Popular Science - November 2007
by Gregory Mone
posted by Scott
Most people try to avoid tornadoes, but a Canadian Scientist, Louis Michaud wants to start them. Michaud wants to turn these havok wreaking twisters into power plants. Now, one question is that it would take too much energy to create the twister, making the output meaningless. Yet Michaud says that the start up energy would be free. The first test of this machine will be this spring in Sarnia, Ontario.
This is how the machine should work. First, it takes in hot water, most likely from a nearby nuclear power plant. The hot water runs around the exterior of the vortex machine. Next, fans that are placed in a series of cells, take in hot air heated by the water. They then blow it through slanted channels to a 330-foot-wide chamber. The air flows to the walls of the camber and spins up through a 100 foot wide hole in the top, thus making the twister. The ongoing supply of more hot air could produce a 30 foot wide tornado. After the twister is formed the fans become generators that create electricity.
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