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Evaporation Prevention Using Molecular Blankets
Makarand writes "According to this article in the
New Scientist, a Canadian company is testing a
technology to reduce water evaporation from reservoirs by
spreading an ultra-thin blanket of organic molecules on the surface to block the escape
of water molecules into the air.
Trials conducted in India and Morocco showed between 30 and 45 per cent reduction in evaporation
using this method. However,
the long term ecological effects of reducing evaporation in lakes or reservoirs is not yet clear
as evaporation prevention can increase water temperatures and affect the exchange rates of gases
such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide."
won't this increase the algae population ?
the problem with water is distribution not evaporation
What's the difference between this "new" system for evaporation prevention and the Liquid Solar Blankets sold in Pool Supply stores? This tech has been used for years!! Course this company has probably jacked up the pricing since this is supposedly "new" once again...
I'm sure they could use this in the Ural Sea (or whats left of it). Could animals drink through it? If they could I can imagine this being very useful for the thirsty animals during dry seasons in Africa's national parks.
-cp-
Don't forget possible changes to the weather. For instance, there are a number of areas whose climate and micro-climate are influenced by nearby bodies of water.
Were you envisioning covering the Great Lakes with this stuff?
I'd be willing to test the product in my toilet based on the assumption that it'd reduce the atomized crap on my toothbrush due to flushing.
In the book the film is caused by pollution, but it is almost impossible to disperse and remains resistant to the waves and man-made attempts to break up the film. In the end, humanity ends up clinging to life by the edges of the ocean, each person with their own solar-powered desalination plant.
A sobering thought if you've read the book. Imaging what whould happen if this stuff got loose?
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even if you prevented the great lakes from evaporating, the only difference that would make would be: no more lake effect snow
Ever wonder why your local weather forecaster is wrong so often? Why he can't predict weather any further out that 3 days with better luck than my dog? Their climatological models ignore all the small stuff-like evaporation from small lakes--that end up having a distinct influence on climate, due to the nonlinearity of processes like evaporation and condensation.
This is one of the big contributors to loss of rainforest: if you clearcut a swath through the forest, you raise local temperature and reduce local evaporation. Reducing local evaporation means there's less water in the air flowing over the adjacent rainforest, and it doesn't rain in the forest. The newly dehydrated rainforest dies, and fails to provide water to forest further downwind, which dies...
If this stuff works as well as they claim, there will be huge incentives for every city, county and state (let alone desert country) to apply it to their watersheds. They may not be talking about literally covering the Great Lakes (although it would take only 130,000 gallons of this stuff to do so), but they are talking about covering vast and vastly distributed bodies of water.
An interesting thing i saw on today tonight a while ago whilst in the middle of the last Aussie drought (which we're still pretty much in) was a guy who was using this left over laundry water and sink water and other waters to water his grass and gardins!
And what about the laundry detergents that get soaked into the soil and water reserves? It might not have an effect if one guy does it but what if everyone did it? I've lived in a place that had a natural water reservoir nearby and it doesn't take a lot to contaminate - the whole town spent several days without drinkable water when someone decided to dump some slaughter waste in the wrong place.