Study on the Cost Effective Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Power Plant

Srinivasan, Nagan; Sridhar, Meena; Agrawal, Monika

doi:10.2523/20340-ms

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…5) An inflation adjustment between 2010-2024 of 38% is assumed [77] . 6) Cost of ship design using a deepwater condenser is 66% of cold water pipe design [78] . 7) The annual operating cost is 5% [79] .…”

Section: Capital Costmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global warming, a global energy resource

Baird

2024

Therm. Sci. Eng.

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Global warming is a thermodynamics problem. When excess heat is added to the climate system, the land warms more quickly than the oceans due to the land’s reduced heat capacity. The oceans have a greater heat capacity because of its higher specific heat and the heat mixing in the upper layer of the ocean. Thermodynamic Geoengineering (TG) is a global cooling method which deployed at scale would generate 1.6 times the world’s current supply of primary energy and remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The cooling would mirror the ostensible 2008–2013 global warming hiatus. At scale 31,000 1-gigawatt (GW) ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants are estimated to be able to: a) displace about 0.8 watts per square meter (W/m2) of average global surface heat from the surface of the ocean to deep water that could be recycled in 226-year cycles, b) produce 31 terawatts (TW) (relative to 2019 global use of 19.2 TW and c) absorb about 4.3 Gt CO2 per year from the atmosphere by cooling the surface. The estimated cost of these plants is $2.1 trillion per year or 30 years to ramp up to 31,000 plants which are replaced as needed thereafter. Compared for example to the cost of world oil consumption that in 2019 was $2.3 trillion for 11.6 TW. The cost of the energy generated is estimated at $0.008/KWh.

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Section: Capital Costmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global warming, a global energy resource

Baird

2024

Therm. Sci. Eng.

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“…However, we restrict our discussion to a simplified version to allow greater scrutiny of the underlying data and improve transparency on the main costs involved. Table 4 shows the estimated cost of a 100 MW OTEC power plant with its underwater cabling and supporting vessel facilities as initially proposed by Srinivasan et al [50] and slightly modified to account for additional expenses pertaining to planning and development operations involved. An annual expenditure of about 1.5% of the capital cost is expected as operational and maintenance cost (O&M), Co [51].…”

Section: Cost-benefit Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of domestic water use on air pollutant emissions in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

DeFelice¹,

Gibson²

2013

Int J Energy Environ Eng

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The geographical location of Mauritius near the warm tropical waters of the Indian Ocean coupled to the vast exclusive economic zone approximating 2.3 million square kilometers, encourage the promotion of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) systems. Technological advancements have enabled offshore structures to pump the cold water lying at 1000 m depth in the seawater column to the surface, and through the temperature difference set up with the warm surface layer, drives a turbine and generates electricity. In this study, a model has been developed to compute the temperature difference between the deep (1000 m) and surface (20 m) seawater layers around Mauritius. An algorithm has been implemented to determine the net power generated from a proposed OTEC power plant, acquired through the processing of sea surface temperature satellite images, at a resolution of 1 km. The spatial and temporal variations of the net power generated has been observed by splitting the annual data into four monsoonal time frames. Results show that the south-western region of Mauritius possesses high OTEC resources, with annual mean daily net power generation capacity of about 95 MW, representing about 20% of the peak power demand of the island. Moreover, the bathymetry of the southern region is propitious due to deep cold water availability at a proximity of less than 5km from the coastline. The energy and exergy efficiencies of the OTEC system are found to be 1.9 and 22.8%, respectively. A cost-benefit analysis indicates that profits of the order of 4.5 times the initial investment can be generated.

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“…Studies have been carried out by Srinivasan et al . on the cost effectiveness of OTEC plants, and they designed a new OTEC system by introducing a subsea condenser. When identifying locations for OTEC plants, the thermal gradient suitable to drive the plants should not be very far away from the shore.…”

Section: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the ocean heat budget and ocean thermal energy conversion

Faizal

Ahmed

2011

Int. J. Energy Res.

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SUMMARYOcean water covers a vast portion of the Earth's surface and is also the world's largest solar energy collector. It plays an important role in maintaining the global energy balance as well as in preventing the Earth's surface from continually heating up because of solar radiation. The ocean also plays an important role in driving the atmospheric processes. The heat exchange processes across the ocean surface are represented in an ocean thermal energy budget, which is important because the ocean stores and releases thermal energy. The solar energy absorbed by the ocean heats up the surface water, despite the loss of heat energy from the surface due to back-radiation, evaporation, conduction, and convection, and the seasonal change in the surface water temperature is less in the tropics. The cold water from the higher latitudes is carried by ocean currents along the ocean bottom from the poles towards the equator, displacing the lower-density water above and creating a thermal structure with a large reservoir of warm water at the ocean surface and a large reservoir of cold water at the bottom, with a temperature difference of 22 C to 25 C between them. The available thermal energy, which is the almost constant temperature water at the beginning and end of the thermocline, in some areas of the oceans, is suitable to drive ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants. These plants are basically heat engines that use the temperature difference between the surface and deep ocean water to drive turbines to generate electricity. A detailed heat energy budget of the ocean is presented in the paper taking into consideration all the major heat inputs and outputs. The basic OTEC systems are also presented and analyzed in this paper.

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Study on the Cost Effective Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Power Plant

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Global warming, a global energy resource

Global warming, a global energy resource

Effect of domestic water use on air pollutant emissions in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

On the ocean heat budget and ocean thermal energy conversion

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