Updraft Tower/Chimney — the hidden solution of green power
The updraft tower/chimney, with it’s variations being mist updraft, smoke updraft and solar updraft can fix climate change and give power!
Another variation would be using a rigid structure (i.e. metal), a flexible structure (i.e. textile), or a mix/hybrid (i.e. metal for the most part, but enough textile at the top for the wind to not go against the updraft, but to aid it instead).
With the exception of the mist updraft tower which also produces clean water, the solar and smoke and mist updraft towers produce energy, cause a local cooling effect and local breeze, especially if they are more than 1km tall, preferably 3km or taller (to be above the clouds and most of the greenhouse gases).
All three of them need a very tall chimney (for household use, it should be at least 20 meters tall, for working optimally), but the same concept has been used in the past, when chimneys had a few tubes (called chimney pots), often dark-colored or ceramic, sticking above the brick layer, to create a small updraft, especially during the summer, when the furnace is kept open and it is not being fired.
The same principle can be used to passively cool or heat buildings. Trombe walls and wind catchers can be used in conjunction with solar chimneys to passively cool a household. Even more interestingly, fire can be used to cool a house down. You just need to put the fire above the air entrance to the fireplace, and even a small fire will create an updraft which would then create a breeze, if there is another way for air to get inside the house.
The solar updraft tower only uses sun-heated air, and often uses soil or a black/dark floor to absorb and store the heat to be used overnight or when it’s cloudy. It sometimes is directed into a spiral/vortex, to maximize the power generation.
The smoke updraft tower uses exhaust from factories to heat the air being used, and often the smoke is released in a cyclonic (separator) path, to have the smoke particles adhere to the walls of the tower, and to mix with the rest of the air to heat it more rapidly.
The mist updraft tower is just like a solar updraft tower, but it funnels water vapors, which rise more rapidly, having a lower density than air. Often, an artificial lake or natural lake/sea/ocean is used to collect the water vapors, and it has been tried to use some of the power generated to boil water and release the mist above the turbine part.
An interesting twist is that a hybrid is not much more difficult to make, if you can connect a pipe from a factory chimney to it for the updraft or for water heating, or use excess heat from factories for water heating to help evaporate the water.
And it does not need to be going stragith-up, either. It can be following the angle of the land, only needing an increase in elevation. Theoretically, we could use one going from a sea or an ocean to the middle of the Sahara, generate power and also use the negative temperatures in the Sahara Desert to effectively increase the air humidity and also make it rain, literally! A nozzle head would be recommended, to spread the mist towards a larger area, so as to mostly limit the effect to only the countries paying for it. And some of the power it generates can be used for cooling some of the mist into drinking water.
Another application would be active support for structures. A slingshot for rockets or even for airplanes could be made with it, or even better, an orbital ring connecting the whole planet, or a lofstrom loop to connect a few parts of the planet, and also massively aid the launching of rockets. Having an updraft-ative-support hybrid would likely mean using the power generated by the updraft to support a structure which extends past the exit/exhaust/top of the updraft tower, possibly having an entire space tower (10km tall) supported with the power of a single updraft tower right next to it.
One last thing…
Hope you liked it. If you did, please give me some 👏 by clicking that button below. It helps other people find this. Thank you!
Here are some more articles you might like:
- Rock Bottom to Industrial Revolution — Needed Technologies
- How do WE fix the world? Small steps, thought thoroughly!
- How to fix Universal Basic Income: Make it be Universal Basic Life Standard #UBLS
- Company Communities Shift, a shift towards a better humanity
- Should parents limit teenagers’ video game time?
- Jobs will be GONE, 💰👀 but unemployment is a CHOICE! 😈
