Ocean Power

As at Pittsburgh the hand of pure science kneaded coal for man's better industry, so at Paris last week it plunged into tropical waters and came out dripping with potential electricity. At Paris the medium for science was Thermo-dynamist Georges Claude,* who told the French Academy of Science that it should be possible to develop cheap power from sun-heated tropical waters.

He reminded the Academicians that the sun always keeps the temperature of equatorial waters at between at and 86DEG Fahrenheit and that a relatively small amount of earth fuel (coal, gas, wood) would raise this already tepid, preheated water to the boiling point (212DEG). The result would be steam, for operating steam turbines.

This was elementary physics. Was it possible that Georges Claude had become senile, to annoy the august Academy of Science with piffle? Steam might operate a turbine at the Equator. But there would need be some cooling device to condense the spent steam. Where would he get ice, or cool drafts, in the tropics? He had the answer ready.

According to a new discovery the temperature of ocean water, at the depth of five-eighths of a mile (1,000 metres), is always 39.2DEG. No matter what the surface temperature may be, the depths are at just a little above freezing (32DEG). Georges Claude would drop a long pipe to the ocean deep and pump up cold water to condense his turbine steam. A totally different method of using tidal energy is to "harness" the powerful ebb-and-flow movement of the tides. Three important projects are already under way to accomplish this--at Passamoquody Bay (see p. 31) inlet of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia; at Sudbury on the Severn, Eng. .and at Aber-Vrach on the Brittany coast. At all three places there are long, narrow estuaries, into which tides rush with enormous energy. Water turbines, set in dams built across these arms of the sea, will whirl as the tides rush through them; and electricity will be produced. Thus progresses the ageless dream of making the ocean work.

*Synthesizer of acetone and ammonia, worker on liquid air, analyzer of the heat-conductivity of metals.