Solar Thermal Tower

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/Ilyaila/st3.jpg

That is the proposed Solar Thermal Tower which is to be built in Mildura (border of New South Wales and Victoria). It is the newest plan of the Australian government to implement more renewable energy sources to reduce green house gas emissions and soars about 1km into the sky, its base has a 120 meter radius. In rough terms it is around the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, thats only the tower base and it is over twice the size of the empire state building. The "greenhouse" base is 2.5 km in diameter.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/Ilyaila/st1.jpg

Heres how it works:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/Ilyaila/st4.jpg
The basic principle of operation is the use of the Sun's radiation to heat a very large body of enclosed air. Being warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, this air will begin to rise. By causing it to flow through windmill-style turbines on its journey up a tall chimney, electricity can be generated.

Obviously, generating 200MW of power in this way is no mean feat. The 'greenhouse' collector will be a roughly circular canopy of transparent plastic material measuring approximately 5km in diameter. This canopy, or roof, will slope upwards towards the centre drawing in air from the edges. In the centre will reside the tower, a 1000-metre- tall structure with a base around 170 metres wide.

On a sunny day, the air at the bottom of the tower will be around 35°C (100°F) greater than the ambient air temperature, causing it to flow at roughly 15 metres per second.

In the lower atmosphere, as a general rule, temperatures fall by around 1°C (41°F) per 100 metres of altitude. Thus at the top of the tower, the ambient air temperature will be around 10°C (50°F) cooler than that at the bottom, without even taking into consideration the heating effect of the greenhouse.

About 40 metres up from the ground, 32 Kaplan-style turbines placed in the chimney will be driven by the rising air, in turn driving generators.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/Ilyaila/st2.jpg

An increase in generated power could be achieved by either increasing the size of the solar collector or the height of the chimney, or both.

One of the most attractive features of the Solar Tower over that of traditional solar generation methods is its capacity to generate electricity under cloud cover, or even during the night.

In order to achieve this, sealed water tubes are placed under the canopy, filled only once during manufacture. During daylight hours incident solar radiation will heat this very large mass of water. At night, that heat will be released. Varying the amount of water under the canopy will alter the output versus time of day profile of the power station.

Through this design, the Solar Tower technology avoids becoming a rapid peak generator, instead having the capacity to produce a much smoother load curve, with very low output variance. This aids in interconnection to the supply grid, avoiding the need to coordinate generation and demand peaks which normally plague green power production methods.


They have created a 30 second animation of what it will be like here, its about 10meg to download, and needs Quicktime.
http://www.webaccess.iii.rmit.edu.au/showcase/media/SolarTower-Metric-Short.mpg

I just thought I'd share this with you, there was a prototype built in Spain back in the 1980's whcih proved successful for the 7 years it was running, it was only about 180 meters high so was nothing compared to what this will be. Honestly I think this could be a great idea for renewable energy, the locals where it'll be built have no problems with it being built and it has the potential to power over 200,000 homes. And hell, if nothing else, it'd be a great view from the top.

wow!... thats fucken 733+, i guess mildura needs the attention a massive solar powered cigarette could provide

The science all looks good, but how practicale is it to actually build? The chunk of land it will need, the massive size of it. It will present many engineering nightmares. Would the cost of construction be recoverable?

The huge chunk of land it'll need isn't really a problem out where it's going, if it was somewhere more populated, ie America, that may be an issue. All Aussie capitals (bar one, but who counts the ACT) are on the coast, and this will be about 1000k inland.
The main thing our government is thinking about in building it is to increase our renewable energy outage to somewhere over 5000 Megawatts, I'll check those figures for you though, this is all off the top of my head. The costs will be extensive, yes, but all things considered the bastards refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, they need to do something.

Edit: The tower reduce the amount of Greenhouses emissions entering our environment by 750,000 tonnes. It will create 1,200 jobs in the building of it and 50 when it is operational and they have been researching if it will be commerically viable for the past 15 months, concluding that it will be, they're saying it will cost about $670m AUD to build.

Very intersting. Considering its location is so distant from everything else the additional cost and planning for getting the power where it needs to be has been factored in? What kind of timeline are they looking at for completion?

EDIT> I guess what I am trying to ask is are the citizens there really willing to blow all of that money on something that does nothing?

