CASE STUDY REPORT ON

PYRE 202 WIND ENERGY, TIDAL ENERGY AND OTEC

Submitted by

R.SUNDARAMOORTHY

216012676030

I YEAR M.TECH

RENEWABLE ENERGY

PERIYAR NAGAR, VALLAM

THANJAVUR -613403

APRIL 2017

SIGNATURE OF FACULTY

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGES

ABSTRACT 3
INTRODUCTION: 4
TYPES OF OTEC 4
CLOSED CYCLE 4
WORKING OF CLOSED CYCLE-OTEC 6
OPEN CYCLE 8
LAND- AND SEA-BASED OTEC 10
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES 11
BENEFITS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF OTEC 13
CONCLUSION 14

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 OTEC (OCEAN THERMAL ENERGY
CONVERSION)

ABSTRACT

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), to me, is the developing

worlds answer to OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
We will no longer have to depend on oil supplies from other countries. OTEC
is an efficient, clean process, which utilizes the difference in temperatures
between the oceans surface and its depths to produce energy. The ocean
thermal energy conversion process works something like a refrigerator in
reverse. The warm surface waters vaporize a refrigerant and the vapour is
then used to drive a turbine. The refrigerant vapour is then condensed back
into a liquid after being cooled by Coldwater brought up from the ocean
depths. This technology is best applied in the tropics like India, because the
sun heats the ocean surface to comparably high temperatures, creating the
highest temperature differentials between surface and depths, which
translates into the largest potentials of energy production. This paper
describes the status of the various ocean thermal energy technologies, with
emphasis placed on those with a near-term potential and applicability in large
numbers

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INTRODUCTION:
In OTEC, we use the temperature difference between the hot surface
of the ocean and the cooler, deeper layers beneath to drive a heat engine in
a broadly similar wayexcept that no fuel is burned: we don't need to create
a difference in temperature by burning fuel because a temperature
gradient exists in the oceans naturally! Since the temperature difference is
all-important, we need the biggest vertical, temperature gradient we can
possibly find (at least 20 and ideally more like 3040). In practice, that
means a place where the surface waters are as hot as we can find and the
deep waters (perhaps 5001000m or 10003000ft beneath) are as cold as
possible. The best place to find such a combination is in the tropics (between
the latitudes of about 20N and 20S).

TYPES OF OTEC

There are essentially two different kinds of OTEC plant, known as

closed cycle and open cycle.

CLOSED CYCLE

In closed-cycle OTEC, there is a long, closed loop of pipeline filled with

a fluid such as ammonia, which has a very low-boiling point (33C or 28F).
(Other fluids, including propane and various low-boiling refrigerant
chemicals, have also been successfully used for transporting heat in OTEC
plants.) The ammonia never leaves the pipe: it simply cycles around the loop
again and again, picking up heat from the ocean, giving it up to the OTEC
power plant, and returning as a cooled fluid to collect some more. How does
it work? First, the pipe flows through a heat exchanger fixed in the hot
surface waters of the ocean, which makes the ammonia boil and vaporize.

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The heated ammonia vapour expands and blows through a turbine, which
extracts some of its energy, driving a generator to produce electricity. Once
the ammonia has expanded, it passes through a second heat exchanger,
where cool water pumped up from the ocean depths condenses it back to a
liquid so it can be recycled. You can think of the ammonia working in a
broadly similar way to the coolant in a refrigerator, which is also designed to
pick up heat from one place (the chiller cabinet) and carry it elsewhere (the
room outside) using a closed-loop cycle. In OTEC, the ammonia picks up
heat from the hot, surface ocean waters (just as the coolant chemical picks
up heat from the chiller compartment), carries it to a turbine where much of
its energy is extracted, and is then condensed back to a liquid so it can run
round the loop for more heat (just as the coolant in a refrigerator is
compressed and cooled in the fins around the back of the machine).

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WORKING OF CLOSED CYCLE-OTEC

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 Ammonia (or another low-boiling, heat-transport fluid) flows around
a closed loop at the heart of the system. That's the white square
in the centre of this illustration.
Hot water enters a completely separate pipe near the surface of the
ocean and is piped toward the central loop containing the
ammonia.
The hot water and the ammonia flow past one another in a heat
exchanger, so the hot water gives up some of its energy to the
ammonia, making it boil and vaporize.
The vaporized ammonia flows through a turbine, making it spin.
The turbine spins a generator, converting the energy to electricity.
The electricity is carried ashore by a cable.
Having left the turbine, the ammonia has given up much of its
energy, but needs to be cooled fully for reuse. If the ammonia
weren't cooled in this way, it wouldn't be able to pick up as much
heat next time around.
How is the ammonia cooled? In a third pipe, cold water is pumped
up from the ocean depths.
The cold water and ammonia meet in a second heat exchanger,
which cools the ammonia back down to its original temperature
ready to pass around the cycle again.
The cold water from the ocean depths, now slightly warmed,
escapes into the ocean (or it can be used for refrigeration or air
conditioning).

