water appreciation thread

This Belgian company specializes in micro-hydro turbines that don't need big dams or other expensive infrastructure. Using a drop of only 1.5 meters they can generate anywhere from 5 to 100 kW, and the turbine is designed to move slowly, in the center of a whirlpool, which means it doesn't harm fish if they happen to swim through it!

https://www.turbulent.be/

initially looks very promising but its all run by belgians. belgians can't be trusted.

initially looks very promising but its all run by belgians. belgians can't be trusted.

That's racist. Do you have a reason for saying that? Keep in mind this is general discussion.

https://cheeseweb.eu/2014/04/3-reasons-no-belgian-friends/

i've known three belgians and all three were untrustworthy bastards

surely i can't be wrong writing off an entire country?

This guy yells a lot but it's a pretty dope video

This guy yells a lot but it's a pretty dope video

pretty cool but he seems to have hundreds of feet of pipe for no reason and said something about "2 phase DC" which makes no sense, but I guess it's clear what he's doing looking at his electrical box (terrifying looking rectifier btw), he probably just misspoke. I think you could easily make this system 10x simpler and possibly more efficient. Some of the extra pipe seems to be for building pressure for the turbine sprayers, but that's not until the last 50ft or so of the line and it only gets up to 16psi.

pretty cool but he seems to have hundreds of feet of pipe for no reason and said something about "2 phase DC" which makes no sense, but I guess it's clear what he's doing looking at his electrical box (terrifying looking rectifier btw), he probably just misspoke. I think you could easily make this system 10x simpler and possibly more efficient. Some of the extra pipe seems to be for building pressure for the turbine sprayers, but that's not until the last 50ft or so of the line and it only gets up to 16psi.

As far as I can tell all of the pipes are necessary if you care about not disturbing the wildlife. First, the pipe entrance is submerged, which is the first line of defense against debris. There is a chance that fish might get sucked into the tube, but that's why this portion of the system is open on both ends. The water input pipe has a L bend in it, and a long deep tube where large sediment and rocks will fall. That slightly filtered, but constant supply of water is then fed over another filtered tube which spins like a water wheel. The spinning automatically keeps the screen clear and the wide trough gives a way for sticks, leaves, and small fish to safely flow downstream. The filtered water then goes down to the turbines.

What in particular would you change about the system?

oops we got rid of all the water in california for farmland and now there's no more rain

boy golly who could have seen that coming

ice is strong

stronger than rock

ice is cool

Water is a liquid that grows in volume when you lower its temperature.
Is it the only one that does that?

Stick a giant straw into the ocean to harness the temperature differential between the depths and shallow water in tropical regions

Holy shit. This is the total area of land which feeds into the mississippi river.



That's one big watershed

Water is a liquid that grows in volume when you lower its temperature.
Is it the only one that does that?

I looked it up, apparently there are 5 elements which expand when they freeze.

- Gallium
- Silicon
- Bismuth
- Antimony
- Germanium

However water is not an element but a molecule of hydrogen and oxygen. If there are 5 elements which exhibit this behavior, surely many more molecules do this as well.

I know that ice, bismuth, and silicon all form crystals. So perhaps the connection here is that materials which form crystals tend to expand when they are frozen, and materials which do not form crystals tend to shrink?

This is a graph of the snow and rainfall in the South Platte watershed. That's where I live! It looks like we're already off to a pretty dry year.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/WCIS/AWS_PLOTS/basinCharts/POR/WTEQ/assocHUC6/101900_South_Platte.html

Another video discussing the micro-turbines I posted last year. This one is a bit more in depth and is told from the perspective of an environmental educator instead of a product demo.