Solar Wind Energy Tower Inc. (fka SWET)

[Nomad505]

I have two ideas I'd like to bring up that might be helpful to your model.

The interaction between the water and the air should be as adventurous as possible. I've seen those outside air conditioning systems that use a small hose with tiny atomizers that create a very fine mist. Seems to me that you could just run the hose around the inside of your tower to get the best evaporative cooling effect. Maybe even wrap it several times to increase the number of nozzles to eliminate dead spots.

The nozzles should all be pointed straight to the center of the tower. Angling up or down would add unwanted bias to the system.

Finally, the Solar Wind Energy Tower is designed so that the water injection system is not right at the top of the tower. It's some distance inside the tower. Seems like that's probably a good thing to do as well.

I have little doubt that you can replicate the way a tower would create a downdraft. I grew up in a semi desert climate and know how much of a difference a swamp cooler can make to hot dry air. Since cold air is less dense than warm air it should produce a downward effect.

The biggest hurdle I see in making the tower work is pumping the water all the way to the top. The tower requires a lot of water. The number that has been tossed out for how much it will use in a year is given in acre feet. That's a cubic foot of water across an entire acre of land. Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact number but it was definitely much more than one. If you consider that some of the water is going to be recycled since it didn't fully evaporate the amount of water being pumped is absolutely huge.

Pumping water has it's limitations. It takes quite a bit of energy to lift it. The higher the lift the harder it is since you are dealing with the weight of the entire column of water. Eventually there is a point where you can't raise it any higher with a given pump. It just can't lift the column of water.

The science of the project had been discussed quite often earlier on by people with various levels of understanding.