Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Seems obvious right? The ice is melting, so build a series of big mobile freezer boats to produce new blocks of ice.
Iceberg-making submarine aims to tackle global warming by re-freezing the Arctic
Alyn Griffiths
A team of designers led by Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha proposes re-freezing sea water in the Arctic to create miniature modular icebergs using a submarine-like vessel, in a bid to combat climate change.
The Indonesian designer worked on the prototype with collaborators Denny Lesmana Budi and Fiera Alifa for an international competition organised by the Association of Siamese Architects.…
“The main goal of this idea is to restore the polar ecosystem, which has a direct effect on the balance of the global climate,” said the designer, adding that in this scenario “it is better to prevent than cure“.
…
The submarine-like vessel would submerge to collect sea water in a central hexagonal tank. Turbines would then be used to blast the tank with cold air and accelerate the freezing process.
During this process, the vessel would return to the surface of the sea and the tank would be covered to protect it from sunlight. A system of reverse osmosis would be used to filter some of the salt from the water in order to speed up the process.
Once the water is frozen, the vessel would submerge again, leaving behind an “ice baby” with a volume of 2,027 cubic-metres. These miniature icebergs would then cluster together in a honeycomb pattern to form a larger ice floe.
…
Read more: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/07/27/refreezing-the-arctic-geoengineering-design-climate-change/
The concept video;
There is a slight flaw with this idea.
Refrigeration, reverse osmosis, pumping heat, all takes a lot of work. Both the latent heat of fusion extracted from the water to turn it into ice and the waste heat from the freezing process will have to be dumped somewhere.
If they dump the waste heat into the Arctic ocean, or the air, it will probably melt the ice their submarine just finished freezing.
Update (EW): tweaked the wording of the last few paragraphs.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The heat goes into the cold air making it warmer? I bet they don’t build one.
“I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!” – character Dick Jones, Robocop
This reminds me of that crazy space elevator idea. Both are fundamentally flawed concepts.
Why will a space elevator not work?
A space elevator could only work at the equator and the opposite end would need to be in a geostationary orbit. Otherwise the other end would want to move around too much. So the operator’s opposite end would need to be 22,000 miles or 35,000 Kilometers away. Or it would require compensation thrusters for stability and a constant supply of fuel to avoid the Coriolis Effect playing an influential role.
Have a look at angular momentum and ask the question where does the AM needed for a hoisted load come from and what happens if that does not occur.
A: the thing desintegastes in no time. And if somehow that needed angular momentum is provided when a load is shifted upwards, then the energy required makes the concept defeat itself.
I don’t understand the details but I thought there was a large problem with large different electrical potentials. Maybe related but I also kind of remember a space shuttle letting out an experiment on some kind of long tether and the experiment getting zapped????
Anyone?
Sufficiently strong and light cables are a long way off, if they’re even possible. I recall reading that steel wire’s weight would break itself at 62 miles length, maybe carbon nanotubes or aomething….?
The electric potential sounds interesting as a power source.
Actually, it is worse that Bryan A commented: the “space elevator cable” would need to extend significantly above geostationary orbital altitude unless a really large mass was attached at the end of the cable just slightly above geostationary altitude. By really large, I mean a mass that would something like 100 times more massive that the mass of the cable below it. This would be required such that the angular momentum—you might say outward-directed centrifugal acceleration, but that’s technically incorrect—of this mass AND resulting cable-tension torque on this mass would be sufficient to support (actually offset) the integrated angular momentum of, AND resulting integrated cable-tension torque AND gravity loading torque associated with the cable itself below geostationary altitude on the same mass. The cable would not be straight but would have a significant amount of curvature. The cable might suffer from significant oscillations (“whipping”) as wind-induced drag across atmospheric altitudes excites different vibrational modes is such a spring-mass system.
Finally, such a “space elevator” cable system would likely be able to support only an additional mass of perhaps .001% of the total system mass (i.e., the useful payload to orbit) without causing the orbital mechanics-related angular momentum and tension balances of the system to become unstable. I can only speculate that “tidal” torques from the Earth-sun-moon system might also develop long period oscillations in the cable, possibly leading to critical, diverging instabilities.
