Written on June 29, 2008 – 3:00 am | by Bogdan Alex |
For those of you who think that man hasn’t the slightest chance against the forces of nature, check this one out. New Scientist is pleased to inform us that some ingenious guys came up with an artificial tornado device.

The giant "vortex engine" is specifically designed to harness waste heat from conventional power plants and turn it into additional energy. Well now, all this global warming is forcing people to come up with weird ideas like this recycling process implied by the vortex engine. Instead of recycling waste heat, maybe they should concentrate on implementing solar panels, wind turbines and other green solutions.

The artificial tornado device is Louis Michaud’s latest design. It is actually a circular wall 200 meters across and 100 meters high without a roof. Air carrying the waste heat would be blown in from vents on the sides, spinning around the walls into a vortex that transforms into something resembling a small scale tornado. Once started, the vortex would draw in more hot air from vents in the wall, pulling it past turbines and generating electricity.

Michaud estimates that a single vortex engine of this size would create a tornado about 50 meters in diameter that would be able to generate between 50 and 500 MW of electricity.