Harnessing the Sea A Practicable Scheme?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 24

Harnessing the Sea A Practicable Scheme?

■ ILLIONS of pounds’ worth of energy is going to waste annually on sea dently be quite worth while to capture and utilise even a very small fraction of this, if it could be done. An officer of the U.S. Navy things he has discovered a way, and Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, director of science service, writing in “Collier’s” (New York),j thinks his plan worth trying. Says j Dr. Slosson: A four-foot wave in sea water 30-| feet deep—a very moderate and usual condition—has 5.45 horse-power a foot of front, or 28,000 horse-power a mile. I If the wave is S feet high, the horsepower rises to 25.58 for each running foot of shore front, or 135,062 horse- i power a mile. Power produced by the newest and most efficient plants costs about four-tenths of one cent a horse-power hour. The magnitude of the prize lias tempted many engineers to devise some form of wave motor, Jjut so far the problem has baffled them all. The latest to make the attempt is Lieut.Com. Lybrand P. Smith, of the Bureau

of Engineering of the United States Navy, who has planned a device for gathering and storing the energy of wares by means of a hydraulic rartj. A large funnel is set at the surface with its mouth toward the open sea, and beyond the breakers. The force of the wave entering it drives the water through a long horizontal pipe leading below sea-level to the shore. At the end the shock strikes the ram, which at every stroke lifts a certain amount of water to a high reservoir on the cliff behind, perhaps 100 feet above the sea. The stored water can

be drawn off as needed and converted ; | into electric current by turbine and . ! dynamo. ■j Commander Smith calculates that j approximately 60 per cent, of the kin- ; etic energy of the w aves could be accumulated in a usable form, but be- ! lieves more data should now be obI tained and experimental research I made. But it seems a scheme worth i trying, since here is a source of unI limited free motive power, more ac- | cessible, as a rule, to cities than coalI mines or waterfalls, and sites on the ! sea-coast bluffs are mainly waste land. \ is it not possible to make a seashore motor cheap enough so that the capi- • tai cost of construction will not swal- ■ low up the advantage of the free i power? I “The Popular Science Monthly” j gives us this explanation of the device : ; When waves sweep into these metal traps, the terrific impact of the water is sufficient, says the engineer, to drive a stream through a pipe straight up the cliff that borders the shore. At the top, it has but one avenue of escape. Before it can reach the sea again, it must plunge down flumes' and through the turbines of

the power-house at the bottom to generate huge quantities of electricity. To make sure that no water can dodge the path laid out for it and slip back down the inlet pipe, one-way valves guard the entrances to the “hydraulic rams,” as engineers term the funnels and their standpipes. A wave’s force bursts open the valve and water rushes in; but when the water recedes the valve closes and the imprisoned brine can find an exit only through the larger pipe to the powerhouse.