Deep Reach Technology, Inc. Receives Contract for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Scale Model Testing from leading OTEC Technology Developer
Houston, Texas (USA) – 2014
Deep Reach Technology, Inc. (“DRT”) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a contract for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Scale Model Testing. The contract was awarded by Lockheed Martin Corporation and funded jointly by Lockheed and the U. S. Department of Energy. Dr. John Halkyard will be the principal investigator on the scale model test of a full ocean thermal energy conversion (“OTEC”) pipe-platform system. DRT’s team for this project includes BMT Scientific Marine Services, Houston Offshore Engineering, LabOceano, and Makai Ocean Engineering.
OTEC is a renewable energy technology that produces electricity from energy harvested from the warm waters of the world’s tropical oceans. Compared to standard oil & gas deep-water floating systems, OTEC uses relatively small platforms but requires extremely large pipes that are 10 times larger than typical oil risers. This unique combination has been a long-time barrier to widespread adoption of OTEC, as it results in uncertainty on the overall motion of the floating system. This project is designed to reduce the uncertainty by testing a scale model of an OTEC platform and pipe in a wave basin operated by Petrobras in Brazil.
The basin testing will test whether HARP, a standard oil & gas hydrodynamic analysis tool, can compute estimates of the platform/pipe system. This would validate its use for OTEC system analysis and design and open the door for development of the first commercial-scale OTEC system.
The DRT team includes a number of design and academic leaders in the field of marine technology, offshore production facilities and deep-sea mining. For further information contact Mr. Steven Rizea, DRT President at SRizea@deepreachtech.com or Dr. OTECHalkyard, at JHalkyard@deepreachtech.com.
A video describing the project is now available at https://vimeo.com/82520569.