Energy tower (downdraft)

An energy tower is a method for producing electrical power for consumer consumption, the brainchild of Dr. Phillip Carlson, which has been expanded upon by Professor Dan Zaslavsky. An energy tower produces electricity by drawing the energy from the air around it.

Concept summary

An energy tower is a tall hollow cylinder with a water spray system at the top. The water is pumped up to the top of the tower and then sprayed inside the tower which cools the warm air hovering at the top. The cooled air, being denser than the outside warmer air, falls to the bottom of the cylinder which causes a turbine at the bottom of the cylinder to spin. The turbine is connected to a generator which produces the electricity.

The tower should optimally be situated in a hot dry climate, which thus allows for the greatest extraction of energy from the air. The need for large quantities of water may be solved by choosing a location that is not too far from the coast [1].

An alternative approach to this is the solar updraft tower, which would require huge (up to 7 or 8 kilometres in diameter) agricultural glass house collectors to capture the solar heated air. Even though energy towers use some energy (about 50% of the turbine output) by having to pump water to the top and pressurizing nozzles, their advantage is that they require no such large collection areas, because dry air, if available, is continuously drawn at the top from the surroundings.