Coupling of an offshore wind-driven deep sea water pump to an air cycle machine for large-scale cooling applications

摘要

A system for using offshore wind energy to directly provide large-scale cooling through the exploitation of cold deep seawater below thermocline formations is proposed. The concept is based on an offshore wind-driven hydraulic pump supplying high pressure deep seawater to a land based plant. This pressurised seawater is used to power a hydraulic turbine which drives an inverse Brayton air cycle machine, and is then diverted to a heat exchanger to cool the pressurised air prior to flowing back to the sea.