Suzanne's Mom's Blog

It’s a good day to think about someplace warm.

I was standing around chatting with friends while waiting for the train tonight. We were all complaining about the weather. When I said we should count ourselves lucky because it’s 35 degrees F below zero in Minnesota, a woman standing near me piped up saying that she was from Alaska and it’s 60 below there.

So this is about balmy Curacao.

Santiago Ortega writes at AlertNet (a “free humanitarian news site”) about Curacao’s plan to turn seawater to energy.

“A Dutch company called Bluerise B.V. and the company that owns Curacao’s airport  – Curacao Airport Holding N.V. – are exploring building a small 100-kilowatt marine power plant that will use the temperature of the seawater as a power source.

“In the tropics” — ah, the tropics! — “the sun heats the ocean surface and keeps it warm all year long. But at a depth of one kilometre (0.6 miles), sunlight can’t reach and warm colder waters, circulated from the Arctic.

“Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) works by deploying a pipeline in the ocean to pump cold, deep water to the surface and take advantage of the difference in its temperature with the warm surface water.

“Cold and warm waters are used in a process to condense and evaporate ammonia, causing it to move inside a closed-pipe circuit. Evaporated ammonia powers a turbine that generates electricity, and then is condensed to continue the cycle.

“The downside of the process is that the difference in temperatures is not very large, so the efficiency of the process – and thus the power production – is low when compared to conventional power plants. The bright side is that the energy resource is as abundant as the ocean itself.” More.

Photograph:  R. Norman Matheny/Christian Science Monitor
Costumed dancers perform a folk dance for tourists in Curacao, a Caribbean island nation that is considering using seawater to generate electricity.