Rome, 15 February 2006 – Italy is fast becoming a world leader in the field of alternative energy technologies using marine currents. And INSEAN – The National Institute for Naval Architecture Research and Experimentation – headed by Admiral Giano Pisi, is making a major contribution to optimising the Kobold patented turbine, which has already been “adopted” by UNIDO – the United Nations Industrial Development Organization – for an experimental programme to disseminate Kobold farms throughout the archipelagos of the People's Republic of China, Indonesia and the Philippines, to generate electricity from marine currents.
Over the past few weeks, in one of the INSEAN naval dockyards equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation for monitoring the performance of Elio Matacena’s Ponte the Archimede S.p.A. patented turbine, a series of trials on a life-sized model have been conducted in order to substantially increase the performance of the turbine prototype on a platform in the Strait of Messina.
“Using our testing equipment and instruments, for which we are renowned worldwide, our Institute is contributing to a project which is one of its kind, and which will make Italy particularly competitive in a cutting-edge sector, particularly in the present state of the energy market. Our researchers have managed to establish the specific design conditions to increase the energy production rating to this hugely insightful idea that will provide clean and renewable energy to islands in Asia, by converting the marine currents which are so plentiful in those Asian seas into ‘blue deposits’ of eternal energy.”
This morning INSEAN is staging a practical demonstration of the ongoing trials in the presence of the Director of UNIDO Italy, Diana Battaggia, the Ambassador of the Indonesian Republic, Susanto Sutoyo, accompanied by his Scientific Counsellor Ahmad Irdamis, and the Scientific Counsellor of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China, Sun Chengyong, together with the Second Secretary for Science and Technology, Zhuo Li Ge Tu.
This visit is to become more familiar with the state-of-the-art of the turbine for which negotiations are currently in progress to manufacture it in those countries: within a couple of years, the first small islands in China, Indonesia and the Philippines will be able to shake off the shackles of costly and polluting electricity generators using conventional fuels.
|
