Comments for Solar Power Tower Video at http://www.ecogeek.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.ecogeek.org Sat, 18 May 2013 14:23:20 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1266 as you can see is this movie quite old, the german administration closed that experimental power plant a few years ago. :( but i'm not 100% sure. - icke Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:50:46 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1265 [quote]I was wondering, tho, how a taller chimney increases efficiency of the turbine[/quote] Air is pushed up and out a chimney because the pile of hot air inside it is less dense than the cool air at the bottom of the chimney, which pushes the hot air up. A larger pile of of hot, low-density air in the chimney will move more air than a smaller one, and in particular, a very [i]tall[/i] pile of hot air tends to cause air to move through a chimney relatively [i]fast[/i], which is what you want for use with a turbine. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney#Chimney_draught_or_draft]Check out the Wikipedia article on chimneys.[/url] I expect that it's possible to design a single turbine to extract all the useful energy from the chimney, and doing so, and putting it at the bottom, is simply cheaper and simpler than using a stack of turbines. - Western Infidels Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:02:15 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1261 I'm taking their word for it. Multiple turbines, I know, would end up decreasing the energy produced by the tower. Though I'm at a loss to explain why. As for the height and width increasing efficiency, I have no idea...but I believe them. - Hank Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:53:15 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1260 Multiple turbines up the chimney would have a greatly diminishing return since every time a hot air molecule hits the turbine blade it loses some of its speed & heat energy and would have less energy to transmit to subsequent turbine fan blades. I was wondering, tho, how a taller chimeny increases efficiency of the turbine, which they claim it does in that video. Cuz the minute I saw that turbine at the base of the chimney I thought, whats the point of such a tall chimney? - Jinks Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:54:17 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1259 Not completely sure, but my "physics gut" tells me that you can't get the same amount of air to do "more" work. There'd be a point where x turbines would stall the air rising to a point that they wouldn't turn. - monotonehell Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:29:56 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/395#comment-1257 Why not have many fans and generators all the way up the stack instead of just one at the bottom? - ljkhjkk Sun, 17 Dec 2006 09:20:26 +0100