Wouldn’t it be fun to have to collect up 22,000+ miles (depending on the cable break point) of whatever super material comprises the cable after it falls to earth’s surface.
LOL. A tethered-space elevator would not work because of “problems.” The sheer amount of possible problems is too numerous to calculate for through engineering. Things like differential air pressure in the bottom rooms of a skyscraper versus the top rooms are things that architects and structural engineers can factor in, but making a functioning physical structure that stays penetrating our atmosphere while maintaining structural integrity against extreme differential conditions (air pressure, gravity, temperature, cosmic radiation, chemistry, etc…) is not practical or practically safe. We have enough difficulty making a space-shuttle that we feel is statistically safe enough to deal with all of those conditions. To make a structure that deals with all of those conditions on a consistent basis while keeping human lives safe just seems like a worse option. But! Who’s to say that Elon Musk couldn’t try it?
I think the wisest thing to do is just view the new generation of rockets as untethered elevators.
Kota hatu haha , ha ha ha ! This has to be a joke name. It’s a spoof.
I mean no one would get an architect to design a scientific solution to a physical problem right?
Another Great Idea by Captain Oblivious
No Kotahatuhaha is a real indonesian surname
All of the constraints of a space elevator are well known. It is somewhat beyond current materials, but nothing about it is “fundamentally flawed”.
Isn’t that along the lines of “all of the forcing amplitudes and feedbacks of Earth’s climate system are well-known”? Both claims are made without a single controlled, system-encompassing experiment having been done to reveal gaps that are certain to be in statements of such hubris.
So, they take the heat out of the water and radiate it back into the atmosphere, after adding the energy required to transfer the heat. But then again, those pushing this kind of nonsense have a tenuous grasp on such inconvenient fundamental concepts like the laws of thermodynamics.
Better to do it the Futurama way — tow in icy comets from space & dump them periodically into the oceans. Hilarious:
https://youtu.be/OqVyRa1iuMc
There you go, citing the so called “Laws of Thermodynamics” like they were reality or something. I will continue to believe in unicorn farts and foo-foo dust, thank you very much.
I believe that Sooty – whose puppet was Harry Corbett – used magical Oofle Dust for many years.
He even had a solution to droughts; dig a well!
Of course, in his well they found lemonade!
Auto – tongue as firmly in my cheek as the gallant Mr Kotahatuhaha’s tongue is in his.
But send grant money, in $100 bills, please.
Yea, I know how controversial it is to claim that no one Joule is any more powerful at warming the surface than any other, especially since the IPCC invokes pixie dust to amplify the next Joule from the Sun to be 3-4 times more powerful at warming the surface than the average Joule from the Sun.
It’s too bad I can’t put this magic stuff in my gas tank and get 3-4 times more work out of each gallon of gasoline. Or even solve world hunger by feeding 3-4 times more people with the same amount of food.
They already did it in Indonesia. That’s why it is so cold there.
Here’s an idea, we can cool the planet of we all leave our fridge doors open.
Do i get a prize?
No, your idea doesn’t involve a submarine.
Refrigerator doors on a submarine?
You’d do better to float large white plastic islands. It would give seals and bears Haul Out space and increase albedo without requiring energy to freeze the ocean.
and reuses all the nasty plastic and styrofoam(for a while) what a double header winner!!!! ding ding;-)
Close, but no thermoplastic cigar for the waste heat. Close.
Now that is a good idea. Probably make them white spheres. Reflect sunlight
when the ice melts in the summer. Too big for bears, seals, and whales to eat.
Have to be indestructible and non-toxic materials.
Obviously they know nothing about Heat Transfer and Thermodynamics. Stupid.
I think they plan to drliver the ice via solar freaking roadways
the ice dispenser on the asteroid in Futurama made more sense
You can tell that thermodynamics was not part of the architecture curriculum. Where in God’s name do they find these bozos.
It’s exactly like opening your refrigerator door to cool down a room. The refrigerator tries to maintain its low temperature by doing work to pump heat from the cold section to the ambient air, the net effect of which is to make the ambient air hotter by the amount of work added.
