Previous investigations of the large-scale deployment of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversions (OTEC) systems are extended by allowing some atmospheric feedback in an ocean general circulation model. A modified ocean-atmosphere thermal boundary condition is used where relaxation corresponds to atmospheric longwave radiation to space, and an additional term expresses horizontal atmospheric transport. This produces lower steady-state OTEC power maxima (8 to 10.2 TW instead of 14.1 TW for global OTEC scenarios, and 7.2 to 9.3 TW instead of 11.9 TW for OTEC implementation within 100 km of coastlines). When power production peaks, power intensity remains practically unchanged, at 0.2 TW per Sverdrup of OTEC deep cold seawater, suggesting a similar degradation of the OTEC thermal resource. Large-scale environmental effects include surface cooling in low latitudes and warming elsewhere, with a net heat intake within the water column. These changes develop rapidly from the propagation of Kelvin and Rossby waves, and ocean current advection. Two deep circulation cells are generated in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific basins. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is reinforced while an AMOC-like feature appears in the North Pacific, with deep convective winter events at high latitudes. Transport between the Indo-Pacific and the Southern Ocean is strengthened, with impacts on the Atlantic via the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).

A simple algorithm previously used to evaluate steady-state global Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) resources is extended to probe the effect of various effluent discharge methodologies. It is found that separate evaporator and condenser discharges potentially increase OTEC net power limits by about 60% over a comparable mixed discharge scenario. This stems from a relatively less severe degradation of the thermal resource at given OTEC seawater flow rates, which corresponds to a smaller heat input into the ocean. Next, the most practical case of a mixed discharge into the mixed layer is found to correspond to only 80% of the so-called baseline case (mixed discharge at a water depth of initial neutral buoyancy). In general, locating effluent discharges at initial neutral-buoyancy depths appears to be nearly optimal in terms of OTEC net power production limits. The depth selected for the OTEC condenser effluent discharge, however, has by far the greatest impact. Clearly, these results are preliminary and should be investigated in more complex ocean general circulation models.

While the importance of environmental analyses based on isotope discrimination has been growing, uncertainties remain about underlying phenomena. Published results on the temperature dependence of carbon isotope fractionation during methane oxidation in various media show different trends. A decrease in fractionation is generally expected with temperature, but some data for methane oxidation in aqueous media show an inverse relationship. This apparent contradiction was probed by representing the first methane oxidation step as three elementary processes: the adsorption of methane on the bacterial cell wall, the desorption of methane from the wall, and the conversion of methane into methanol mediated by methane monooxygenase (MMO) enzymes. Assuming that the proportion of vacant adsorption sites is stationary, a formula for the composite fractionation factor α was obtained. It was shown that α not only expresses the fractionation that may occur in each elementary process, but that it also depends on the ratio of the kinetic rates for conversion into methanol and desorption. This result and experimental data were used to estimate the activation energy for the desorption of methane from methanotroph cell wall in aqueous medium (≈200 kJ/mol). Simple Rosso models of bacterial maximal-specific growth rate were then used to demonstrate that α and the isotope fractionation from the MMO-mediated conversion into methanol alone could vary in opposite ways as temperature changes, but that care must be exercised when using fitted relationships across wide temperature ranges.