Equatorial Eastern Pacific Doldrums Artificial Waterspout Driven Direct Air Capture of CO2

[James Bowery]

First look at this video of a waterspout on a river in Russia.

Then note the sea-level inward spiral of air flow of this waterspout:

Then note the sea-level vortex formation dynamics of waterspouts (which, on land, are called "landspouts" or "dust-devils") are less likely to overshoot the troposphere than are supercell vortexes which spawn what people ordinarily think of as "tornadoes".  (Note the absence of the "overshooting top" in the landspout anvil cloud.)



This means that a set of sea level stators, such as sails, can create artificial spin to produce a waterspout in the absence of any natural spin.  Likewise, those same stators can reverse the chirality of the spin to terminate the waterspout, just as one can "come about" with sails to reverse direction of a ship.

These structures draw air inward to spin up like an figure skater drawing her hands inward during a a spin, and this can draw air past structures to do direct air capture of atmospheric CO2.  What may not be as obvious is the fact that the structure is driven by taking heat from the ocean surface, thereby resulting in lowering of surface ocean temperature which, in turn, convects ocean water downward.  This will draw CO2-laden sea water inward.  This can pass by structures for direct ocean removal of CO2.

It seems to me the minimum cost of demonstration of this technology would involve a number of sailing boats in a place like the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Doldrums, arranged in a circle with their sails canted in such a manner as to impart spin on ocean-surface air currents that are forming pillar clouds.  They could be spaced quite a distance from the center of their circulation since angular momentum is conserved.  Indeed, having a larger number of sails would help induce more vorticity even though they were placed at a larger radius.

These ships could carry Direct Air Capture devices.  Their DAC electricity could be drawn from a combination of solar panels and water turbines as water flows past their hulls.

[James Bowery]

"Saildrone" is a commercially available autonomous sailing craft that could, with appropriate machine learning and control, provide a demonstration platform for the vorticity stators to establish the waterspout.

The Saildrones would need reprogramming to form themselves into a stable circle surrounding the waterspout.  See what flying drones are capable of:

https://youtu.be/HRrOxJLH03g

[Michael Hayes]

Here is a view of driving through a water spout spun up by a storm, there is little energy relative to a terrestrial tornado:

https://youtu.be/JHkEd0qY1aU?si=XbThorx8h3sXlzk4

Clear weather water spouts show a water surface vortex before the atmospheric vortex becomes apparent, yet the upper air vortex induced windshear is what spins up the water surface vortex.

The higher one goes when starting a clear weather spout, the colder the intake air will be. Creating a strong delta T is needed.

Placing DAC equipment on rather high fans moving air down will likely create a CDR method with marine environmental benefits. The water surface infrastructure can thermally shock most reusable DAC membranes, and thus harvesting the CO2. Using the DAC generated CO2 for biomass cultivation in the highseas, or more, might be deployable with today's tech. The cost of the movement of air is an issue with most DAC systems, giving DAC tech a secondary roll in a larger system that moves lots of air for other mCDR reasons is likely reasonable.

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[Michael Hayes]

Clear weather water spouts have an outermost/hotter evaporative vortex zone, which is an ascending vortex, that shields an inner colder/descending vortex zone. 

The crew that ran through the vortex did not note a drop of temp as the outer/upward vortex evaporation rate is supremely efficient the water surface. 

 

 

[James Bowery]

That depends on the swirl ratio (the ratio of tangential momentum to inward momentum of the air flow).  See Figure 2.1(a) of Diwakar Natarajan's thesis.  Ideally the swirl ratio would remain in the regime of about 10% where upward momentum does not encounter any reverse momentum.  That may produce a too-large diameter in order to attain the necessary altitude for adequate temperature difference.  That's a job for CFD that must, in any event, be done prior to any field demonstrations based on a hypothetical sailing drone swarm.

There has been quite a bit of work on CFD since that thesis -- some of it out of New Zealand -- that I'm not yet familiar with.  Moreover, there's been a lot of advance in the economics of doing CFD in those years.