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This idea is for drought-stricken countries surrounded by ocean (like, say, Australia).
The idea is to use giant (perhaps at least partially tide-powered?) fountains in the ocean to fire masses of water into the air to evaporate and form clouds (at least some of which would then drift inland to
provide much-needed rain).
The fountains would be carefully optimised for evaporation between turning the seawater into a fine spray and propelling it to a massive height.
The area around each fountain would be fenced off so no fish or other sea life gets sucked into the fountains.
They would be strategically positioned far enough from land that any salt would fall back into the ocean, but close enough for the water vapour to drift back in.
Cloud-making plan to reverse global warming
http://findarticles...080309/ai_n24934697
Professor Stephen Salter suggests spraying sea water droplets into the atmosphere to form clouds as a means of mitigating global warming [xaviergisz, Aug 08 2008]
Apparatus for enhancing wave height in ocean waves
http://www.patentst...60/description.html
One of the free patent sites, listing the idea for using constructive interference to concentrate ocean wave energy [talldave, Aug 09 2008]
Lake Nyos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Not a nice place [8th of 7, Aug 09 2008]
More about Nyos
http://www.pbs.org/...no/01/indexmid.html
Scary ... [8th of 7, Aug 09 2008]
RAF Rainmakers Kill 35 people!
http://www.guardian...on.physicalsciences
[mecotterill, Aug 10 2008]
[link]
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Evaporation also cools. (Evaporation, ah, so cool!) |
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Suppose this method has a 10% chance of delivering water to where it's needed. Then you'd want it to use 10% of the energy of the alternative means which you can be pretty sure will deliver water where it's needed, such as a desalination plant and some pumps and lots of irrigation pipes. |
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A giant metal petri dish under the surface
of the water that lifts a foot deep of water
out would require less energy and would
serve to cook the water quickly and
naturally. Viable option? |
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Bonjour a partir de demi-boulangerie
monsieur [Irrevenant]. |
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A series of strategically place pylons could act like a 2-D version of a Fresnel Zone plate and so use constructive interference to focus and concentrate water waves into your misting device. |
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// it does a good job of evaporating itself // |
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Well, no. It's a function of energy input and surface area. Small droplets evaporate faster because their surface area is large compared to their volume (square-law versus cube-law, that's why bigger animals tend to live in colder climates) and they can acheive total internal reflection, concebntrating ebergy. |
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The notionally planar (but fractal) surface of the ocean does a good job of distributing thermal energy through its bulk. If all the incident solar energy were captured at the surface the rate of evaporation would be much higher. |
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On some volvanic islands, natural blowholes form, spraying atomised droplets high into the air. This is a rare and freakish natural phenomenon. But there are plenty of hot places on the planet where the force of surf could be harnessed through simple passive conical pipes with vertically-aimned nozzles to increase evaporation. |
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See also the techniques for degassing of deep volcanic lakes by use of a gas-syphon. |
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No, it doesn't, it's rubbish. The droplets are too big, and they don't go high enough. |
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See link. There was a series of
experiments in the 1950s in Britain to
make rain but they were halted following
a disaster at Lynmouth and all such
research has been halted since then. |
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Interesting how they were trying to
develop it as a 'weapon'. |
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Yay for salt encrusted coastal areas? |
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I mean evaporation of salt water means that airborn salt is suddenly a concern. |
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I was wondering if you did this powered off wind farms whether you could generate the clouds WAY offshore and then have them blow in. |
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Also I was wondering what this would do to effect Hurricanes. Would localized cooling kill them off where they "breed"? This would basically cool the air and cool the water by blocking sunlight with clouds. obviously you'd need a lot of them, but after Katrina money could probably be found. |
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