii.gov...

a reply to: Phage

(Alittle more nfo for those following along...)

Complementary Technologies

OTEC has potential benefits beyond power production. For example, spent cold seawater from an OTEC plant can chill fresh water in a heat exchanger or flow directly into a cooling system. Simple systems of this type have air-conditioned buildings at the Natural Energy Laboratory for several years.

OTEC technology also supports chilled-soil agriculture. When cold seawater flows through underground pipes, it chills the surrounding soil. The temperature difference between plant roots in the cool soil and plant leaves in the warm air allows many plants that evolved in temperate climates to be grown in the subtropics. The Natural Energy Laboratory maintains a demonstration garden near its OTEC plant with more than 100 fruits and vegetables, many of which would not normally survive in Hawaii.

Aquaculture is perhaps the most well-known byproduct of OTEC. Cold-water delicacies, such as salmon and lobster, thrive in the nutrient-rich, deep seawater culled from the OTEC process. Microalgae such as Spirulina, a health food supplement, also can be cultivated in the deep-ocean water.

Finally, an advantage of open or hybrid-cycle OTEC plants is the production of fresh water from seawater. Theoretically, an OTEC plant that generates 2 megawatts of net electricity could produce about 14,118.3 cubic feet (4,300 cubic meters) of desalinated water each day.

Energy.gov - Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Basics.

Pretty basic ideas when in a hot climate why waste energy cooling buildings, gardens, HVAC units, when you can use the "spent" liquid for the same purpose? A type of upcycling that I particularly like! The good old "win-win" situation like TheBadCabbie has said, "make electricity and clean water at one go"!

OTEC works best when the temperature difference between the warmer, top layer of the ocean and the colder, deep ocean water is about 36°F (20°C). These conditions exist in tropical coastal areas, roughly between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. To bring the cold water to the surface, ocean thermal energy conversion plants require an expensive, large-diameter intake pipe, which is submerged a mile or more into the ocean's depths.

(same source as above)

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

There is also the hybrid model a closed system that exchanges with an open system. Looks like expense is the major factor now. But as material sciences advance that might not be much of a challenge. Imagine a large pipe made from CO2 sucked out of the air (carbon nanotubes), a thin layer of metal coated inside with a non-flaking ceramic material that resists corrosion...

I like your thinking! These ideas need to be invested in and reported on to get people excited. Seems right now to be an engineering and cost issue. Maybe we could repurpose those floating oil drill rigs?

Anyway, if I did not say so earlier... S+F!

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

a reply to: TheBadCabbie

There is also the hybrid model a closed system that exchanges with an open system. Looks like expense is the major factor now. But as material sciences advance that might not be much of a challenge. Imagine a large pipe made from CO2 sucked out of the air (carbon nanotubes), a thin layer of metal coated inside with a non-flaking ceramic material that resists corrosion...

I like your thinking! These ideas need to be invested in and reported on to get people excited. Seems right now to be an engineering and cost issue. Maybe we could repurpose those floating oil drill rigs?

Yes, new materials hold the likelihood of boosting the efficiency and easing the technical challenges of OTEC.

Even as we are, though not without its challenges, OTEC is very doable right now.

There have been hiccups. I think it was India dropped part of their (downward pointing intake)pipeline from a floating platform during installation a few years back. I think they ended up just bringing out new pieces and redoing the install rather than do a recovery. I'll look it up when I've got a chance and link it here. Installing a massive 1000m down pipe is challenging enough, recovering pieces of it from the deep sea floor is another game altogether I'm sure. You don't want to drop your pipe while you're hanging it then...

As to the oil rigs, some of those oil rigs are practically off the shelf convertible to OTEC as I understand them(spar type). Others could be easily adapted(semi submersible, standard floating rig). That's pretty expensive equipment, by the way. You get into the hundreds of millions and billions pretty quickly. It could absolutely be re-purposed though, and I'm pretty sure it would perform well. A decommissioned carrier would have been an option as well, but I think I missed the boat(s) on those. Maybe next time.

Cost is still an issue, but I think it's almost down to who ends up doing it first(and second, and third, etc.). Like I said, I just hope I can catch a piece of the action as it pops off, because this tech is poised to roll. It's just a matter of time, in my opinion. I think that even if some better energy solution were to present itself, OTEC is still very viable for the other resources it can produce. Food production, water, etc.

