Science: Sea Power

A group of curious Cuban engineers peered about in a small sheet-iron building at Matanzas Bay, Cuba, last week. They studied the arrangement of a lot of pipes and tanks, and of a board, covered with levers, buttons and gauges beside which stood Dr. Georges Claude, French academician. After three years of patient work, Dr. Claude was ready to give the first public demonstration of his method for taking Power from the sea (TIME, Sept. 22 et ante).

While many of the visitors expressed skepticism to one another in polite whispers, Georges Claude explained the process to them. Great pumps are used to suck up cold water, 40º F., through a mile-long tube from the bottom of Matanzas Bay. Warm surface water, 80º F., rushes through other pipes into a large vacuum tank. When a liquid is kept under low pressure, it will boil at temperatures much lower than 212º F. The pressure in the vacuum tank, Dr. Claude explained, is low enough to cause the 80º surface water to boil, give off steam. When he finished his explanation, he pressed a switch, started his sea-machine to work. Shortly the steam began to turn a turbine adjacent to the boiler. Rushing through the turbine into an empty tank cooled by the 40º undersea water, the steam was condensed by the lowered temperature.

When the visitors saw the turbine gathering speed, traveling at a rate of several thousand revolutions per min. they stopped their whispers, stared. Then Georges Claude turned on electric generators. Forty large bulbs began to glow dully, soon lighted up, shone brightly for min. Cuban scientists nodded their heads. Here was a Power which might some day give to Cuba and all tropical and semitropical countries an industrial value they never dreamed of.

Next day Dr. Lucian de Goicochea, dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Havana, ex pressed his doubts about the practicability of Georges Claude’s power plant.

Said he: “If the 30 horsepower obtained yesterday is the maximum tobe obtained by the Matanzas Plant, consider the cost of a plant powerful enough to supply a city requiring 40,000 horsepower for its electrical needs.”

Other skeptical minds asked whether the auxiliary power which is needed to pump such large amounts of water will not necessarily have to be almost as great as the final power generated.

Dr. Claude is positive he can so perfect his machine that it will be commercially efficient. In answer to reported criticisms made by Dr. William J. Humphreys of the U. S. Weather Bureau. Washington, he retorted: “I may assure you that it is just another example of bad prophecies being useless.”