I just read there are plans to create a 1km tall building in China.
What if that tower was built as a hollow chimney?
Imagine if the exhaust from all the day to day operations, the air conditioning especially, were vented to the inside of the building and (relatively) cool air was taken in the bottom 70 floors or so. Wouldn’t that cause an enormous updraft?
And wouldn’t that updraft drive a very large set of fan blades? Fan blades large enough to generate power? Probably not enough to power the entire building, but still a significant amount. The biggest wind turbines right now are generating 8 Megawatts.
Who knows, if the turbine was massive enough, the gyroscopic force could even work as the equivalent of a tuned mass dampener to counteract earthquake movements (or possibly enhance them. I’m not an engineer).
Just a random thought.
UX UNbound 