Here's an article I found that has quite a bit of information on OTEC, looks to have been written about 2003. "Otec Explained" the page banner names it, looks like a UK site. It mentions the Indian pipe loss briefly:

The next demonstration project to follow was a 1MW barge mounted Indian OTEC project built in the year 2001 and pioneered by NIOT, Chennai....While conducting some experiments off the West Cost of India, the cold water pipe got snapped off and arrangements were made to replace this pipe.

www.esru.strath.ac.uk...
There are other historical failures I will try to document here in the future, some of which are also mentioned in this article's history timeline.

Environmental concerns are included in the report:

Chemical Polution

Biocides, which are used in most marine technology developments to some extent, are particularly important in OTEC operations since the efficiency of operation can be severely reduced if bio-fouling occurs. Heat exchangers for example must be free of bio-fouling to operate with maximum possible heat transfer. High concentrations of biocide coatings will have an affect on the marine life which ingest them and may pollute waters close to the operation. Strict guidelines exist for certain biocide concentrations in natural waters. The environmental protection agency (EPA) in the U.S. permits a maximum of 0.5 mg per litre of Cl2 concentration. Closed cycle OTEC plants require to use Cl2 at levels of less than 10 percent of the EPA limits

The use of ammonia as a working fluid is also a potential hazard to the environment. It is chosen because of appropriate physical properties. A spillage of ammonia to the sea would have adverse effects to the environment but the flow rate of release and overall volume of any spillage would dictate the severity of the leak. In small volumes the consequences would be minimal and in fact salts of ammonia would act as nutrient enhancements. A large spill of ammonia into the sea would pose a hazard to marine life, platform crew and the adjacent population who are likely to inhale the highly toxic vapour.

Chemical pollution will also be produced by the corrosive effect of seawater passing through the heat exchanger system. Corrosion will produce metallic ions, and scale particles which could have direct toxic effects on the marine life which ingests, them as well as long term pollution to the sea. In reality this is a low priority impact which is an unavoidable element of any metallic marine vessel. The heat exchangers are the greatest potential source of trace elements because their large surfaces are in continuous contact with the seawater streams. Elements of particular concern are copper, aluminium, zinc, tin, chromium, cobalt, nickel, cadmium and manganese.

Oil and Grease release is also likely as trace pollutants. Operations are not likely to produce more than any other sea vessel, and pollution is predicted to be well within EPA limits.

Emissions (carbon dioxide)

Gas solubility in seawater decreases with increasing temperature. Any OTEC operation is likely to require large volumes of cold CO2 rich water to be pumped up to the warm surface waters. The decreased pressure and increased temperature will decrease the ability of the discharged water to retain CO2 in the solution. A net out-gassing of CO2 could occur. At an OTEC facility the worst case scenario is that the CO2 concentration in the effluent water would equilibrate to the same concentration as the warm sea water in a now mixed layer. The maximum CO2 that could become released to the atmosphere is the difference between concentrations at sea surface and the deep ocean. The concentrations at the sea surface and 700m depths are, 2 and 2.4mini moles CO2/kg water respectively. Studies show that power production utilising OTEC would release CO2 emissions, however it has been predicted that maximum emissions would be five times less than that produced by a fossil fuelled power plant of the same power capacity. Furthermore, OTEC facilities would not produce other emissions and particulate matter such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, lead, carbon monoxide, ozone and other hydrocarbons. In conclusion, release of CO2 from an OTEC plant is not expected to affect the local or regional climate significantly and there will be negligible contribution to the green-house effect, particularly when compared with practices and consequences of conventional power stations.

That looked to be the worst of it, as the environmental concerns went, but there's a lot more in the article. I didn't want to over quote it. Lot of information in that article. I gave it a thorough scan, and I'm looking forward to absorbing it in its entirety soon.

I originally read about OTEC in a book called 'The Millennail Project', by Marshall Savage. There's a Wikipedia page on it:
The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps-Wikipedia page

Savage's proposed plan was to build floating cities and farm the oceans to acquire the capital resources that a large scale space program would require. He also felt that a seafaring lifestyle would be a good training environment to prepare his proposed society for a spacefaring lifestyle. The sea is a harsh mistress, but deep space is likely a harsher one.

