Recently I caught this crazy idea about using the natural flow of hot and cold air to create a "Atmospheric Vortex Engine".
He propose a way of producing a tornado-like twister that can concentrate mechanical energy and capture it to produce electricity. The mechanical energy is produced when heat is carried upward by convection in the atmosphere.
"The vortex engine consists of a cylindrical wall open at the top and with tangential air entries around the base. Heating the air within the wall using a temporary heat source such as fire or steam, will initialize the vortex. The heat required to sustain the vortex once established can be the natural heat content of warm humid air or can be provided in cooling towers located outside of the cylindrical wall and upstream of the deflectors. The continuous heat source for the peripheral heat exchanger can be waste industrial heat or warm seawater. Restricting the flow of air upstream of the deflectors regulates the intensity of the vortex. The vortex can be stopped by restricting the airflow to deflectors with direct orientation and by opening the airflow to deflectors with reverse orientation. The electrical energy is produced in turbo-expanders located upstream of the tangential air inlets. The pressure at the base of the vortex is less than ambient pressure because of the density of the rising air is less than the density of ambient air at the same level. The outlet pressure of the turbo-expanders is sub-atmospheric because they exhaust into the vortex."
The capturing of the energy will be using wind turbines. With wind turbines at the inlets to the arena, Michaud calculated that about 200 megawatts of electricity (enough to power a small city) could be extracted without draining the vortex of its power.
This concept can be developed further more, and be used to spin water to produce more energy, and other crazy ideas.
This amazing idea is still in planning stage, but have a very promising future.
