A fundamental study on upwelling due to heat input at deep sea

Abstract

A new cooling water system for power plant is proposed in which the cooling medium circulates in the closed duct system between the condenser and the heat exchanger installed at deep sea. This cooling system could improve power generation efficiency since deep sea water has lower temperature than surface water. It is also expected that the environmental impacts on the ocean surface layer will be greatly reduced because there is no warm water discharge. On the other hand, the influences of heat brought to the deep ocean have to be investigated. In the present study, the upwelling phenomena due to heat input in the bottom layer of the ocean with stratification and background current are investigated by hydraulic model experiments and numerical simulations. The upwelling height can be expressed by using non-dimensional parameters regarding the thermal input rate, the stratification gradient, and the velocity of background current.