Ocean Thermal and Geothermal Energy: an Overview of Technologies and Systems
- Key words
- Geothermal energy, ocean thermal energy, energy balance, power generation, direct use.
- Conference
- World Geothermal Congress
- Year
- 2015
- Session
- Direct Use
- Language
- English
- Paper number
- 28047
Full text
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Abstract
The Earth and the oceans have a natural temperature gradient between the surface and given depths. The natural temperature gradient is used to operate renewable energy systems, such as power generation and space heating/cooling, which operate on similar thermodynamic concepts. For a given purpose, different technologies are used to extract heat from the two resources. Even though the concepts of the two systems are the same, their heat energy extracting performance is different. An overview of the similarities between the usage of the two thermal resources is presented in this paper. The energy balances at the surface of the Earth and the oceans are also presented.
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