Giant pipe and balloon to pump water into the sky in climate experiment
Field test by British academics marks first step towards recreating an artificial volcano that would inject particles into the stratosphere and cool the planet
John Vidal
It sounds barmy, audacious or sci-fi: a tethered balloon the size of Wembley stadium suspended 20km above Earth, linked to the ground by a giant garden hose pumping hundreds of tonnes of minute chemical particles a day into the thin stratospheric air to reflect sunlight and cool the planet.
But a team of British academics will next month formally announce the first step towards creating an artificial volcano by going ahead with the world’s first major “geo-engineering” field-test in the next few months. The ultimate aim is to mimic the cooling effect that volcanoes have when they inject particles into the stratosphere that bounce some of the Sun’s energy back into space, so preventing it from warming the Earth and mitigating the effects of man-made climate change.
Before the full-sized system can be deployed, the research team will test a scaled-down version of the balloon-and-hose design. Backed by a £1.6m government grant and the Royal Society, the team will send a balloon to a height of 1km over an undisclosed location. It will pump nothing more than water into the air, but it will allow climate scientists and engineers to gauge the engineering feasibility of the plan. Ultimately, they aim to test the impact of sulphates and other aerosol particles if they are sprayed directly into the stratosphere.
If the technical problems posed by controlling a massive balloon at more than twice the cruising height of a commercial airliner are resolved, then the team from Cambridge, Oxford, Reading and Bristol universities expect to move to full-scale solar radiation tests. (Guardian)
What pump could they find with that kind of head? What hose could they use that can take 20 km of water? That 2,000 atmospheres of pressure at the bottom. That’s not even considering the downward weight of the water and pipe. The pressure problem could be solved using pumping stations, but that exacerbates the weight issue, and use of balloons to eliminate weight makes the thing so vulnerable to wind shear that it will rip itself apart before it can be turned on. Even if by some miracle you manage to design it so that it runs, are you willing to spend 5.4 kWh of power per kg you pump up (that’s ignoring the huge pump loss that will be present)? You can’t build this thing with Star-Trek levels of technology, and you go broke just trying to run it.
Are they willfully ignorant or just plain dumb?
A 1000 m tall pipe full of water will generate about 1500 psi. To resist bursting at that pressure the ‘garden hose’ will have to be made of steel about 3 cm thick.
It will be more like oil rig drilling pipe.
The hose will weigh about 20 kg/meter of length. You would need a D*MN*D big balloon to lift a 1 km steel pipe weighing at least 10,000 kg PLUS the weight of the water (figuring about 40 kg/meter) – about 40,000 more kg.
Total weight is 50,000 kg – more likely 100,000 kg when you add in safety margins, the weight of the blimp and nozzle, stabilizing gear against wind drag, etc.
One cubic foot of helium will lift one ounce. Lifting 100,000 kg will take 3,5 million cubic feet of helium. Helium costs $75 per thousand cubic feet. Thats US$262,000 *PER LAUNCH*.
And that’s just for the 1/20th scale test rig…
Ben and Tom beat me to the pressure issue, it was the first thought I had when I read about this scheme. I was busily calculating when I clicked the link. Right on, guys!
But….but…but it SOUNDS so good!
1 km is “twice the cruising height of a commercial airliner”?? Really?? 3281 feet?? All the many airliners I’ve flown on fly much higher — and I’m thankful for that.
This is a trick to expel money from the people. Such action will cause costs and they will be laid on the tax-payer. It will be told that the absence of climate catastrophe is only due to this action, rather due to the falsehood of Al Gore’s claims. The proof of the falsehood of Al Gore’s claim will be denied by this action. And we are forced to pay and many of us are scared into paying, beacuse they think we need this balloon to prevent calamity.
This trick is described in a 1999 book. I don’t know whether I am allowed to name this book and the pages her. If I am allowed, I will name it.
What if the water were conveyed in the pipe in gaseous form? Would that make it technically feasible? Would not the heat of the vapor mitigate some of the pumping energy required (steam rises)? The water vapor could condense at altitude if liquid water is needed to form the emitted aerosol.
Skookum, I considered that after I made my initial post. That would reduce the pressure levels to rational numbers. However, the heat loss could not be compensated for on that length of pipe. You have noticeable condensation of superheated steam after only a few hundred horizontal feet, much less vertical. Insulation is heavy, and heating stations require fuel be piped up the same distance. The result is the same, ludicrous. you might be able to build the test rig. The 20 km one is pure fantasy.
There is another way out of this dilemma of lifting water/vapor 1 km into the atmosphere -
Gather all the Conspiracy theorists Chemtrail spraying aircraft and use them to spray just plain old water. Then the heights and quantities could be varied to see how effective it would be to ” cool the planet .”
No ?
Classic plan from “believers”. Forget the physical impossibility of actually doing what they want to do, but the fact that they want to do something with unknown consequences.
What if they decided they were going to release an artificial bacterium ‘for the betterment of mankind’???
As I can’t find any rule banning the publishing of book titles on this page, I now name the book I announced to name.
title: Send In The Waco Killers
Essays on the freedom movement, 1993 – 1998
author: Vin Suprynowicz
pages 159 to 168
In my previous comment I forgot to mention that the book only describes the template for the trick and not the trick itself. There is no mention of balloons spraying water droplets. Instead, the story is about oxygen-generating factories.