OT iceberg power

[darryl]

Reading about icebergs floating down iceberg alley got me wondering if you could harness one of those things. Back in the prairies you could find ice houses, which were just piles of ice bricks inside a straw shelter, basically. You could have ice all summer if you harvested enough ice from your frozen winter. In this case, you could potentially tow an iceberg into a lagoon of sorts, then use it for keeping cool in the summer.

Speaking of cool, I've been wondering if you could use a pelltier device with direct sunlight on one side, and cooling by some means (melted iceberg water perhaps) on the other side. Would you get enough heat input to create a sizable temperature difference across the device, or would you have to concentrate the solar radiation?

I know these devices are poor insulators, so you're always going to have a steady flow of heat across them, which is a loss. Can you make anything reasonably efficient as a power generator from a grid made of these devices?

[Ridgerunner]

In the 70's the Saudi's and I believe others thought about towing one to Africa but nothing ever came of it.

[J Tiers]

yeah, the idea was for a fresh water source.

These days, they better hustle or there won't be any left.

[elf]

It would be more efficient to just move to Antarctica and set up your Peltier device there. After beaming the power output to a satellite, you could beam it anywhere in the world.

[gellfex]

Peltier's are cool, but remarkably inefficient. There are far better ideas for using natural temp differential to generate power. It would take less power to draw cold water from the deep ocean than to move an iceberg. Google OTEC, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. Idea is decades old, but whose time has not yet come.

[garyhlucas]

When they tried to tow an iceberg the tow rope went taut and coriolis forces from the earths rotation took over. The tugboat was pointing straight ahead as it rotated slowly about the iceberg!

[754]

Icebergs have too much draft for efficient towing...may have spelled it wrong..

And they have too much shrinkage on the long haul...

[aostling]

Icebergs have too much draft for efficient towing...may have spelled it wrong..
And they have too much shrinkage on the long haul...

The percentage of shrinkage depends on size. Here is a serious proposal to tow an iceberg to Cape Town; it could arrive with a loss of only 10%.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...million-people

[SteveF]

I would disagee that thinking you can tow a 125 million ton iceberg counts as a "serious proposal".

[danlb]

I would disagee that thinking you can tow a 125 million ton iceberg counts as a "serious proposal".

I did not read the article, but it MIGHT be a proposal that uses currents to do the moving. Then all you need to do is nudge it as a tug moves a large ship.

Dan

[genea]

I did not read the article, but it MIGHT be a proposal that uses currents to do the moving. Then all you need to do is nudge it as a tug moves a large ship.

Dan

125 million tons is about the same weight as 1000 aircraft carriers. I'd really like to see that tug.

[elf]

At 5 tugs per aircraft carrier, you would only need 5000 tugs to move the iceberg....

[Paul Alciatore]

That does not sound right. If that were so, ocean liners could not be towed. They tow everything including those huge oil drilling platforms.

I am sure some large tugs would be needed.

When they tried to tow an iceberg the tow rope went taut and coriolis forces from the earths rotation took over. The tugboat was pointing straight ahead as it rotated slowly about the iceberg!

[reggie_obe]

That does not sound right. If that were so, ocean liners could not be towed. They tow everything including those huge oil drilling platforms.

I am sure some large tugs would be needed.

Ocean liners and tankers are still under power while the tugs guide them. Drilling rigs have a skeleton type structure that doesn't present a lot of surface area to the water.

[alanganes]

Ocean liners and tankers are still under power while the tugs guide them. Drilling rigs have a skeleton type structure that doesn't present a lot of surface area to the water.

In addition to all of that, while I don't know what an off shore drilling platform weighs and I'm too lazy to Google it, I think it's a safe bet to think that the largest of them weighs a lot less than 125 million tons.