The hot water from the ocean surface, slightly cooled, drains back
into the upper ocean.

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OPEN CYCLE

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Photo: A model of a simple open-cycle OTEC system. The heart of it is a large turbine driven by steam, which
is cooled by water pumped up from the deep ocean. Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy of US DOE/NREL.

In open-cycle OTEC, the sea water is itself used to generate heat

without any kind of intermediate fluid. At the surface of the ocean, hot sea
water is turned to steam by reducing its pressure (remember that a liquid can
be made to change state, into a gas, either by increasing its temperature or
reducing its pressure). The steam drives a turbine and generates electricity
(as in closed-cycle OTEC), before being condensed back to water using cold
water piped up from the ocean depths. One of the very interesting by-
products of this method is that heating and condensing sea water removes
its salt and other impurities, so the water that leaves the OTEC plant is pure
and salt-free. That means open-cycle OTEC plants can double-up
as desalination plants, purifying water either for drinking supplies or for

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irrigating crops. That's a very useful added benefit in hot, tropical countries
that may be short of freshwater.

LAND- AND SEA-BASED OTEC

Open- and closed-cycle OTEC can operate either on the shore (land-
based) or out at sea (sometimes known as floating or grazing). Both have
advantages and disadvantages, which we'll consider in a moment. Land-
based OTEC plants are constructed on the shoreline with four large hot and
cold pipelines dipping down into the sea: a hot water input, a hot water
output, a cold-water input, and a cold-water output. Unfortunately, shoreline
construction makes them more susceptible to problems like coastal erosion
and damage from hurricanes and other storms.

Photo: Coming in to land: Land-based OTEC means you have to pipe huge volumes of water ashore, which
is what this giant cold-water pipeline does at the Natural Energy Laboratory at Keahole Point, Hawaii. Sea-
based OTEC avoids this problem, but you have to carry the electricity generated offshore to land instead.
Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy of US DOE/NREL.

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 Sea-based OTEC plants are essentially the same but have to be
constructed on some sort of tethered, floating platform, not unlike a floating
oil platform, with the four pipes running down into the sea; early prototypes
were run from converted oil tankers and barges. They also need a cable
running back to land to send the electrical power they generate ashore.
Hybrid forms of OTEC are also possible. So, for example, you could build an
OTEC platform some distance offshore on the continental shelf, which would
share some of the advantages of land-based OTEC (stability and durability,
closeness to the shore, and so on) and floating OTEC (opportunity to exploit
a greater temperature gradient, so generating power more efficiently).

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

ADVANTAGES

OTEC sounds immensely attractive: it's clean, green renewable

energy that doesn't involve burning fossil fuels, producing large amounts
of greenhouse gases, or releasing toxic air pollution. By helping to reduce
our dependence on fuels such as petroleum, OTEC could also help to reduce
the "collateral" damage the world suffers from an oil-dependent economy
including wars fought over oil and water pollution from tanker spills. It could
also provide a very useful source of power for tropical island states that lack
their own energy resources, effectively making them self-sufficient. As we've
already considered, open-cycle OTEC can play a useful part in providing
pure, usable water from ocean water. OTEC can also be used to produce
fuels such as hydrogen; the electricity it generates can be used to power
an electrolysis plant that would split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen,
which could be bottled or piped ashore and then used to power such things
as fuel cells in electric cars. The waste cooling water used by an OTEC plant

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can also be used for aquaculture (growing fish and other marine food such
as algae under controlled conditions), refrigeration, and air conditioning.

DISADVANTAGES

The biggest problem with OTEC is that it's relatively inefficient. The
laws of physics (in this case, the Carnot cycle) say that any practical heat
engine must operate at less than 100 percent efficiency; most operate well
belowand OTEC plants, which use a relatively small temperature
difference between their hot and cold fluids, have among the lowest
efficiency of all: typically just a few percent. For that reason, OTEC plants
have to work very hard (pump huge amounts of water) to produce even
modest amounts of electricity, which brings two problems. First, it means a
significant amount of the electricity generated (typically about a third) has to
be used for operating the system (pumping the water in and out). Second, it
implies that OTEC plants have to be constructed on a relatively large scale,
which makes them expensive investments. Large-scale onshore OTEC
plants could have a considerable environmental impact on shorelines, which
are often home to fragile, already threatened ecosystems such
as mangroves and coral reefs.