The First Millennial Foundation was born, wobbled, sort of fizzled, and has now morphed into the Living Universe Foundation.
LUF-Welcome

Work continues there incrementally to advance the original aims proposed by Savage in 'The Millennial Project: Colonizing The Galaxy In Eight Easy Steps'. Savage himself stepped away fairly early on in these doings, as I recall from my study of this group of a few years back. I don't know that there was any scandal or intrigue to that decision, though there might have been.

Other seafaring societies have come into being more recently as well. The Seastedding Institute is one such organization.
www.seasteading.org...
From their about section:

At The Seasteading Institute, we believe that experiments are the source of all progress: to find something better, you have to try something new. But right now, there is no open space for experimenting with new societies.

That’s why we work to enable seasteading communities — floating cities — which will allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for how to live together.

Who Are We?
Seasteaders are a diverse global team of marine biologists, nautical engineers, aquaculture farmers, maritime attorneys, medical researchers, security personnel, investors, environmentalists, and artists. We plan to build seasteads to host profitable aquaculture farms, floating healthcare, medical research islands, and sustainable energy powerhouses. Our goal is to maximize entrepreneurial freedom to create blue jobs to welcome anyone to the Next New World.

We are credentialed, qualified, pragmatic idealists who plan to apply hard economics, evolutionary principles, and business savvy in order to create the first nations not to aggress against any people. Over a thousand people have donated to the Institute, and hundreds have volunteered their expertise.

Another notable organization I am familiar with is the Sea Lions Foundation.
www.sealionsfoundation.com...
From their Who We Are section:

The Sea Lions Foundation was founded by Joshua Daniels. Mr. Joshua has healed the sick and injured, taught people to hear the Voice of the Lord, delivered Words of Knowledge which were confirmed accurate and Prophecies which came true, and owns nine dogs and an unknown number of cats. It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true, and if you’re looking into the Sea Lions, you need to know that you’re not dealing with people who are all hat, no cattle.

Mr. Joshua was filled with the Spirit in 1994, and immediately was taken by the Holy Spirit into training, and led through several years’ adventures to living on a boat in San Diego Harbor, where he discovered concrete ships. While researching what changes he’d need to make to his boat to make it the world cruiser he wanted for missions, he realized it would be easier and cheaper to start from scratch. He also discovered how amazingly cheaply and simply a very effective concrete boat is manufactured, and the results of that work are what you see at the Freedom Fleet.

HIs experiences at various churches pointed up to him the importance of doing things the way Yeshua and the apostles said, and the Sea Lions’ policies of personal freedom with integrity and morality, forgiveness and restoration, and loose, flexible, voluntary structure came about.

His experience as a Consulting Business Analyst to major corporations for over a decade taught him how organizations work, and what their limits are, and the restricted role of the Sea Lions’ Council came into being.

He dabbles in music, playing banjo and guitar occasionally, and prefers fountain pens to rollerball.

Proudly Christian, and passionate about it. Don't get too alarmed though. Josh is actually a nice guy, and seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. I personally wish him well in his endeavors, and look forward to working with him in the future. I think this technology holds tremendous potential for healing our planet and our people, so I think OTEC and mariculture can be a superb tool for missionary groups. I look forward to seeing it utilized in this fashion.

There is/was another seafaring social movement that I came across the last time I was researching this issue more deeply that was Scandinavian in origin. I only remembered it as I was writing this post, so I'm not going to try and research it just now, but I thought I should mention it anyway. Perhaps I'll be able to provide more information on it later.

I thought I would do a post while I had a moment on an early historical failure in implementation of this technology. This is from one of the articles I quoted in my OP:

The first to build practical plants was a pupil of D’Arzonval, the French engineer George Claude, member of L’Academie des Sciences, of the French Society of Civil Engineers. He won the fiftieth anniversary medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He chose the “open cycle system” in which the ocean surface water itself evaporates and drives the turbine, and rejected the “closed cycle”, of which he said in a talk to American engineers 22 October 1930(1.):
“Manifestly, such a solution is burdened by a number of inconveniences, one of them being the extra equipment for and cost of the working fluid and another the necessity of transmitting enormous quantities of heat through the inevitably dirty walls of immense boilers…. The sea water itself contains all that is needed for the direct utilization of such small temperature differences.”

