The European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) came into force in 2000, 25 years ago. It is one of the most ambitious pieces of EU legislation, creating a coherent legislative and policy framework for all outstanding issues related to river water, including the reconstruction of polluting dams, with the ultimate goal of achieving a high level of environmental safety for all European water bodies, including artificial ones, by 2027. The Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) (England and Wales) Regulations 2017 updated the 2003 Regulations for England and Wales, and separate provisions applicable to Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the most efficient locations for electrolysers are within hydroelectric schemes, but future developments in river power generation include the introduction of vortex kinetic power stations such as the Hydro Power Tower (HYPOT), which are installed in river bends and convert the kinetic energy of the flow into potential energy in electric batteries used to produce hydrogen. When a river turns or bends, vertical vortices are created. These vortices can be very powerful and can be comparable in strength to the currents that form at the tops of mountain peaks. In addition, such sites can collect energy from a large area, making them some of the most powerful sites on the planet. Kinetic energy is a scalar value, which means that it does not depend on the direction of the water flow and is described only in terms of magnitude. It follows that with an increase in the mass (m) of the river water flow due to tributaries, its kinetic energy also increases, and with a doubling of the speed (v) of the object due to the slope, the value of kinetic energy increases fourfold. Thus, kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass and speed of the entire water flow of the river in the bends, which in natural conditions perform the characteristic work of transporting huge reserves of bottom sediments. As a result, the power of vortex HYPOT
calculated taking this work into account can reach tens of megawatts, which will more than replace dam hydroelectric power plants, and therefore will be a sufficiently powerful source of electrical energy for the production of hydrogen on an industrial scale.
