Wave energy.

[Old Things]

To me, this only makes sense to use the ocean as a way to produce energy. Of course, you would have to "Do something" about all the coal-burning companies that profit from burning coal.

It seems more likely that we will be unable to do this because greedy people will keep it from happening. But the ocean is a limitless energy source that will never go away.

Patented Wave Energy Technology Gets Its Sea Legs

Distributed embedded energy converter technologies (or DEEC-Tecs) could eventually transform sources of everyday energy into electricity or other forms of usable energy.

www.nrel.gov

Why Wave Power Has Lagged Far Behind as Energy Source

Researchers have long contended that power from ocean waves could make a major contribution as a renewable energy source. But a host of challenges, including the difficulty of designing a device to capture the energy of waves, have stymied efforts to generate electricity from the sea.

e360.yale.edu

 

[Cognisant]

The difficulty isn't extracting energy from ocean currents, that's easy, the hard part is constructing a machine with moving parts that can survive operating in salt water for a significant length of time without succumbing to biofouling.

For example this would be my solution:

As waves come into land they're funneled by two concrete sea walls down to a point, this increases the intensity of the waves, and at the peak of that funnel there's a check valve, basically just a rubber ball trapped in a wider section of pipe. It works using much the same principle as a hydraulic ram pump, the focused wave creates a moment of high pressure forcing the valve open, water enters, then pressure in the pipe closes the valve again as soon as that pressure is gone.

This ram-pump sorta thing pumps water up to a reservoir (like a hydroelectric dam) or water tower, storing up potential energy, and when you want to use that power you release the water back into the ocean through a turbine.

Sounds simple right?

Except that check-valve is going to get biofouled to hell and corrosive salt water will destroy the turbine, and the concrete, and basically everything it touches because the ocean is a hateful thing.

 

[Old Things]

I did not know that...

 

[Cognisant]

There's also the problem that although my idea would probably work it wouldn't generate all that much power, it might be enough for a small island community or single seaside residence but you won't power a city with this.

Coal power plants don't just burn a few wheelbarrows of coal a day, they burn thousands of tons. The ship below can carry enough coal to keep a power plant running for two, maybe three days.

There are thousands of these ships delivering coal to port cities across the world, to ports that run 24/7 and can load/unload a ship in a matter of hours.

If we want to go green with energy generation we need to think BIG.

 

[dr froyd]

coal-based energy is arguably the industry that has been the most subjected to relentless assault from policymakers over the past couple of decades – even when its been a completely suicidal endeavor with last year being a case in point when highly anti-coal regions like europe had to resort to coal due to energy shortages.

so its continued existence is definitely not for the lack of trying, it's more pure necessity.

i've also had ideas like why not cover the entire pacific ocean with solar panels, or say the sahara desert, but obviously there's a myriad of infrastructural issues with these ideas. I'm sure we'll get there eventually tho. If there's one thing we're not lacking right now it's the will to make zero-emission energy.

 

[Cognisant]

We could have fusion right now if we weren't shy about setting off hydrogen bombs under the ocean...

There's no way that could possibly come back to bite us.

 

[Old Things]

coal-based energy is arguably the industry that has been the most subjected to relentless assault from policymakers over the past couple of decades – even when its been a completely suicidal endeavor with last year being a case in point when highly anti-coal regions like europe had to resort to coal due to energy shortages.

so its continued existence is definitely not for the lack of trying, it's more pure necessity.

i've also had ideas like why not cover the entire pacific ocean with solar panels, or say the sahara desert, but obviously there's a myriad of infrastructural issues with these ideas. I'm sure we'll get there eventually tho. If there's one thing we're not lacking right now it's the will to make zero-emission energy.

Always two sides to the same coin.

We could have fusion right now if we weren't shy about setting off hydrogen bombs under the ocean...

There's no way that could possibly come back to bite us.

LOL

 

[scorpiomover]

We could have fusion right now if we weren't shy about setting off hydrogen bombs under the ocean...

There's no way that could possibly come back to bite us.

We could just build fusion reactors in space. If the bombs go off, there's no-one to hear you scream.

 

[Cognisant]

We already have a fusion reactor in space, it's called the sun.

The point of doing it under the ocean is that all that energy gets captured by the water, mostly as heat, and as that column of hot water rises it can be used to drive a turbine. See fusion isn't actually that hard, it's generating that energy in a sustained controllable manner and capturing it for use elsewhere that's really difficult.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Here is a light wave / particle experiment, the double slit experiment, they are trying to figure out if it is a wave or a particle, skip in one minute if you don't like unrelated banter:

Physicists demonstrate Young's double-slit interference in time – Physics World

A temporal version of the famous experiment generates fringes in frequency rather than space

physicsworld.com