Claude ran a small experimental device before fellow-members of l’Academie des Sciences in Paris, then build a larger plant at OUGREE in Belgium, which, in his words, “Made my virulent opponents hold their tongues.” His one-meter diameter turbine generated 60 kilowatt at 5000 rounds per minute with a total ocean thermal difference of 20 degrees C. This proved the thermodynamic viability. It remained to be seen how the plant would function in the ocean, how pumping cold water form deeper layers would influence neighboring layers and whether foaming would drastically decrease efficiency or break the turbine.

Claude moved his Belgian plant to Cuba. A two feet diameter pipeline would have been sufficient to supply his turbine with the proper amount of steam, but would have caused the cold water to be warmed before arriving at the condenser and would have incurred intolerable friction losses. A pipeline of two-meter diameter was built — and lost in a storm. A second pipeline was also lost. A third pipeline was built and successfully laid. The plant ran for eleven days, producing 22 kw on a turbine much too small for the other components of the plant, but Claude was operating on his own money and that of a few friends, and could not afford a new turbine. The basic function was nevertheless proven and, in the opinion of these resourceful enterprisers, should have been followed by prototypes and commercial plants.

shamcher.wordpress.com...
Also, here is a site dedicated to posting OTEC related news:
www.otecnews.org...

Here's a New York Times article from 2009:
www.nytimes.com...
A quote:

In theory the technology could, among other uses, provide substantial amounts of power to Hawaii and other warm-water sites and also be used in floating power plants making industrial products like ammonia. However, such goals are distant.

Skeptics say that the technology is highly inefficient because it requires large amounts of energy to pump the cold water through the system.

Patricia Tummons, who edits the newsletter Environment Hawaii, said a major question about the technology was “just how economical it can be.”

Robert Varley, who is helping to lead Lockheed’s efforts, estimated that just 3.5 percent of the potential energy from the warm water pumped might actually be used. “In reality that doesn’t matter — the fuel is free,” he said.

But building and operating the platform will be costly. Harry Jackson, the president of Ocees International, an engineering firm based in Honolulu also working on the technology, estimated that a test plant of the size Hawaii is planning — which is still far smaller than commercial scale — would cost $150 million to $250 million.

Some environmental groups are cautiously embracing the technology as one of many approaches that could help reduce fossil fuel consumption and thus combat climate change.

Here's a report from The Millennial Project 2.0, a community sourced continuation of Marshall Savage's work from The Millennial Project. TMP2.0 approaches OTEC from the perspective of it being a primer for space colonization, so that's nice.
tmp2.wikia.com...
You'll find features that are intended to be continued in future spacecraft and habitats envisioned in their design schemes. Here's a quote from that report:

While the marine colony community of Aquarius will most certainly seek advances in undersea cable technology to enable increasing line distances with decreasing losses, near-term no existing submarine power cable technology can effectively link a fleet of OTEC ships spanning the Equator with the rest of the world, thus limiting their use to just about as many locations as coastal OTEC's are limited to. To overcome this the OTEC must be complemented with facilities for the continuous packaging and distribution of energy in a more practical portable form; hydrogen or other energy packaging mediums. This requires not only plants and large volume storage for this conversion but also a shipping infrastructure that can deliver these energy products to the rest of the world. Thus we see that OTEC is NOT simply a way to provide power for a marine colony and produce a little export income. The marine colony is the key to the implementation of OTEC as a global energy source. The marine colony would exist for the sake of OTEC, which is ultimately only able to fully realize its potential in that context.