I think what we're mainly trying to do is, while we're not really part of the Kyoto, reduce the greenhouse emissions, the Western world is killing our Ozone layer and that hole is so close to Australia it causes great concern.
I think you'll find few people know about the development yet, so it'll be interesting to see how they react to it.

I read recently, and during my senior project research, that the holes in the ozone layer are natural. It isn't a solid layer all over in the Stratophere. There's gonna be places where it holes and where it clumps. I dunno, but to totally blame human population seems a bit rash.

Imagine the ozone is like a football field. If you start at one goal line and and move all the way down the field to the THREE FOOT line, that is all of the other gasses and debris and crap that are there. That last three feet, that is the amount that is comprised of so called greenhouse gasses. You know how much the world adds to that on a yearly bassis, using our same scale? 3/8 of an inch.

For more about Kyoto see my other post, here. (http://www.matrixmania.com/showpost.php?p=180489&postcount=13)

Christianity and Islam put fear into the heart of men through judgement day. They do this for the simple reason to be able to control the masses. No one will listen if there is not some punishment.

By saying your children will have to wear tanning oil all the time, and mask and stuff, people are afraid again. Through increased media attention on skin cancer, and stuff, this can be done over time without people actually noticing the real statistics. The same goes for crime, terrorism, famine, everything. The media and the government are manipulating us into believing we need them.

It's as old as mankind.

Nice tower though :D.

Mr U

I think what we're mainly trying to do is, while we're not really part of the Kyoto, reduce the greenhouse emissions, the Western world is killing our Ozone layer and that hole is so close to Australia it causes great concern.

Just as a side note, Australia and the USA are the only developed nations that have not ratified the Kyoto Proticol. In fact, Australia got permission to increase its greenhouse gas emmisions. Our goverment gave the reasoning that we needed to do that because the majority of our power is created by burning coal, and we needed to increase our power for some reason. At least with this solar tower, we can do our bit to reduce our emmisions. I think its a feasable idea, and if it works prehaps more of these towers could be developed throughout Australia.

At least somebody else here (HU) has been paying attention.

Ok Don, not trying to be a smartass here, but was that a shot at me? I was just giving my thoughts on this because I read about it a while ago in newspapers. I got the information on Australia and the US from my political studies textbook, so I'm very sure that it is correct.

Christianity and Islam put fear into the heart of men through judgement day. They do this for the simple reason to be able to control the masses. No one will listen if there is not some punishment.

By saying your children will have to wear tanning oil all the time, and mask and stuff, people are afraid again. Through increased media attention on skin cancer, and stuff, this can be done over time without people actually noticing the real statistics. The same goes for crime, terrorism, famine, everything. The media and the government are manipulating us into believing we need them.

It's as old as mankind.

Nice tower though :D.

Mr U

It's all about media. Jesus, I've got skin cancer now, and that was due to me being exposed in the sun from a very very young age living in a coastal town and not wearing a hat or sunscreen, not due to the last few years surfing (though I'm sure that hasn't helped). It's like everything. Big deal, I go get them cut out and I make sure I'm more informed than my parents etc etc. Responsibility and awareness are what it's all about. No secret there. The stats imo haven't increased, they've just become more noticable due to the media.

As for Mildura residents being concerned they'll have something they don't need TheDon, I think it will be more a case of them accepting the new jobs on offer, and taking what they can get as long as they're qualified of course. The real question is IF native title comes into play. Which I'm fully expecting. In which case the greenhouse effect will be the last thing on everyones mind. You gotta love the human predictability factor.

Ok Don, not trying to be a smartass here, but was that a shot at me? I was just giving my thoughts on this because I read about it a while ago in newspapers. I got the information on Australia and the US from my political studies textbook, so I'm very sure that it is correct.

First, no. Second, ok. I am not saying that the evil Aussies and Yanks havent ratified Kyoto. I am also not saying that Australia get to raise emissions. I am not really debating anything at all with you.

Alright then, I go the wrong end of the stick. Sorry bout that.

No worries, tis my fault for being too vague. I have no doubt that the information you posted is accurate, I just dont agree with the idea that Australia and the US arent doing anything good for the enviroment or that global warming is a real threat.