Although OTEC plants are only suitable for tropical seas with relatively
large temperature gradients, that's less of a problem than it sounds.
According to DOE, OTEC could theoretically operate in 29 different
sovereign territories (including warmer, southern parts of the United States)
and 66 developing nations; and temperate parts of the world that can't
operate OTEC most likely have alternative forms of ocean power they could
exploit, including offshore wind turbines, tidal barrages, and wave power.

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 Although OTEC produces no chemical pollution, it does involve a
human intervention in the temperature balance of the sea, which could have
localized environmental impacts that would need to be assessed. One
important (and often overlooked) impact of OTEC is that pumping cold water
from the deep ocean to the surfaces releases carbon dioxide, the
greenhouse gas currently most responsible for global warming. The amount
released is only a fraction (perhaps 10 percent) as much as that produced
by a fossil-fuelled power plant, however.

BENEFITS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF OTEC

1. Immense Resource: OTEC is solar power, using the oceans as a
thermal storage system for 24-hour production. Unlike other renewable
energies, the maximum available energy from OTEC is not limited by
land, shorelines, water, environmental impact, human impact, etc.
2. Baseload Power: OTEC produces electricity continuously, 24 hours a
day throughout the entire year. Intermittent renewable energy sources
are not baseload and often require storage of their energy during peak
production hours for later consumption. Large, baseload OTEC plants
could actually start to replace fossil-fuel-fired power plants without
compromising grid stability.
3. Dispatchable Power: OTEC is dispatchable, meaning that its power can
be ramped up and down quickly (in a matter of seconds) to compensate
for fluctuating power demand or supply from intermittent renewables.
For this reason, OTEC is complementary to other renewables like solar
and wind, and could enable further penetration on the grid while helping
to maintain its stability.

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 4. Security: OTEC offers the opportunity of tapping an immense energy
resource that is not controlled by other nations.
5. Renewable: OTEC is conservatively believed to be sustainable at four
or more times mans current total electrical energy production.
6. Clean Energy: OTEC has the potential of being a very clean alternative
energy unique for a firm power source capable of providing massive
energy needs. The environmental risk with OTEC is very low.
7. Offshore: OTEC production occurs offshore. Land resources are not
needed other than for on-shore landing. OTEC is not competing for
other vital resources such as food and fresh water.
8. Low Risk: Conventional Closed Cycle OTEC is a low-risk

The problem with this remarkable renewable energy is cost. At

present, OTEC plants can be built that will be economically attractive to
Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam (at electrical rates just above twenty cents
per kWh range without energy credits). Makai Ocean Engineering performed
a study for Office of Naval Research looking at an offshore OTEC industry
providing energy to the continental US via ammonia as an energy carrier.
These future OTEC prices are slightly high, but close to competing with other
renewables and with overlapping margins of error.

CONCLUSION
Among many ocean energy prospects, OTEC offers the most near
term potential and possesses applicability for a large variety of sites. OTEC
has tremendous potential to supply the worlds energy. This potential is
estimated to be about 1013 Watts of base load power generation. However,
OTEC systems must overcome the significant hurdle of high initial capital
costs for construction and the perception of significant risk compared to

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conventional fossil fuel plants. Ocean thermal energy in multiple thousands
of MW is a very promising source and needs to be exploited. Available
indigenous technologies may be upgraded with detailed engineering studies
on various components of OTEC plant system like cold-water pipes, heat
exchangers and innovative turbine concepts. Under such circumstances,
OTEC should become the preferred renewable energy option for all the
markets where OTEC is feasible. For developing tropical countries where
OTEC is feasible, the social benefits from OTEC might far outweigh
economic factors. Some of these benefits include energy self-sufficiency,
minimal environmental impact, and improved nutrition for inhabitants from
desalinated water. It appears that OTEC technology might become more
financially competitive if it could capitalize on the many value-added by-
products that can be produced from the deep seawater. Renewable energy
technologies like OTEC are vital to the nation to meet the demands of the
next century and millennia

Source:

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-otec-works.html

https://www.makai.com/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion/

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