Growth of ocean thermal energy conversion resources under greenhouse warming regulated by oceanic eddies

Abstract

The concept of utilizing a large temperature difference (>20 °C) between the surface and deep seawater to generate electricity, known as the ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), provides a renewable solution to fueling our future. However, it remains poorly assessed how the OTEC resources will respond to future climate change. Here, we find that the global OTEC power potential is projected to increase by 46% around the end of this century under a high carbon emission scenario, compared to its present-day level. The augmented OTEC power potential due to the rising sea surface temperature is partially offset by the deep ocean warming. The offsetting effect is more evident in the Atlantic Ocean than Pacific and Indian Oceans. This is mainly attributed to the weakening of mesoscale eddy-induced upward heat transport, suggesting an important role of mesoscale eddies in regulating the response of thermal stratification and OTEC power potential to greenhouse warming.

Sustainable Energy Resources for Driving Methane Conversion

“…Moreover, the primary sources of appreciable amounts of waste heat energy include not only the industrial ones (e.g., exhaust gases) mentioned above but also the natural ones. For example, the ocean thermal energy is based on temperature differences in ocean waters, [ 150 ] the asphalt pavement illuminated by sunlight, [ 151 ] the aforementioned geothermal well, [ 146 ] even the seabed hydrothermal fluid, [ 152 ] etc. These natural waste heat energy resources can be also used to drive the conversion of CH 4 .…”

Performance Improvement of OTEC-ORC and Turbine Based on Binary Zeotropic Working Fluid

“…Te development and utilization of ocean thermal energy provide a way to solve the energy problem [1][2][3][4][5]. In existing studies, the thermal efciency of the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) in the ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) system is very low, only 1.3%-3.5% [6][7][8].…”

On the Vertical Structure of Mesoscale Eddies in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension

“…The latter has been shown to exert significant influences on the large-scale ocean thermal structure (Yu et al, 2019), anthropogenic climate changes (Du et al, 2022), ocean's biogeochemical cycles (McGillicuddy et al, 1998(McGillicuddy et al, , 2007, dispersion of marine pollutants (Gilchrist et al, 2020) and microplastics behavior (Cai et al, 2022).…”