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Okay, we probablly all agree, the VentureOne is iPod cool. But, chances are if you’re hanging out on this web site, defining cool for you (and me) doesn’t come from American Idol or the pages of People magazine, but more fundamentally about thinking and learning about things that have a real potential to change the world that we do and will live in.  Well, so, I for one think that Independent Natural Resources SEADOG(tm) Pump and linking it up with water desalinization so that there is zero-carbon energy and zero-carbon waste water desalinization is Wave Cool.  

The SEADOG^TM pump captures ocean-wave energy to pump large volumes of seawater, consuming no fuel or electricity and creates no polluting by-products in the process. The pump uses buoyancy to convert wave energy to mechanical energy. The main components of the SEADOG^TM pump include a buoyancy chamber, buoyancy block, piston assembly, piston shaft, piston cylinder, and intake and exhaust valves.  When positioned in the water the buoyancy block (filled with air) floats within the buoyancy chamber, moving up and down in relation to the ocean waves and swells. The buoyancy block is connected to the piston shaft which in-turn moves the piston assembly through the piston cylinder.

So, that is the pump.  But, what the SEADOG^TMB system does is takes the pumped water and puts it into an hydroelectricity generation system.  Store the water so that it can be a baseload, “drawing from the water holding area when it is needed to match demand”.  INRI is claiming that the “system has the potential to be cost competitive with any other form of base-load power generation”.

The claimed benefits of this setup are pretty impressive:

• Pump operation requires no fuel or electricity and introduces zero carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
• The pump is an adaptable device that can be scaled and configured for most of the world’s shorelines.
• Pump design and construction is simple and utilizes materials that are readily available almost anywhere. Pump manufacturing is well suited for job creation in the region of deployment.
• The pump device contains no electrical or hydraulic components which can be damaged by seawater and possibly introduce pollutants to the water or air.
• An installed and operating pump system (array of pumps) will continue to function if one or more pumps are shut down for maintenance.

And, for desalinization,

In their writeup, Renewable Energy Access explained it as follows:

 To create hydroelectricity, the SEADOG ocean-wave pump captures energy from ocean swells or waves to pump seawater to a land-based holding area or water tower, where the water can be returned to the ocean through hydroelectric turbines.

In addition, because the device pumps water to a reservoir, it can store salt water or desalinated fresh water in the form of potential energy to generate power on demand, even if the current wave regime during a particular period is too low to generate power.

The SeaDog offers the potential for GHG-free energy generation and GHG-water desalinzation. 

Again, back to Renewable Access:

 The lack of sufficient fresh water is a growing concern in many regions of the world and seawater desalination is increasingly essential. The state of Texas alone has more than 100 desalination plants. Energy consumption is significant in desalination, sometimes accounting for as much as one-third of the operating cost of desalinated water.

How many of those new coal plants could SeaDogs make obsolete overnight?