Icy Innovations, Japanese Levees, Tesla Water?
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Now the good stuff... this month we cover:
Bonus photo of the month: Let me know how you feel about the "Bath Mouthpiece"... which allows you to breath during a house/hotel fire if you can't leave the room. Patented in 1981.
First: the unconventional ways startups are saving Arctic sea ice
If you wanted to prevent the Arctic from a complete meltdown, how would you do it? A couple of startups think they have the answers - and the methods they're using are pretty unique.
The first, California-based?Arctic Ice Project,?is exploring an experimental approach to attempt to save the region — this time, through the use of hollow glass microspheres that can reflect the sun’s rays, promote the albedo effect, and protect the summer ice below it.
“Human society has been incredibly slow to decarbonize; by the time we accomplish it, it’ll be well beyond 2050 and all the Arctic ice will have melted in the summer, which makes this feedback loop so much more difficult to shut down,” says?Steven Zornetzer, Ph.D., Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Arctic Ice Project. “So, we want to preserve Arctic Sea ice so that the Arctic Ocean doesn't absorb so much energy during the summer.”
Bringing the beach to the north pole?
Made from silicon dioxide, the hollow glass microspheres are bright white, look like sand, and they float. Before these silicon microspheres are applied to the Arctic, Zornetzer says the team is working with a Norwegian scientific organization called?SINTEF?to ensure that the material is safe, non-toxic, and will not affect the food chain or harm any organisms.
“We’re working to understand the dynamics and ecology of the Arctic, and test what happens to the material when simulated in high wind and turbulent conditions: Does the material survive, does it break down, what happens to it when it breaks down, does it stay on the surface, does it sink, where does it go?” Zornetzer explains. “Our motto is to do no harm...We’re being very diligent about that.”
Another focus of the project involves deciding when and where these glass microspheres should be added in the Arctic to have the greatest effect. Critical times to apply the material involve either late fall, before the winter freeze — so that the microspheres will be already in the ice — in the spring before the ice melt occurs, or both.
But innovation doesn't happen overnight... or even in a year
The Project is engaged with in-depth computational modeling to simulate various situations surrounding ocean events including wind, ocean currents and temperatures. The modeling suggests that this methodology can be effective in restoring Arctic Sea ice; however, there are still a lot of questions to answer.
“If our eco-toxicology demonstrates that the material is safe and we have enough evidence from our computational modeling and simulation, then we will start field studies and field testing in the Arctic. We already have collaborators who are interested in working with us. But that's probably at least 4-5 years away,” Zornetzer says.
“We’re getting to a point of desperation and if we don’t use tools like this, then the problem is going to accelerate to the point where it will be uncontrollable,” Zornetzer exclaims. “If we don't get ahead of this problem in time, it'll probably be the existential problem for our species and life on earth as we know it.”
Another startup is trying a 'no-brainer' approach... just make more ice
Real Ice?is a startup designing systems that utilize renewable energy sources — including?wind?and?tide?— to thicken sea ice, protect the Arctic habitat, and restore the ecosystem.
Real Ice was initially inspired by?Steven Desch?— a Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at?Arizona State University?— and his concept of?Arctic Ice Management, which suggested using renewable energy sources to power machines that could replenish the sea ice.
However, previous approaches lacked scalability — which is essential when considering the size of the Arctic and how much ice needs to be restored to make a difference.
Pump, pump pump it up!
Real Ice wants to utilize existing technology to reduce the time needed to implement a renewable-powered solution to Arctic ice melt. There are water pumps already in use today to generate ice for a variety of recreational and commercial purposes (such as platforms for oil rigs, ice pathways in Arctic regions, public ice rinks, etc), although these are diesel-powered.
Real Ice’s innovation involves the combination of existing pumping technology with advancements made in clean energy. The implementation of renewable energy is critical for Real Ice to ensure that it is not adding to the carbon problem.
The technology pumps seawater from below the ice onto its surface during the winter periods. This thickens the ice and consequently increases the albedo levels so it can last through the summer months to the following winter, becoming multiyear sea ice.
