How to Recover “Hidden” Energy from Urban Heat Islands With the Atmospheric Vortex Engine

By Jerry_Toman on January 11, 2010 4 Comments Atmospheric Vortex Engines, AVE, AVE arena, buoyant vortex, convection cooling, cooling towers, electrical generation, EPA air quality standards, Houston, Phoenix, renewable energy, solar chimney, solar;, spinning updraft, troposphere, turbo-expanders, UHI, urban heat island, urban heat island effect, wind, wind power turbines

A problem that worsens each decade for southern cities such as Houston or Phoenix is an effect called the Urban Heat Island (UHI_), for which inner city temperatures have been observed to exceed temperatures measured in nearby rural areas by amounts now approaching 20 F. This article proposes a novel and simple means of mitigating this by installing a straight-forward technology, called the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE). it is estimated that, by installing AVE facilities that could continuously elevate 1000 m3/s of air per square kilometer of surface from the inner city into the mid troposphere. During hot summer months, approximately 0.3-0.5 kwh/m2/day of heat (~ 65% via evaporation) would be removed and a mean temperature reduction of 3-4 oF could thereby be achieved as cooler, drier air from rural areas is pulled in to replace the warmer, wetter air that would be ejected from the region.