HPAC Presentation 4/5 September: Ocean Nanobubbles and Buoyant Flakes to Cool the Earth
rob...@rtulip.net
Please join the Healthy Planet Action Coalition this Thursday/Friday to discuss Ocean Nanobubbles and Buoyant Flakes with Sev Clarke.
The technology of producing submicron bubbles of air in water (nanobubbles) is well established for improving water quality. Sev will explain how nanobubble technology could be adapted to increase ocean reflectivity as a direct climate cooling technology, building on the earlier proposal in the Oxford Direct Climate Cooling article linked below. His presentation title is Albedo Synergies: How Buoyant Flakes and Ocean Aeration with Nanobubbles Might Reverse Global Warming Quickly, Cheaply and Safely
Coated rice husks, known as Buoyant Flakes, can grow plankton that will produce surfactants that coat nanobubbles and extend their life. The resulting nanobubbles could persist for months, floating in the ocean surface layer and increasing ocean albedo. Nanobubbles could significantly increase ocean reflectivity, cooling the water with major benefits for biodiversity conservation and mitigation of global warming, for example around coral reefs.
Sev Clarke is an independent Australian inventor and regular participant in HPAC discussions. He will speak for about half an hour followed by up to an hour of audience discussion.
Time: 5.30 pm Thursday 4 September Eastern Time = 10.30 pm UK = 7.30 am Friday 5 September Eastern Australia time.
Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88954851189?pwd=2OEdvleb4UpYfK4a950ryohFWcw93F.1
PLEASE NOTE: Zoom now requires a passcode for meeting security. The code for this meeting is 662519
Here is the text on Buoyant Flakes and an earlier version of the Nanobubble technology from the article Addressing the Urgent Need for Direct Climate Cooling: Rationale and Options, Baiman et al, Oxford Open Climate Change, 2024 https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/4/1/kgae014/7731760
Buoyant Flakes
● Buoyant Flakes” as a cooling approach refers to the dissemination onto nutrient-deficient ocean surface waters of rice husks coated with a mix of hot-melt, water-insoluble lignin (e.g., Organosolv) and rice water glues, urea leavening agent, and waste mineral powders rich in the phytoplankton nutrients of iron, phosphate, opaline silica and trace elements that are typically deficient in warm surface waters. The ultra-slow release of these nearly insoluble minerals is intended to provide a sustainable basis for an enhanced, marine food web. Buoyant and slow release reduces the risk of eutrophication, nutrient robbing, toxicity, or transport of nutrients wastefully to dark ocean depths. The nutrient-laden flakes would contribute in various ways to cooling on scales depending on how widely they are deployed. The most important for short term cooling is reduction of solar energy absorption by the ocean, which is the primary storage location for GHG-trapped radiation, because the phytoplankton fed by the flakes are of lighter color than the deep blue of the open ocean and thus reflect more sunlight. Where Buoyant Flakes are disseminated and drift they have the potential to increase oligotrophic ocean albedo from 0.06 to as much as 0.12 for up to a year. Secondary benefits include: that krill and other diurnally vertically migrating (DVM) species would, in effect, carry much of the CO2 taken up by the additional biomass to depths as excreta and exhalation where it would no longer be affecting the climate; that photosynthesis by phytoplankton will transform some of the absorbed sunlight, carbon dioxide, and mineral nutrients into biomass and oxygen; and that , many species of phytoplankton produce DMS (dimethyl sulfide) that, when emitted into the atmosphere, can serve as cloud condensation nuclei, tending to make marine stratus clouds more reflective [107] and thus reducing solar absorption. The net effect would be reduced warming of mid waters by shading, increased oxygenation of surface waters, increased oceanic uptake and sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and an increase of fish stocks. Done over a sufficiently wide area, the “Buoyant Flakes” approach would likely tend to return the regional marine food webs to conditions closer to their pre-industrial state, although done to excess might also contribute to benthic hypoxia unless offset by increased downwelling of chilled and oxygenated brine, which might be promoted by induced cooling from this and other such approaches leading to increased formation of sea ice. The buoyant flakes are specifically designed to overcome some of the potential limitations of ocean fertilization [108].
Earlier version of the nanobubble technology
● Fizz Tops (Fiztops) are table sized, floating, lightweight, solar-powered units that are designed to inject low-diameter microbubbles into the top centimeter of ocean which, whilst rising, lose some gas and shrink to become nanobubbles into the less than a millimeter thick sea surface microlayer (SSML) which are stabilized by concentric shells of surfactants, ions and gas-saturated water. Often buoyant surfactants are generated continuously in the ocean from organisms and degrading biomass. Nanobubbles occur naturally throughout the surface ocean. Fizz Top units may either be anchored to cool a specific area of ocean, coral reef or aquaculture operation, or else be free-floating. Small bubbles are highly reflective of incoming solar energy. Hence, they can shade and cool underlying water. Unlike larger bubbles, nanobubbles have ’neutral’ buoyancy and can live for up to six months in the SSML. They may also increase overall planetary cooling by, counter-intuitively, warming the SSML by refracting solar energy sideways, thereby releasing ocean heat to the troposphere by evaporation and convection where it may then be better radiated to space [107], though this is less important for cooling than their albedo impact. This effect is much less than that of albedo increase. Fiztops might carry a variety of sensors to record and transmit current environmental conditions and activities there. The main risks are encrustation, cluttering the ocean, maintenance costs, and whether sufficient power could be generated by the flexible, conical photovoltaics. They should also have some additional benefits such as scarce floating habitat. Some groups, such as illegal fishers, might not welcome Fiztops’ surveillance capabilities. As the microbubbles shrink to become nanobubbles they are not dissolved in seawater [120,121]. As nanobubbles larger than the wavelength of light are highly reflective and long-lived, the limited amount of energy provided by the photovoltaics should be effective at cooling waters down-current of them.
I hope you can join us.
Regards
Robert Tulip
Healthy Planet Action Coalition
rob...@rtulip.net
Please join the Healthy Planet Action Coalition this Thursday/Friday to discuss Ocean Nanobubbles and Buoyant Flakes with Sev Clarke.
Time: 5.30 pm Thursday 4 September Eastern Time = 10.30 pm UK = 7.30 am Friday 5 September Eastern Australia time.