• schroedingershat@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        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.