Canadian engineer Louis Michaud looks over one of his small man-made vorticesPosted on 06/26/2008 9:33:30 AM PDT by BGHater
Engineer spins up plan to generate electricity from sucked-up air
Coiled up in a tornado is as much energy as an entire power plant. So a Canadian engineer has a plan to spin up his own twister and extract energy from its tethered tail.
It all depends on heating the air near the surface so that it is much warmer than the air above.
"You can generate energy whenever you have a temperature gradient," said Louis Michaud. "The source of the energy here is the natural movement of warm and cold air currents."
These so-called convective air currents are only useful if they can be channeled in some way. That is why Michaud proposes using a tornado as a kind of drinking straw between the warm ground below and the cold sky above. Wind turbines placed at the bottom could generate electricity from the sucked-up air.
Whirlwind tour Tornadoes and hurricanes form when sun-heated air near the surface rises and displaces cooler air above. As outside air rushes in to replace the rising air, the whole mass begins to rotate.
Michaud got the notion of a man-made tornado — what he calls the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) — while working as an engineer on gas turbines.
Canadian engineer Louis Michaud looks over one of his small man-made vortices
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Well maybe we can put those man-made global warming tornadoes to good use! /s off
Been done.
This would work but the construction cost would be substantially the same as an ordinary power plant. Also, it would put out varying amounts of power regardless of demand.
This has SciFi B-Movie written all over it!
I also expect that if they actually try this, that we will be reading about the disaster of Tornado that they could not control.
Man-made tornadoes? A way for the ‘Rats to tilt the outcome on election day in close elections in the tornado belt?
Brilliant idea! It ranks right up there with the Atomic Hand grenade.
"You can generate energy whenever you have a temperature gradient," said Louis Michaud.
This is awesome! You could just start pumping energy into this thing and get more and more energy out of it! It's a perpetual motion machine!!
I can't think of a single flaw with a scheme like this.
Sounds good to me , what could go wrong with making tornadoes ? Congress could pass a law prohibiting twisters from doing harm without a permit .
"Commence Operation Vacusuck!"
I can.
Just wait until one gets out of its cage.
And of course, by EdWood's law, it'll be a pregnant one, so then they'll start breeding in the wild.
Pretty soon they'll be all over the place.
A spin doctor like Rove should be able to make a tornado do what he wants.
I have a tornado box that I made for science fair in Jr. High. It is pretty awesome. Maybe I should dig it out and get it running. Help out on the energy bills around here.
Yeah, with common-sense laws like this, what could go wrong?
I don't know about that. This could the the solution to global warming. You can produce a twister by cooling the air above an already warm surface as easily as warming the surface.
So, during periods of global warming, we just cool the top air, and during periods of global cooling, we reverse the process and warm the air below.
Problem solved!
Thats the first thing that popped into my mind.
What a maroon. If this would work why aren’t there tornados constantly forming over volcanic lava fields?
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