Friday, July 28, 2017

Rain enhancement gas grid

Drought causes more fires (and there have been fires in France, Portugal, Corsica, Florida and so on) and carbon dioxide is being spewed into the air. It would therefore be worth using natural gas, if burning it could create rain - the exploration companies are burning it anyway.
When the methane gas in natural gas is burned, it produces water vapour (methane is the main constituent of natural gas). 
CH4+2O2 gives CO2+2H20, so it humidifies air.
Now convectional rain can be brought about merely by having a piece of darker ground heating up more than surrounding lighter coloured ground (urban heat island effect and so on).
 Why not encourage fracking companies to burn the waste gas in long pipes with lots of holes in to form a sort of huge grid with thousands of flames coming out? This will heat and humidify a large volume of air and could enhance chances of convectional rain, if relative humidity is high (relative humidity usually increases when air gets colder at night). More trees could be grown with more rain (perhaps in deserts) to offset carbon dioxide made from the "rain enhancement gas grid" and less trees would be burned in fires. 
When coal is gasified it produces hydrogen and methane, which could be used, especially hydrogen.
The heat value of natural gas is about 15 kWh per kg and 1 tonne of it could heat a volume of air 200 m deep by 334 m by 334 m, to a temperature 2 degrees C higher than it was (at a temperature of 23 deg C and pressure of 1 atm, air has a volumetric heat capacity of about 1.2 kJ/(deg C.m^3).
If you have 100 tonnes of trees per hectare (100 m by 100 m) then this can create 170 tonnes of carbon dioxide if burned. If one could create rain with a tonne of natural gas over a hectare, it would create 2.75 tonnes of carbon dioxide, but save 170 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being spewed into the air by fire. The natural gas industry could theoretically prevent greenhouse gas emission from forest fires dramatically.
Gas companies could use the following method in deserts to get trees to grow: Use a bulldozer to bulldoze any rocks in the area to a specific location. The rocks will heat up during the day and retain some of their heat during the night.. At night when relative humidity increases, use a gas grid in the rocky area to humidify the air more and cause more convection. The rocks could be dyed a dark colour so they get hotter in the sun (a fairly natural dye such as a dark metal oxide could be used).The amount of water vapour produced by one tonne of gas is about 2.25 tonnes. Because relative humidity is already high at night, this will enhance the chances of rain. For instance Cairo often has a temperature of about 26 deg C at night and an RH of 80% at the same time. A parcel of this air, 100 m by 100 m, by 100 m holds 19.5 tonnes of water vapour. If you add 2.25 tonnes to this from the burning gas grid, you increase the water vapour content significantly.

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