mistermack wrote:The energy requirement isn't all that much, if you use very large bore pipe.
I would design a submersible electric pump attached to the lower end of the pipe, with a power line down from the ship.
That way, you're pushing the water, rather than sucking it, so you could use thin-walled wide bore pipe, kept inflated by the pressure.
I saw a tv clip of a dredger ship the other day doing something similar, it was sucking up mud, sand, silt etc and making an island with the dredged material. The volumes it was shifting was amazing.
Shallow water dredging that probably costs $10,000 an hour to run the dredge, which is paid for by the market for artificial islands as real estate.
Where's the profit motive for pumping water from the deep sea to the surface?
Compared to that, sucking up fine organic deposits would take a lot less energy.
I would have thought that if generating electricity from warm/cold water was feasible, there would be loads of places where upwellings of cold water would make it easy to access. I would have expected that it would be in use already somewhere.
How many of these ships would be required to make a measurable difference, what does each one cost, and who is going to pay for it and how?
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