A Nano Tower’s task is to capture and filter as much air as possible when the wind blows. The air can of course also be captured and filtered via balloons or other structures. The volume of air that blows against the Nano Tower is filtered through a braced nano sheet in order to make use of the methane and/or hydrogen contained in normal air.
At present there are wind turbines that are more than 200 metres high. Tall masts based on a lattice construction are nothing new, for example in 1974 a radio mast was opened in Poland with a height of 646 metres. It is not a problem to build something big and tall.
The 200-metre-high wind turbines with their gigantic generators and huge rotor blades high up on the turbines are clearly subjected to incredible forces when the wind blows. They must be built to withstand these forces. The modules, which are built in factories, are so big and heavy that one significant cost of building a wind turbine is the cost of building a durable road to the site of the wind turbine. To withstand these forces, a wind turbine must therefore also be secured to an enormous concrete foundation, which can have a diameter of 100 metres.
HyMeAir has calculated that it could be possible to build a Nano Tower with a diameter of 300 metres and a height of 470 metres (or more) that is more durable, and therefore has a much longer useful life, than a wind turbine.
One possible way of building a Nano Tower could be to build, for example, 64 small individual latticed towers of the same type as modern cranes. Latticed structures do not weigh much, they require very little material and small foundations, and they are cheap and easy to build.
These 64 narrow towers could be positioned in a circle with a circumference of 942 metres. The distance between the towers would then be just over ten metres. The 64 towers are joined together with lattice bars and secured by cables. This means that the towers support one another.
The external sheet, plastic or glass fibre sheet surface of the tower, to which an appropriate number of nano filters would be secured, would measure 470 metres x circumference 942 metres = 443,000 square metres.
It has been estimated that in only a few years the manufacturing cost of graphene sheet will have fallen from USD 100 to USD 1 per square metre. There is good reason to assume, given increased manufacturing efficiency, that the price of nano sheet will fall, maybe down to USD 0.1 per square metre. The raw material costs virtually nothing.
Almost half of the surface of the 443,000 square metres on a Nano Tower consists of the wind capture surface, the filtering surface, about 220,000 square metres.
The space, the container, where the filtered gas will be diverted and collected in the first stage, only needs to be a few millimetres deep.
At an average wind speed of 10 metres/second, 2,200,000 cubic metres of air will hit the filter every second. One year consists of 31,536,000 seconds. This means that the Nano Tower’s filter receives almost 70,000 billion cubic metres of air per year.
One single Nano Tower that filters out methane, hydrogen and helium would, at a theoretical but unrealistic efficiency of 100%, produce combustible gas with an energy content of 1 TWh, 1 billion kWh/year.
N.B: the weight of gas is not the same as its volume. 1 kg hydrogen = 13.9 litres, 1 kg methane = 1.8 litres and 1 kg helium = 7.2 litres.
A tower of this size would have an internal capacity of 33 million cubic metres for the storage of gas(es). A Nano Tower is thus also an enormous energy store.
According to reliable figures, during 2015 Sweden’s wind turbines each produced an average energy output of only 0.005 TWh, 5 million kWh per year. In other words, it would take about 200 wind turbines to generate one single TWh per year.
How much does energy cost at present, on average? The average global price of energy, coal, gas, nuclear power, water, wind energy, wood or solar energy for the end customer, processed energy that in various forms reaches you as the end consumer, is not easy to calculate. Furthermore, the price of processed energy changes from year to year.
If you take away all of the subsidies and taxes, it is a reasonable estimate that the average global price of processed energy is around USD 0.06-0,08 per kWh.
As already mentioned, 100% efficiency in a Nano Tower is not feasible.
It is of course not possible to use 100% of all gas from the air/wind. Nano Towers also cost money to build and finance. Nano Towers require operation and maintenance and must eventually be scrapped. The gas may have to be processed, e.g. converted into electricity, before consumers can make use of the energy, etc.
HyMeAir therefore calculates the efficiency of a Nano Tower at only 50%. This produces net energy per Nano Tower of 0.5 TWh/year, 500,000,000 kWh per year.
A land-based wind turbine costs at least USD 5 million to finance, build and demolish (up to USD 35 million per wind turbine). Because of the major forces to which they are subjected, they have a useful life of only 20–25 years. They cost at least USD 0.15 million in operation and maintenance.
A Nano Tower is not subjected to forces from the generator and enormous rotor blades. Without these heavy moving parts, a Nano Tower should not cost any more than a wind turbine to build and operate. The useful life should also be twice as long, 50 years. But if we apply caution and estimate the cost of building a gas tower to be twice as high as a wind turbine, and that cost is spread over twice the period, it gives the same depreciation/construction cost per year.
Depreciation of the Nano Tower would then be USD 0.2 million/year, operation and maintenance USD 0.15 million/year, making a total of USD 0.35 million per year. This gives us 500,000,000 kWh per year at a cost of USD 0.0007 per kWh, at an efficiency of 50%.
If we then add another safety factor and assume that the price, for some reason not known at present, rises by 43%, the price of energy will be around USD 0.001 per kWh.
We have already estimated the current average cost of energy to be around USD 0, 07 per kWh.
According to the cautious estimates above, the energy cost of a Nano Tower with a construction cost that is twice as high and with an efficiency of just 33% would be 1/60 of the current price.
In other words, the energy would be virtually free. Everything in our lives would become much cheaper. The cost of filling a large car in an environment-friendly way might fall from the current level of 60 dollars to just a couple of dollars.