A
New System
for Open, Location Independent, Reliable, Clean and Renewable Energy.
Solar Powered Ammonia Absorption System
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This
implementation
of the energy tower is intended for higher annual sunlight areas or for
a system that the primary focus is seasonal thermal storage.
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Day Cycle
The
system utilizes pressurized anhydrous ammonia to cool the ambient air
capturing the
convection energy in a down draft tower structure. The ammonia is then
absorbed into cool water, heated in thermal solar collector and the
ammonia vapour is fractionally distilled, cooled and condensed under
pressure. A portion of the heat is recovered in a separate low boiling
point steam turbine. The heat is stored in a large
underground thermal storage structure.
Step by step detail in
pdf format
Flow
Animation (requires
FlashPlayer)
Night Cycle
When
the ambient air is cooler, the system operates very similar to
traditional goethermal and extracts heats from the local thermal
storage, uses that heat to drive a steam turbine and air cools the
turbine with a heat exchanger at the base of the tower. The convection
caused by warming the air at the base of the tower drives the wind
turbine. The improvements over most low-gradient geothermal systems is
that the heat source is relatively close and the air cooling generates
some electicity rather than being an efficiency loss in transfering a
cooling media (usually cooler surface water).
In seasonal heat storage systems, there is a very large gradient
between
the thermal storage and winter air and the system is very efficient for
it's class.
Day Cycle (Tropical
Locations)
In
high humidity tropical climates, the ambient air temperature remains
relatively close to the shallow surface earth temperature and the
temperature gradient would not make a bi-directional system feasible.
The extraction of clean water from the humid air at a height is a major
benefit of this system in a tropical location. A
twin-tower in a "U" shaped system with a continual down and updraft air
flow would be a design intended to dissipate as much heat as possible
in the hot climate. The system would use large
anhydrous ammonia storage to allow
night operation and require large solar collectors to recover the
ammonia in the day. During sunlight periods the solar collectors and
ammonia storage would need to be large enough to allow sufficient
ammonia to be recovered/re-pressurized to allow for continual
operation. The system wouldn't use thermal storage and the ground would
only be utilized as a heat sink to dissipate excess heat.
This page, images and other documentation on this website are
copyright Robert
J.
Rohatensky, January 2007
and are published under the Design
Science License.
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