A much simpler approach would be to use an ice substitute, in the form of white, closed-cell polystyrene foam boards. They don’t have to be very thick, maybe half an inch. An 8 foot high stack of 40×8 foot sheets of half inch, 3 pound boards would only weigh only 7,680 pounds. That’s the size of a 2 TEU shipping container. It would cover 61,440 square feet of ocean (1.4 acres). The biggest container ships can carry >20,000 TEU. So one shipload could cover 14,000 acres! Actually, one would want to use it to cover the winter ice pack to prevent it from melting in summer time.
There, FIFT.
There’s a big problem with that.
The thickness of the ice depends on the air temperature. The ocean supplies heat to start the ice melting from the bottom up. Yep. As the ice starts getting thinner the temperature above the ice is still way below freezing. There’s no melt water on top of the ice, but the ice is getting thinner. It’s melting from the bottom up. That will continue until the temperature at the top of the ice removes heat sufficiently quickly to keep the bottom of the ice below the freezing point.
If you put insulation on top of the ice, you will actually speed up melting at first. On the other hand, ocean currents don’t move heat into the arctic that fast. I’m not sure if that’s enough to eventually melt all the ice. Well, yeah, if the insulation is sufficiently good, all the ice will melt eventually. It could take decades though.
Insulating the arctic would change the weather like crazy though. During the melt season, the arctic temperature follows the average very closely. That’s because of the melting ice. If you defeat that mechanism with insulation, the summer temperatures would probably swing as wildly as the winter temperatures.
Well, wild, unpredictable swings would be fantastic! Much better than the assured extra warming of the loony-tunes submarine ice-maker. Just think of the extra grant money that would be needed to model the new and improved human climate change!
And the polystyrene at that thickness couldn’t support the weight of a Polar Bear or Seal without berating apart. Also the pressure from ice floes would grind them to pieces. Suddenly your big styrene sheets become styrene beads and pieces
Thats why heat pumps and airconditioners add to the urban heat island.
Why not cover the winter ice with aluminium foil (shiny side up) to reflect all the heat back to space. Eliminates the problem of plastics contamination.
I once seen a solar room heater (much hyped by the inventor and friends) that actually pumped out noticeably warmer air. Problem was, it was placed on the inside of a sunny window.
Common sense seems not so common any more.
Comment from a common man (not always sensible.)
Most of the active cooling at the poles is the result of their surfaces (ice and water, bit of land in Antarctica) radiating heat to the night sky that, IIRC, has an effective blackbody temperature (absent clouds) of -30 to -50 deg-C, coupled with evaporative cooling at the water surfaces. This occurs when the Sun is below the horizon or very low on the horizon at each pole . . . that is, most of the year.
An aluminum foil covering would compromise the cooling of land and floating ice that results otherwise from direct radiation to the night sky, likely resulting in an overall annually-average warming of the poles.
“There is a slight flaw with this idea – what do they plan to do with the waste heat?”
Where do they plan to get the energy for the refrigeration? Photovoltaic is problematic because the Arctic is notoriously cloudy, and the sun is usually low on the horizon, meaning very little energy.
How about using fossil fuels? Are our college graduates getting dumber?
“Where do they plan to get the energy for the refrigeration?”
Easy peasy. From a perpetual motion machine.
Nuclear Power. But trying to make ice in the arctic is a waste of energy
How about nuclear? There is no known practical process for converting fission directly to electricity. All functioning reactors use the heat of fission to boil water. The resulting steam runs a turbine, which runs an electrical generator. The end product of the steam is condensed water, which is still very hot. It has to be disposed of, thereby adding heat to either the water or air.
Because fresh water is in short supply in the Arctic ocean, salt water will have to be used in a heat exchanger. It will have to be isolated from the neutron flux to avoid creating radioactive nuclides. Boiling salt water is highly corrosive, meaning short life-spans for the circuit containing the boiling water. Salt will be concentrated in the salt water circuit, so it will have to be disposed of and replaced with fresh salt-water, either continuously or periodically. The expelled salt water will add heat to the water and change the salinity, thereby affecting life forms in the vicinity.
