ENERGY TOWER TO COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING
1,000-YARD TALL TOWER USES CONVENTION PRINCIPLE
Gustav Eiffel would have
been proud. Though the
tower bears little
semblance to his renowned Eiffel
Tower in Paris, the scale of
construction and benefits of this
1,000-yard tall Energy Tower would
have pleased him. Its Israeli
inventors claim the tower could be
a source of cheap electricity.
The Energy Tower, 400 yards in
diameter, can be located near a
water body, the sea, an estuarine or
even drainage water and would
operate on the simple principle of
convention – hot air rises above
cool air. Water is used to cool air at
the top of the tower, explains
Professor Dan Zaslavsky, Project
Founder, Department of
Agricultural Engineering at the
Technion-Israel Institute of
Science. The heavier air falls,
gathering speed and eventually
powers turbines located at the base
of the tower.
“It’s a radically simple idea,”
says Zaslavsky of the
Energy Tower Project.
“We could easily
produce between 15 to 20
times the total electricity
the world uses today.” The
researchers also say that this
would be more lucrative than
energy derived from the sun, wind or
hydrogen. The tower could undertake
desalination work at half the cost of
such existing facilities. “We can
produce cheap desalinated water, we
can irrigate the desert, we can
produce bio-fuel, we can boost
aquaculture,” says Zaslavsky.
The research team also believes
that the tower could help combat
the problem of global warming.
“There is a natural process by
which the earth cools itself
known as Hadley Cell
Circulation. This
naturally happens
mostly over the
equator, where air is already
humid,” says Zaslavsky. “But if we
find a way to humidify desert air,
this global cooling process can
occur over desert latitudes too.
And energy towers work by doing
exactly that.”
The Israeli team has
identified 40 countries
where the Energy Tower
would prove to be a
boon, but interest and
investment is hard to
come by. In a world fast
exploring ways of
conserving the earth’s
resources, however, we
could witness a eureka
moment at any time in
favor of energy towers.
