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Variability of exchanges in the northern seas

Objective


The project developed three 600MWe class supercritical coal-fired boiler designs, a traditional two-pass spiral wound design and two vertical ribbed tube furnace variants; based on a two-pass boiler configuration and a novel horizontal furnace arrangement. The project succeeded in targeting current absolute state-of-the-art steam conditions of 290barg/600°C/620°C at turbine inlet, which are limited by availability of suitable steam turbines rather than boiler materials. Innovative features have been introduced to the designs for improved plant costs, operability and flexibility. These include state-of-the-art materials, vertical internally ribbed tubing, improved separator design, improved mechanical details and integrated fuel reburn. Technical guidelines have been generated for the novel design features for application to future designs. A techno-economic assessment of capital cost and cost of electricity has provided a basis for selection of the most suitable design for demonstration.
The overall objective of the VEINS proposal reads:
To measure and to model the variability of fluxes between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean with a view on implementing a longer term system of critical measurements needed to understand the highlatitude oceans steering role in decadal climate variability.
Exchanges between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean result in the most dramatic water mass conversions in the World Ocean: Warm and saline Atlantic waters flowing through the Nordic Seas into the Arctic Ocean are separated by cooling and freezing into shallow fresh waters (and ice) and saline deep waters. The outflow from the Nolthem Seas to the south provides the initial driving of the global thermohaline circulation cell, the one to the north is of major impact to the large scale circulation of the Arctic Ocean Measuring these fluxes is a major requirement to quantify the turnover-rates within the large circulation cells of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans and a basic condition to understand the role of these ocean areas in climate variability on interannual to decadal scales.
For this purpose a consortium of 18 institutions with long standing experience in high latitude observations and modelling propose to obtain 3 year synoptic time series of water and property transports in the key passages from the Arctic Ocean through the Nordic Seas into the Atlantic Ocean. These measurements will provide integral information on the water mass formation processes in the Northern Seas and on the forces driving the circulation between the different basins. This makes them especially suitable for the validation of large scale circulation models.
Its results will be used to develop an eff1cient observational design to measure time series resolving up to decadal time scales, which are considered to be the most crucial measurements for advancing our predictive capabilities for shorter term climate changes.

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Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG
Address
Troplowitzstrasse 7
22529 Hamburg
Germany

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Participants (17)

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Last update: 9 August 2004

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/MAS3960070

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