Poorly Thought Out Ideas For Alternative Energy

Before you read on, keep in the mind difference between ignorance and innocence. When a child thinks babies come from mom’s bellybutton, they are innocent. People would say “Oh, that’s so cute,” not “What a moron. That’s gotta be the dumbest 4-year-old I’ve ever met.” I claim innocence on this post because I know nothing about physics, chemistry, math, or any similar subject that should probably be capitalized.

I would never claim to have even a basic understanding of any form of engineering, I just barely earned C-s in every college science class I ever took. However, I was thinking about two problems that our environment faces and how they could work together. I imagine that one of two things could happen with this post: 1) Some engineer writes me an email telling me how incredibly stupid I am and how my idea is a total joke. 2) I would be known as the Great Salvation of Mankind and they’d make movies about me. More likely though, would be a third option of nobody ever reading my post. Or maybe there is a fourth outcome: this is exactly what they’ve been doing for the last 90 years.

I’m not exactly sure how water desalination works, but I imagine that it would be possible to boil sea water and catch the steam. Assuming this works, we move to the next step. Coal-powered factories burn coal to create heat that moves turbines. Many coal plants are located closer to the source of the coal to save on transportation costs. If the power plant is on the ocean (or the Great Salt Lake I suppose), than you could combine the desalination process with the burning of coal to create energy.

One possible way to do this is the same way a 90% efficient furnace works. Instead of burning the natural gas and then pushing the exhaust out the flue, the flue first passes back through the heat exchanger to use the heat of the flue to heat air. Then the not so hot exhaust is expelled out into the atmosphere.

If there is a problem boiling the water in the original heat exchanger where the coal is moving the turbines, then use the hot exhaust to boil the water.

Here’s another one that I’m sure defies the lay of physics: You could make the tips of wind turbine fins magnetic. Have opposing magnets that help get the turbine moving and keep it moving during weak wind.

I’ve got one of those flashlights that you shake and it charges the battery. It basically just has a piece of metal bouncing back and forth crossing a bundle of copper wires. It seems like you could create something similar that would work off of vibrations (instead of a back-and-forth motion). These devices could be placed under interstates. By my calculations (all of which are made-up) rush hour traffic in each major city would create enough electricity to basically cancel the greenhouse emissions created by the cars involved in rush hour.

Or maybe they could install those devices in hybrid cars to help charge the battery.