• Pixlbabble@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Seriously I’m dumb but wouldn’t it just be transfer of heat? I was joking btw but now I’m invested lol.

      • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You need a temperature gradient to extract energy.

        The water is still cooler than the atmosphere just less than usual.

        It would be a few degrees warmer than deep ocean water, so you could maybe power one of those toy stirling engines with a heat sink near the surface and one deep down, but the amount of usable energy per m^2 would be milliwatts at best.

        • Madison420@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There is a temperature gradient from deep water to shallow, the sterling cycle is just not efficient enough to gain energy with a massive deep-shallow-deep heat pipe system.

          • dudebro@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That’s usually the information I’m looking for.

            Even if the concept works in theory, on practice it may not yield enough magnitude to be useful.