So, I agree with Ralph, a perpetual motion machine is the only practical solution. 🙂
I suppose that, since salty water can be colder without freezing, a solution could be desalination. Are there any salt removal processes that don’t create heat as a byproduct?
God…I chose the wrong career
people actually get paid to come up with this crap
..now all the need is enough to make a million km/sq every year
What’s the worst that could happen?
Um, increased albedo triggers a new glacial epoch.
Yeah, it should work about as well as cooling down an apartment by leaving the refrigerator door open.
Bedwetters never bother with thermodyndamics, physics, and cost/benefit analyses. It’s beneath them.
Sounds kinda obvious don’t it.
Hide it in the ocean.
Well what would they use to power this sub. Would have to be nuclear to be efficient.
Diesel? Unthinkable.
Maybe electric powered by umbilical cords to solar arrays or windmills?
Of course these folks just don’t learn, they will never beat mother nature.
A solar powered submarine!
Brilliant!
Now I know why I always check this site!
I’d Let Nature run it’s course and save all that effort for nothing.
If the I.C.E. is melting,then the trouble at the border is going to get much worse.
Build a wall and keep all the ice from floe-ing out
Ha – Ha – Ha – Ha
Neither the article nor the video address power requirements. Nuclear? Solar? Unicorn farts? Magic?
I have a better idea. Let the AMO continue its transition to its cold phase and watch Mother Nature make scary amounts of ice in the Arctic, without humans doing a thing. Of course, there are no huge profits to be made with my solution. No one will be promoted or win a Nobel Peace Prize. No one will get their mug on the front page of the New York Times or on CNN. I guess that make my idea completely unacceptable.
One more thing…How are these submersible ice-cube makers powered?
I know! they could hide it in the ocean when they submerge, shove it down there with all the other missing heat right ?
You beat me to it southerncross. That’s the obvious solution, isn’t it?
Let’s give credit where credit is due, it should be called the Trenberth Cycle heat engine. Powered by non-GMO, 100% organic, fair trade, gluten-free unicorn flatulence and hiding the missing heat in the depths of Davey Jones’ Locker, the climate catastrophe will finally be averted!
What is wrong with these idiots? Why do they like ice/death so much?
The shipping magnates won’t be happy about that one. They are all rooting for Global Warming (Alarum! Alarum!) to open the Northwest Passage.
Anyone care to hazard a wild guess who would fund the protests against these ice producing submarines?
Refrigeration, reverse osmosis, pumping heat, all takes a lot of work. Both the latent heat of fusion extracted from the water to turn it into ice, and the waste heat from the freezing process, will have to be dumped somewhere.
Details, details!
Is that all you have to worry about. For gaud’s sake these people have important work to do — build a boat and save the planet.
And al you can worry about is details — really!
< /sarc >
And that latent heat of fusion is ~80 calories = 80 times as much as it takes to change the temperature 1 degree.
Did they think about the efficiency of the process involved? Nuclear conversion to electrical power is only about 35% efficient, the other 65% gets dumped in the water, In this case it is right below the ice cubes they are making. Then there is the added loads for cooling all of the equipment and the heat they generate as required to make the electricity to run the big refrigerator or the fans needed they talk of using to make these ice cubes.
Haven’t done the calculations, however I seriously doubt it is even worth the effort.
I see a Darwin Award coming up
“….the Association of Siamese Architects….” This is how stereotypes begin.
Aw c’mon, guys; accept the humor of the suggestion. In the spirit of Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett–‘It’s April First Somewhere’. There might even be a hint in the name of one of the contributors–it includes a few haha’s.
This would work if the ice floated to the surface and reflected more heat back into space than was spent on its creation.
“Floating” ice, come on, we’re trying to be realistic here.
Pikecrete would be a better “solution.” Giant aircraft carriers, etc.
But where do they get all the fibre (wood pulp in the original) from? Even at the handleable 4% fibre content one would need a lot of pulp or other suitable fibre.
Tisk, Richard.
Wood is a Re-newable. It grows on trees and trees are good to chop down. Just ask the UK power industry.
The graphic for this article should have been an infinite number of copies of the zombie with the burning hair.