FAU PROFESSORS OFFER HOPE OF FLOATING OTEC

IOA News Letters Summary

The authors of a recent review and forecast in Sea Technology, Drs. Stanley E. Dunn and Ray F. McAllister of Ocean Engineering Department at Florida Atlantic University, said many offshore floating structures are being proposed or developed and , in some cases, are in planning or prototype construction for a wide variety of uses. A practical use of such offshore floating structures is to site an ocean thermal energy conversion facility. In conjunction with the offshore floating OTEC plants, they also expect to see floating aluminum, hydrogen and ammonia producing facilities taking advantage of the readily available electric power from OTEC plants because it is easier to use OTEC power at plant site than to transmit ashore. They urged that such ocean energy conversion facilities are needed as an alternate energy source to prevent future energy shortage, and indicated that ocean engineering will continue to gain high levels of acceptance from ocean-oriented industries.