Financial Times, January 22: World power in a barrel
A Russian scientist expelled from his homeland may have the solution to the planet's energy problems, writes Victoria Griffith
Alexander Gorlov looks improbably modest when he announces that he has solved the world's energy problems. His invention - a turbine that can turn the water flow of the world's oceans and rivers into electricity - could make him a death target of the oil-rich Middle East, he speculates. "But I'm not afraid," he says calmly. "I defied the KGB and survived. Anyway, the oil barons would have had to kill me two years ago. The invention is done now; it's too late."
Mr Gorlov's experience with Russia's infamous intelligence agency in fact set in motion the series of events that led to the patenting of his invention last year. In 1971, he went to the summer house of his friend Alexander Solzhenitsyn to fetch a spare car part.
To his surprise, he found KGB agents searching the place. The KGB agents, to cover up their crime, accused Mr Gorlov of being a burglar. Solzhenitsyn used the incident to mount a worldwide public relations campaign against the KGB. When Mr Gorlov refused to spy on his friend, he was deported.
Mr Gorlov ended up in Boston as a professor of mechanical engineering at Northeastern University and began to pursue his dream of creating cheap, environmentally friendly hydropower. Before his expulsion, he had built a successful scientific career in Russia, and had helped design Egypt's Aswan dam.
Yet the great hydropower dams struck a negative chord for Mr Gorlov. He became concerned about their impact on the environment. Dams work by blocking the flow of water to create a powerful artificial waterfall. Propellers deep under the water driven by that energy convert it to electricity. But dams destroy migrating fish populations and flood large tracts of land as they interrupt the flow of huge rivers. The oil crisis of the 1970s also worried Mr Gorlov; he saw clearly that traditional energy reserves would some day be depleted.
Shortly after his arrival in the US, he started to badger the Department of Energy to fund his research on a turbine that would enable the creation of a more benign form of hydropower. After 15 years, it finally offered him a two-year grant in 1990. Mr Gorlov lost no time.
For years, he had been studying the "Darrieus turbine", invented by Georges Darrieus, a French engineer, in 1931. The turbine, designed in the first instance to be wind-powered, was one of the first attempts to harness free water flows for power.
In contrast to wheel-type turbines, common at the time, Darrieus came up with a barrel-shaped device fitted with airfoil blades. The design was ingenious. In effect, says Mr Gorlov, it set aeroplane engineering on its head, turning energy inward for power-generation, rather than outward for flight.
Yet the Darrieus turbine never caught on. The device vibrated so much that the blades were constantly breaking, making the system difficult and expensive to maintain. What is more, the turbine sometimes had trouble starting itself. It was also not terribly efficient at capturing energy.
Mr Gorlov's design seems to have solved these problems. By curving the blades, in a configuration that has the appearance of a DNA molecule, he has made the turbine more efficient than the Darrieus. It captures 35 per cent of the power of free water currents, while the Darrieus never caught more than 23 per cent. The new design also puts less stress on the blades, and it permits self-starting even at very low current speeds.
Although the system could be used in almost any river or stream, Mr Gorlov's dream is to place hundreds of these turbines in "ocean power farms" that would supply electric needs worldwide. "The Gulf Stream current alone would be able to provide more electricity than it is imaginable the world would be able to consume," he says.
The system is attracting a great deal of commercial interest. Allied Signal, the US conglomerate, has licensed the product, and says it is in negotiations to install power farms off the coasts of Australia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, China and South Africa.
"We're not selling this as environmentally friendly power, although it is," says Ted Bajer, programme manager at Allied Signal for the turbines. "There's a lot of interest because the system is incredibly cheap and efficient. In dollars per kilowatt, it's cheaper than oil."
Mr Bajer estimates Allied Signal would achieve several billions of dollars in annual sales from the project within the next few years.
The turbines face challenges. One concerns getting the electricity back to the mainland after it is generated. Electric cables along the ocean floor would probably be economically unfeasible.
Instead, Mr Gorlov, in partnership with another company, Gulf Stream Energy, hopes to package the energy in hydrogen fuel. The fuel would then be shipped in canisters back to the mainland. Although this system would probably work, it might create eyesores on the ocean. To make full use of the power it would also be necessary to convert internal combustion engines and other oil consumers to hydrogen use.
None of this prevents Mr Gorlov from predicting that the turbines will eventually become the world's main source of energy. "I set out to solve the world's energy problems in an environmentally friendly way and I have done so," he says. "This will save future generations from the greenhouse effect and is capable of providing all the power we would ever conceivably wish to consume."
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