Cure For Droughts

[All Seeing Eye]

As we all know water evaporates, collects in the atmosphere and then drops back to Earth as rain when the weight of the water vapour becomes too great.
Well my plan therefore is to create a bunch of huge mirrors and magnifiers that are placed in the ocean around Australia for example. These mirrors etc focus the suns rays onto a specific spot on the oceans surface and superheats it causing faster then usual evaporation of the water at that location. There might even be room for an orbital mirror.
Also there will be under water heaters powered by surface solar panels which heat up the water from beneath causing it to boil thus evaporate.

So much water evaporates that it collects in the atmosphere so quickly that when it releases as rain it will be over the Australian landmass.

It cannot fail.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

ANOTHER IDEA.

Ice at the south pole is made up (as far as i'm aware) of freshwater and Australia is quite close by.
My idea is to build a large pipe from Australia to the south pole and build on the other end a factory that melts the ice into water and pumps it to Australia where it get's dumped into pre-dug reservoirs.

Infact who needs to melt it, build instead a floating conveyor belt and just stick ice cubes onto it and the closer it gets to Australia it melts into water all by itself.

 

[Jadzia]

It's not efficient. Water takes a lot of energy to boil and evaporate it.

You'd be better off with a heat exchanger, so you reclaim most of that energy back.

So...

Cold sea water --> (HX hot side) --> Hot sea water --> (Solar heater) --> Steam --> (HX cold side) --> Cold fresh water

So your solar heater is only converting the hot sea water into steam, which is more efficient

edit: I think this principle might be used for sea water desalination, which is industrial production of fresh water from sea water. I don't know if they have mirrors to make it solar powered though.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What about my idea to ship freshwater from the south pole throught a pipeline into pre dug reservoirs?

edit: I think this principle might be used for sea water desalination, which is industrial production of fresh water from sea water. I don't know if they have mirrors to make it solar powered though.

I mentioned that idea before, but people wern't impressed.

 

[Jadzia]

I'd go with desalination.

You could just run some guttering around antarctica and collect the meltwater before it runs off the edge and into the sea.

It would stop rising sea levels, and provide freshwater for Australia.

I think you should invent that.

 

[smithaa02]

As we all know water evaporates, collects in the atmosphere and then drops back to Earth as rain when the weight of the water vapour becomes too great.
Well my plan therefore is to create a bunch of huge mirrors and magnifiers that are placed in the ocean around Australia for example. These mirrors etc focus the suns rays onto a specific spot on the oceans surface and superheats it causing faster then usual evaporation of the water at that location. There might even be room for an orbital mirror.
Also there will be under water heaters powered by surface solar panels which heat up the water from beneath causing it to boil thus evaporate.

So much water evaporates that it collects in the atmosphere so quickly that when it releases as rain it will be over the Australian landmass.

It cannot fail.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination . Looks like they are planning a solar desalination plant in Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Paterson_Desalination_Plant

 

[smithaa02]

ANOTHER IDEA.

Ice at the south pole is made up (as far as i'm aware) of freshwater and Australia is quite close by.
My idea is to build a large pipe from Australia to the south pole and build on the other end a factory that melts the ice into water and pumps it to Australia where it get's dumped into pre-dug reservoirs.

Infact who needs to melt it, build instead a floating conveyor belt and just stick ice cubes onto it and the closer it gets to Australia it melts into water all by itself.

I read in Popular Science (or Popular Mechanics) where they were seriously considering a proposal to drag icebergs with ships to big metro areas like LA for drinking water, so I think your general idea is feasible.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

I think you should invent that.

Aren't we still waiting for him to complete his space vehicle or that "incredible velocity" machine?

 

[Scout101]

as well as the giant trash compactors, cars that run on sugar, etc...

 

[Icemizer]

Oh the eviromentalists will just love you Tachyon.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I read in Popular Science (or Popular Mechanics) where they were seriously considering a proposal to drag icebergs with ships to big metro areas like LA for drinking water, so I think your general idea is feasible.

I would have thought that would be more hard work and the icebergs would melt en-route.
I'm going to e-mail a few Australian scientists and politicians about my south pole pipeline idea.

 

[Jadzia]

I think France has made claim of that bit


Your other idea, I've done some workings out:

Demand
Australia has population of 21,585,178

15% household uses 50 litres per day per person
15% industrial uses 50 litres per day per person
70% agricultural uses 230 litres per day per person
= total of 330 litres per day per person

= 7.1 billion litres per day.


Power requirements

6.4 GJ to vapourise every 2380 kg of cold water
(= 1GJ to boil +5.4GJ to evaporate)

That is, per day
3 million GJ (cold sea water -> boiling sea water)
16 million GJ (boiling sea water -> steam)

19 million GJ total (cold sea water -> steam)

Solar collector

Solar radiation averages typically 800 Joules per square metre, during daytime. So if the usable sunshine lasts for an average of 9 hours per day, that is 32400 seconds.

= 26 MJ per square metre of solar collector.

If we want 19 million MJ, then we want 731,000 square metres of mirror.

So if you built an array using 10mx10m mirrors, you'd need 7310 of them, which you could arrange in a circle with 11km radius.

If you use a heat exchanger you'd expect to reclaim much of your energy (is 90% realistic?), so divide this by 10.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

You are a genius.

 

[smithaa02]

I read in Popular Science (or Popular Mechanics) where they were seriously considering a proposal to drag icebergs with ships to big metro areas like LA for drinking water, so I think your general idea is feasible.

I would have thought that would be more hard work and the icebergs would melt en-route.

Actually melting isn't as big of a problem as most people think because the size of icebergs are so large and the surface area to volume ratio is so low, the ice actually does a good job of insulating itself. It's the same principal that allowed 19th century ice companies to sell ice from New England and ship it to South America despite all the naysayers who said it couldn't be done.

 

[Jadzia]

It reminds me of that scene from Brewster's Millions

 

[Icemizer]

Back in 1979 this was a plot for two episodes of Salvage 1. Although they were towing the iceberg from the north down to California.