Eco Factor: Refurbished power plant to use Archimedes’ inventions to generate green power.
The inventions and discoveries made by one of the most famous mathematicians of all time, Archimedes, would now be used to save our planet from global warming. A device invented by him 2,000 years ago would be brought to use to generate green electricity in a crumbling 100-year-old hydroelectric plant in Yorkshire Dales.
The plant. which has not been used in the last 10 decades, will now be refurbished to provide green electricity to 100 houses. The idea behind this technology is to use a screw discovered by Archimedes to lift water upwards as it rotates. Since we don’t want to lift any water with this screw, modern architects would now use the screw in reverse order so that falling water should be able to turn the screw, which in turn should be able to rotate turbine blades to produce green electricity.
Using water to run turbines is nothing new and it is widely used in hydroelectric dams all over the world. But building a hydroelectric dam needs a perfect location and some millions of dollars. However, this new technique allows a screw just 35 feet long and six feet wide to do the same job. The power plant should be able to supply 510,000 kilowatt hours of green electricity annually to the national grid and also save about 216 tons of CO2 emissions in the whole process.
The Dark Side:
The use of screws to generate electricity looks promising, but the technique can only be used to generate a small amount of power. Presently the technique is nowhere near to deliver power for complete towns. Still, we give the technique a thumbs-up because something done towards the helping the planet is always better than doing nothing at all.
Via: Daily Mail
