The cost of delivering deep-sea-cold-water using pipes has always been notoriously high, and commercial development has failed.

Deep-sea-cold-water is valuable; just a few litres per second is sufficient to help generate enough power for one household.

What about hoses?

Hoses are an attractive prospect because they have numerous physical advantages that mean that they are less costly than pipes.

Material, transport, and installation costs are all lower than pipes.

How can hoses be used?

The Turbo-pump. 

The turbo-pump comprises a hydro-turbine joined to a pump through a common shaft.  Seawater drives the turbine generating shaft power, and that power is transferred to the pump through the shaft.

A turbo-pump must use two hoses, one to deliver water to the turbine and one to deliver water from the pump.

An electric pump is required to drive seawater to the turbine.

The turbo-pump can operate in deep-water without any sophisticated technology, hence the attraction.

Why use a turbo-pump and two large bore hoses? 

Balanced head.

The wastewater can balance the head on the system on or offshore because it is the driving fluid.

The energy used to drive up the fluid created potential energy in the water, and this energy is recovered and used for the most part to drive the turbine side of the turbo-pump.

This means improved efficiency and may mean that OTEC and SWAC is possible at sties where it was not possible before.

More advantages.

• Low-pressure, low-cost hoses are possible.
• PVC. can have a very long operating life in seawater, PVC. is low cost and punctures are very easy to fix.
• Large bore hoses can run at a very low pressure on both sides of the turbo-pump and that can result in long operating lifetimes with little maintenance.

Wastewater options.

• Option to release deep sea-cold-water into the photic zone to create plankton blooms, offsetting Co2, and boosting marine life.
• Option to release wastewater well below the photic zone, lowering both the thermal impact, and the marine life impact, ideal for genuinely sensitive areas like the Great barrier reef.
• Option to release waste warm water below the photic zone where it can then rise due to its temperature difference, thereby causing an additional plankton bloom.

Any of these methods can use the potential energy of the wastewater to help drive the turbo-pump.

Lower costs and higher system efficiencies.

What with the low cost, and ease of installation, larger diameter hoses are much less costly than smaller diameter pipes. Larger diameters mean lower pressure drops, and higher flow rates, for a lower cost, and this is an exceedingly desirable outcome for power applications where efficiency is so important.

The future of turbo-pumps.

We expect to move from centrifugal pumps to propeller pumps as the water delivery requirement increases. OTEC water delivery is a high volume, low head exercise. Centrifugal pumps can work into the MW category and then we expect to see propeller pumps take over.

The largest propeller pump in the world can pump 60 m3 per second and that is enough for 30 MW of traditional OTEC and 180MW (or more) of Hybrid OTEC.

‘Geared’ sea-water turbo-pumps are certainly possible. A ‘geared’ turbo-pump has a smaller turbine / motor side of the turbo-pump and can therefore use lower bore hose including hydraulic-hose on the turbine side of the system; the advantage to this method is the possibility of considerably cheaper hose on the turbine side, the drawback is that the potential energy of the waste cold water is lost.

It is possible that the system can be rearranged to at least partially include a more traditional hydraulic system where a closed loop and a ‘tiny’ hydraulic motor / turbine is used.

Since there is no size requirement in patents these ideas are covered in principle by some of our granted patents.

Any of these methods can provide a cost effective solution with pros and cons to each. Time will tell which method proves to be the most popular.