“As we know, current projections predict that it will not be possible to reach the climate goals set out [to avoid] a global tipping point for widespread disaster. On a global scale, we would like to contribute to the restoration of the Arctic Sea ice which has been shown to add to the current estimates for the lifetime of the Arctic Sea ice. If we can succeed in our project, we would be contributing more time for humanity to make further progress on the other essential climate change mitigations,” CEO Cian Sherwin explains.
领英推荐
Next: the fascinating history of Japan's incredible medieval levee systems
Takeda Shingen (1521-1573), pictured in the feature photo for this month's newsletter, was a Japanese feudal lord and arguably one of the most accomplished leaders of all time. An excellent military commander, he was also a great administrator and inventor of flood control engineering methods that are still in use: the broken levee (Kasumitei).
A normal levee is closed and depends on forcing flood water to stay in a certain channel. A break is catastrophic. Kasumitei is staggered, with sloped openings.
Normally, water flows past the openings. In floods it pushes backwards, inundating sacrificial fields before returning.
The kasumitei greatly reduces the force of the flood water, guaranteeing the safety of the more valuable towns downstream protected by regular levees. Reduced force means far less scouring, debris, & sedimentation, making maintenance of levees and flood plains far easier.
To make the levees more popular, Shingen decreed that peasants maintaining them would be tax free in perpetuity, and he ordered the downstream towns to honor and remember the levees by carrying their gods in procession on top of the levees in April every year.
The rhythmic tramping and masses of men served to regularly compress the levees, thereby saving on expensive maintenance. Normally festivals are in summer, but this festival took place in spring, to give townspeople a chance to inspect "their" levees before the annual summer rains.
Today the levees are planted with cherry trees, serving much the same purpose as tourists gather to see the blossoms and compact the levees at the same time. The roots of the trees also help bind the soil together, and in an emergency they can be felled to reduce scouring.
Fun Fact: the flood shrine goddess is traditionally said to be female, so to stop her the embarrassment of a thousand sweaty half-naked men, the participants to this day must dress up as young girls. Hopefully the goddess will never catch on.
Finally: Century-old water valve invented by Nikola Tesla could have modern use
A one-way water valve with no moving parts invented over 100 years ago by?Nikola Tesla?could be the next big thing in fluid dynamics.
Tesla?patented his “valvular conduit” in 1920. It is essentially a pipe with an intricate internal design that forces fluid moving in one direction to loop back on itself at various points along its length. When water flows into the mouths of the loops, it becomes turbulent and slows down, halting the flow. But if you run water in the other direction, it doesn’t enter the loops and flows freely.
This could be adapted to pump fluids around motors using otherwise wasted energy.
But does it actually work?
Leif Ristroph? and his colleagues at New York University built a 30-centimetre-long (11.8 inch) version of the valve, following Tesla’s original plan, and measured the flow in both directions at a variety of pressures.
Although Tesla claimed in his patent that the valve could make water flow 200 times slower in one direction than the other, the researchers found that their version only made it two times slower. “He was a very imaginative guy,” says Ristroph. “It’s a little unclear whether he actually made and tested it. I suspect so, but there’s no documentation of that.”
Although the effect was much lower than Tesla claimed, "The valve is still a useful design," says Ristroph, "Especially as it has no moving parts so could be maintenance-free."
I'll teach you the Electric Slide
Ristroph believes that Tesla, who also had a?patent for an AC to DC electrical converter, conceived of the valvular conduit to do the same thing for fluid currents. AC electricity sees electrons constantly reverse their direction, but when converted to DC they effectively flow in a loop.
His team made a ring of Tesla’s water valves to mimic Tesla’s electrical converter and found that it successfully took oscillating water sloshed back and forth by a piston and converted it into a steady flow of water in one direction – effectively turning it into a pump.
The team believes that the design could harness the vibrations in engines and other machinery to pump fuel, coolants, lubricants and other gases and liquids.
“Imagine if you had those fluid pump systems basically take the vibration from the motor that’s there anyway, and have that circulate it. It has no moving parts. There’s nothing to break,” says Ristroph.
That's a wrap for this month's At Water's Edge.
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