Winston-Salem Journal | Current Event: University's prototype uses ocean's energy

Winston-Salem Journal | Current Event: University's prototype uses ocean's energy: "Current Event: University's prototype uses ocean's energy


By Kurt Loft
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE

An underwater view shows a ship being loaded with hydrogen, the fuel that could result from the power produced.
(Illustrations courtesy of Florida Atlantic University)


An underwater view shows a ship being loaded with hydrogen, the fuel that could result from the power produced.


A perpetual-motion machine is the stuff of fantasy, but clean, renewable energy sources are within the grasp of societies that marry science, industry and economics.

For years, inventors have dreamed and schemed of tapping power from the ocean, yet nobody has come through with a practical plan. That's the hope of a Florida project that will test the waters on a way to generate electricity from Gulf Stream currents. Researchers at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton are developing an underwater energy farm that employs a network of turbines secured to the ocean floor. As strong currents turn the turbine props, spinning magnets create electricity and send it to a power plant along the shore.

"The concept is you have turbine blades in the flow of the ocean, much like turbines that harness the wind," said engineer Rick Driscoll, the director of the Florida Center for Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology, a research arm of the university.

"Ocean currents are much slower than the wind, but water is 700 to 800 times denser than air."