posted on Nov, 28 2004 @ 06:26 PM
Sardion and cloudx, that is one of the neatest concepts I have ever imagined. At the arboretum where my wife and I volunteer, we have a cooling tower
that does pretty much the same thing without the turbine.
I watched the movie twice, but was not able to back out the capabilities of the tower except that it averaged 30kW. That may not sound like much, but
it's a good start.
There are a lot of engineering questions that the Australians are probably answering now, and I'd love to visit them. For example, wind power
increases as the cube of the velocity, and a turbine, given its inherent size and weight, as well as cut-in and cut-out speeds, has to be matched to
the optimum wind conditions.
This means that, as you scale up your tower and thus the mass and velocity of the wind, you will have to re-design your turbine to closely match it.
I suppose the atltitude of the land is key too, because you'd probably have to make adjustments from the baseline density of 1.225 kg/m^2 of air or
whatever it is. That stuff's easy to figure out, though, if you're an engineer. I'm sure they're running sims right now with 6th and 7th degree
polynomials and should have it right down to a gnat's nostril.
but what really makes this stuff neat (especially for folks in places like Australia and Arizona) is that it traps ambient moisture and allows it to
be exploited for irrigating crops.
Indeed, I could see the water on the underside of the plastic sheeting being gravity-fed to a shaded area outside the actual collection area
where you would have bot slightly cooler and moisture-laden air, along with drip irrigation of plants such as vegetables.
Talk about a great synergy!
I'm definitely going to stay on top of this technology. Many thanks for bringing it up!