Savage also realized that there are many other side-benefits of OTEC that also require a marine colony to host their facilities. In operation, OTECs function like miniature upwelling zones bringing up nutrient-rich deep seawater and discharging it after its use as a heat-sink is complete, much like natural upwelling zones which are responsible for many of the world’s greatest coastal fisheries. In fact, this actually gives OTECs great potential as a carbon sequestration method because salps (an algaevore that excretes carbon at great depths) and algae growth would both be much increased at the outer perimeter of this upwelling plume –a phenomenon already being exploited for this purpose using solar-powered floating seawater pump stations. By using this huge volume of discharge water as the source nutrient supply of a poly-species network of mariculture founded on algeaculture, extremely vast industrial mariculture systems could be developed producing vast quantities of food with no overhead in feed stock and minimal environmental impact. Proportional to the scale of OTEC power production, such mariculture facilities could easily become a major source of food on the global scale –which, of course, needs shipping facilities to distribute it just as the packaged energy does. Given full-scale deployment over the Aquarius phase, such marine colony food production could easily become one of the single-greatest food sources on the entire planet, thus this, in combination with the encouraged conversion of global energy reliance to renewable energy, has become a key factor in Savage’s original plan for using the Aquarius phase as a means of ameliorating much of the socioeconomic strife world-wide, creating a global sociopolitical climate more amenable to human progress and the advance to concerted space development.

Thus we can see how OTEC has the potential to be one of the most significant technologies in the entire 21st century. A world-transforming technology if appropriately and fully implemented in concert with marine colonization. For centuries people have fantasized about living on the sea but there has never truly be an entirely practical reason for that. But with OTEC we have reasons so practical –so vital– they may determine the very survival of human civilization and its ability to expand into space.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I wanted to reply to you again to correct one of my earlier statements that was somewhat inaccurate.
You said:

I am not sure how I feel about mixing all of the ocean's heat layers up. May not be a great idea in the long run if this is used all around the equator.

To which I replied:

Closed cycle doesn't really move seawater around like open cycle does. It's all a large underwater construction where the working fluid does all the moving around as I understand it.

That was not an entirely accurate statement on my part. Most closed cycle systems do pump the cold water up to surface and run the reaction there. I believe there are designs that are more monolithic in nature, where the superstructure of the device would extend far below the waterline. I can't articulate all the details yet because I haven't studied this aspect of OTEC enough and I don't want to state them incorrectly, but I do believe such designs exist. There's also a passive system envisioned using ferrous particulates in the working fluid and mhd collecters along the fluid circuit, but this is a newer concept that may yet be many years off.
The lengthy article I posted a little up the page(which is actually a master's thesis report),
www.esru.strath.ac.uk...
goes into some detail on some of the more advanced OTEC cycles. It appears from looking at his data that there are a number of different approaches to OTEC than the four basic ones of open cycle, closed cycle, hybrid, and passive.

I thought I should write a post on the Lockheed Martin/Reignwood Group/China deal that I mentioned in my OP. I've been meaning to provide more information on this project and I find it extremely interesting that there is absolutely nothing reported on it. You've got this OtecNews article from 2013:
www.otecnews.org...

Today, Lockheed Martin has announced that it is working with Reignwood Group to develop an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) pilot power plant off the coast of southern China. A memorandum of agreement between the two companies was signed in Beijing on Saturday. Following the ceremony, both companies met with United States Secretary of State John Kerry during his first official state visit to the People’s Republic of China.

The 10-megawatt offshore plant, to be designed by Lockheed Martin, will be the largest OTEC project developed to date, supplying 100 percent of the power needed for a green resort to be built by Reignwood Group. In addition, the agreement could lay the foundation for the development of several additional OTEC power plants ranging in size from 10 to 100 megawatts, for a potential multi-billion dollar value.

“The benefits to generating power with OTEC are immense, and Lockheed Martin has been leading the way in advancing this technology for decades,” said Dan Heller, vice president of new ventures for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training. “Constructing a sea-based, multi-megawatt pilot OTEC power plant for Reignwood Group is the final step in making it an economic option to meet growing needs for clean, reliable energy.”

Other similar short blurbs about the deal from 2013 and 2014 are out there floating around, and that's pretty much it. Nothing saying the deal fell through, or has been stymied. No progress reports...Nothing.

This suggests to me that this project has become somewhat compartmentalized while it is being implemented. The company has closed ranks to avoid inadvertently leaking any technical details to competitors or would be detractors. This is disruptive technology to some entrenched industries, so I can't say I blame them. Anyhow, looks like it's gone gray for now, at least as far as Lockmart's project is concerned.

Maybe I'm just missing it somehow. If anyone has any more current info on this OTEC project, I sure would like to see it.