Honolulu’s Next Air Conditioner

[kristopher]

Honolulu’s Next Air Conditioner: The Ocean’s Depths

Mega-engineering comes to air conditioning.

It came from the deep. And it will make offices cooler!

The State of Hawaii is working toward installing a massive seawater air conditioning system in Honolulu that could cut grid power consumption by 77 million kilowatt hours a year and eliminate the need to add 14 megawatts of peak capacity, according to Anders Rydaker, president of Ever-Green Energy, which will provide the technology for the system and own and manage it through a subsidiary once construction is complete.

It will also reduce sewage from conventional air conditioning cooling towers by 84 million gallons a year, as well as eliminating demand for 23,000 to 69,000 pounds of the chemicals employed in conventional chillers.

So what is seawater air conditioning? Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning LLC, the Ever-Green's local developer, will build pipes that draw seawater from four miles offshore at a depth of about 1,600 feet, said Rydaker. The water, which will be about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, will be drawn to an onshore cooling station. Heat exchangers will extract the chill in the sea water to fresh water contained in a closed-loop system.

...The warmed seawater, meanwhile, will be returned to the ocean at an appropriate depth to its current temperature. In other words, it won't go back to 1,600 feet below the surface and screw up the environment....

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/honolulus-next-air-conditioner-the-oceans-depths

[phantom power]

1. clever bit about the return depth tuned for increased temp

:thumbsup:

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. This just makes too much sense for the governments to spend money on it.

.
.
.

I mean

if we reduced our dependency on oil and nuclear for our energy needs

where are all those CEOs gonna get their multi-million $$ bonus checks from??

Oil barons give BIG bucks to peeps in gubment ya know . . .

Look at the USA

TRILLIONS of dollars spent on phony wars to get their "fix"

OIL

The World knows . . .

sheesh

[NNadir]

3. Yeah. In a world rife with poverty and quiet desperation, air conditioning should definitely

be a huge thing to which Government should commit its resources.

Since the human species evolved in the presence of air conditioning, it is an essential need.

No one should bother with learning the laws of thermodynamics either because, well, that might interfere with our consumer fantasies based on scientific illiteracy.

[skids]

4. Air conditioning is not a luxury.

(I know, why do I bother)

We ran out of enough geo-exchange "air-conditioned" caves for our population a long time ago.

While I am sure there are some who would just love it if all the elderly were hauled out into the sun to die of heat stroke, thus reducing our population, I am not among them.

Relief from the heat is no luxury. Man has sought it through all of evolution. It drives down the need for potable water, and is conducive to activities that involve higher thought and learning.

[Greyskye]

5. If your goal was REALLY energy and resource conservation,

as opposed to simply shilling for the Nuclear industry, you would be applauding this.

This is not 'consumer fantasies based on scientific illiteracy'. It is a proven technology which saves energy, and reduces pollutants.

But go ahead, keep on insulting people who are actually making a positive contribution to the world.

It's really clear from this that you don't care about saving people from the dangers of fossil fuels, as you constantly insist. If you did you would be saying that this is an incremental step in the right direction, or at the very least ignore it. But no. You have to dump on it and its proponents as ignorant fantasists. Well done.

From National Geographic in 2004 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0910_040910_deeplake.html:

To anyone who's taken a dip in Lake Ontario, it seems like a no-brainer: Use the lake's icy waters to keep nearby cities cool. Last month Toronto did just that, announcing that its 170-million-dollar (U.S.) deep-lake water cooling system, the largest of its kind, was up and running.

(...)

The heat exchangers allow the lake water to cool a separate, self-contained water circulation system, which flows through buildings in downtown Toronto. The lake water, meanwhile, ends up as drinking water for the city.

Enwave, a Toronto energy company partly owned by the city, developed the system. According to the company, the new cooling system will eventually be able to cool 30 million square feet (2.8 million square meters) of office space, while using 75 percent less energy than conventional air-conditioning.

Chris Asimakis, Enwave's chief operating officer, says that when Toronto's system reaches full capacity, the city will conserve 59 megawatts of energy—the amount of power required to cool 12,000 homes by traditional means.

The project will keep 44,100 tons (40,000 metric tons) of carbon dioxide out of the air, according to the company's Web site. The greenhouse-gas savings is equivalent to keeping 8,000 cars off the road.

Enwave says the system will not only trim use of ozone-depleting refrigerants such as CFCs but also keep buildings cool even during blackouts when fully commissioned.

"People were skeptical at first," Asimakis said. "But eventually the local environmental community gave us their unanimous support."

The project currently cools ten Toronto buildings, including the tiny Steamwhistle Brewery and three skyscrapers in the Toronto Dominion Center, a financial-and-business office center.

(...)

Four years ago Cornell University inaugurated a 57-million-dollar (U.S.) lake-source cooling plant. The system cools university buildings and a nearby high school in Ithaca, New York.

The plant draws 39-degree Fahrenheit (3.9-degree Celsius) water from 250 feet (70 meters) below the surface of Cayuga Lake, a glacially carved lake that is 435 feet (132.6 meters) deep at its lowest point.

W.S. "Lanny" Joyce is an engineering manager at Cornell's department of utilities and energy management. "The system has definitely exceeded our expectations," Joyce said, speaking by cell phone from a boat on Cayuga Lake as he checked the plant's intake system.

"We're saving 25 million kilowatt-hours per year now," he said, adding, "That's an 86 percent energy savings"—6 percent more than estimated.

Cornell's lake-source cooling plant has proven more reliable and easier to operate than predicted, according to Joyce, who said it has also won numerous engineering and environmental awards, including the New York State Governor's Award for Pollution Prevention.

(...)

The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), a state research facility located on the Big Island of Hawaii, runs its own deep-source cooling plant. The system cools buildings on the agency's campus, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The plant draws 42.8-degree Fahrenheit (6-degree Celsius) seawater from a depth of 2,000 feet (610 meters).

"NELHA saves about $3,000 a month in electrical costs by using the cold seawater air-conditioning process," said Jan War, an operations manager. "We still use a freshwater loop to cool our buildings, since seawater is so corrosive."

[depakid]

7. Actually, the concept looks similar to district heating

and it's hard to argue with the efficiencies.

[OnlinePoker]

8. So I guess on those cold New Jersey winter nights...

...you turn off your electric/gas heaters because I know the human species evolved in the presence of those essential needs as well.

[kestrel91316]

9. I trust you've never been inside an office building in the summer when the AC fails........

And since you hate AC, I trust you eschew it, along with heat in the winter, too.

[Greyskye]

10. Yep. Crickets when he's faced with his own hypocrisy.

Why am I not surprised?

[never cry wolf]

6. Damn socialist take over of our air conditioning

Taking away our freedom to pay high electric bills and pollute.