I was asked on another thread about the Petra project and I started answering and now regret it because that thread was about archeology which the Petra project has nothing to do about. It is a hydro electric project that uses salt water as the source of energy and salt water as the end product along with electricity produced without combustion. When you have a good idea most people think you are going to get rich or that why did they not have the idea and get rich themselves. But I have no intentions of getting rich. I am happy to be poor. Things taste better and small joys have still that quality about them. So the best way to proceed was to make the idea public and not subject to other peoples control. So I made a public post announcing the inception of the idea on March 20th 2012. The second anniversary of which is tomorrow here in Japan. So happy birthday Petra.
I write in automatic writing which means I do not include paragraphs. So this is a favor I am doing for someone to told me the first thing he learned was to split things into paragraphs but really it should be as a scroll. No spaces and no punctuation. The Petra project was named after the famous location in Jordan that I visited as a child on school excursion from Switzerland. Americans know it better from the Indiana Jones movie. The Japanese government build around a hundred dams every year around the world and are considered experts in Hydro power construction. So I consulted with them first and they were astonished at the simplicity of my idea and the possibilities. The original concept was for a 10 m. diameter tunnel built by a tunnel boring machine. They can be bought second hand after a city uses them to build subway systems and underground viaducts. A childhood friend in Switzerland who has a doctorate in geology and is an expert in tunnel boring machines having helped build the longest tunnel under the Alps between Switzerland and Italy can' t wait for the project to get started.
When you make calculations for hydro a very simple equation is needed to calculate the effective head and the amount of possible Kilowatts generated. This equation is as follows: KW= HxQ divided by C. where KW is the electric energy expressed in Kilowatts, H is the head (the distance in meters of straight fall between the source and the end of the drop) Q is the flow expressed in speed per second and C is the constant (102 ) which represents the loss of head due to water friction on the surface of the tunnel. Although the head is 400m the effective head is just 320 m due to the seventy kilometer length of the tunnel. for example. A one meter head x 6 m/s divided by 102 is 5 KW of electricity. Fluid engineers can put in the data of the project into a computer and immediately realize the volume, flow rate and potential energy in no time flat. It is an amazing amount of energy wasted because it is not used. Instead the Palestinians have to import Gas bottles from Egypt smuggled in through tunnels. A single tunnel seventy kilometers long would be just a fraction of the tunnels already dug from Egypt to smuggle in goods from neighboring Egypt. My plan is to donate the project to Palestinians as reparations for the occupation and war damages.
I visited Israel a year ago for this project and another project concerning archeological evidence and I went to the dead sea. I was astonished to see that since my last visit there forty years ago the dead sea had dropped ten meters in height and from where I was seated to the edge of the water was at least a hundred meters of new beach where the water had receded due to evaporation. The japanese government contact told me they already had a signed accord with the Palestinians , jordan , Israel and Egypt called the Valley of peace accord signed in 2005 which called for a canal to be built from Aquaba on the red sea to the dead sea. They had already paid for the environmental impact study and the geological surveys. I told them that their idea was not feasible because current lock technology only allows for a ten meter drop for a lock, They would have to build over forty locks and they could never afford it. I have never seen a man turn so ash grey in front of me as if his career was flushed down the toilet. After a few moments of silence to make sure he wasn't having a heart attack I told him why don't you save face and make it an energy project. I have never seen the man again but a friend of mine spotted an article in the Hong Kong financial times about a pipe line being constructed from Aquaba to the dead sea . They call it an environmental restoration project.
Now I have spoken to Financial experts like Bloombergs in london and bankers about getting the project underway with corporate financing. I am just an english teacher in Japan and have no connections to financial circles. But I can tell you this, the more people know this the quicker it will get underway. I have a friend in Switzerland who is a clever business man who would like to branch out into energy but who is currently involved in litigations but might be interested latter. In the mean time since the Jews are not interested I am going to give it to the arabs and they can fight over it. I just hate to see a good idea wasted don't you?" (Sigmund Ivarsson)