WO2022091107A1 - System and method for reducing temperature of water in coral reef and adjacent ocean - Google Patents
System and method for reducing temperature of water in coral reef and adjacent ocean Download PDFInfo
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Classifications
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- F—MECHANICAL ENGINEERING; LIGHTING; HEATING; WEAPONS; BLASTING
- F03—MACHINES OR ENGINES FOR LIQUIDS; WIND, SPRING, OR WEIGHT MOTORS; PRODUCING MECHANICAL POWER OR A REACTIVE PROPULSIVE THRUST, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
- F03G—SPRING, WEIGHT, INERTIA OR LIKE MOTORS; MECHANICAL-POWER PRODUCING DEVICES OR MECHANISMS, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR OR USING ENERGY SOURCES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
- F03G7/00—Mechanical-power-producing mechanisms, not otherwise provided for or using energy sources not otherwise provided for
- F03G7/04—Mechanical-power-producing mechanisms, not otherwise provided for or using energy sources not otherwise provided for using pressure differences or thermal differences occurring in nature
-
- A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
- A01—AGRICULTURE; FORESTRY; ANIMAL HUSBANDRY; HUNTING; TRAPPING; FISHING
- A01G—HORTICULTURE; CULTIVATION OF VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, RICE, FRUIT, VINES, HOPS OR SEAWEED; FORESTRY; WATERING
- A01G15/00—Devices or methods for influencing weather conditions
-
- F—MECHANICAL ENGINEERING; LIGHTING; HEATING; WEAPONS; BLASTING
- F03—MACHINES OR ENGINES FOR LIQUIDS; WIND, SPRING, OR WEIGHT MOTORS; PRODUCING MECHANICAL POWER OR A REACTIVE PROPULSIVE THRUST, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
- F03D—WIND MOTORS
- F03D9/00—Adaptations of wind motors for special use; Combinations of wind motors with apparatus driven thereby; Wind motors specially adapted for installation in particular locations
-
- Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
- Y02—TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
- Y02E—REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GAS [GHG] EMISSIONS, RELATED TO ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION
- Y02E10/00—Energy generation through renewable energy sources
- Y02E10/30—Energy from the sea, e.g. using wave energy or salinity gradient
-
- Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
- Y02—TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
- Y02E—REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GAS [GHG] EMISSIONS, RELATED TO ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION
- Y02E10/00—Energy generation through renewable energy sources
- Y02E10/70—Wind energy
- Y02E10/72—Wind turbines with rotation axis in wind direction
-
- Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
- Y02—TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
- Y02P—CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PRODUCTION OR PROCESSING OF GOODS
- Y02P80/00—Climate change mitigation technologies for sector-wide applications
- Y02P80/10—Efficient use of energy, e.g. using compressed air or pressurized fluid as energy carrier
Definitions
- the present invention relates to a method of controlling the reef water temperature rise driven by the accumulation of heat due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and further relates to the permanent damage to reef systems due to the bleaching of coral reef.
- the invention further relates to weather modification and engineering systems and machineries used to modify wide reef area properties of atmosphere, ground, oceans and reef waters.
- the invention further relates to design of renewable energy generation sources and systems to provide continual energy to drive local weather modification machineries.
- the invention further relates to the continual sensing, monitoring, simulation and modeling of atmospheric and surface properties and coordinated storage and synthesis of the information in distributed and centralized information system.
- the invention further relates to design, control of temporal and spatial coordination of a large array of such weather modification machineries with algorithms for learning and dynamic modification of response.
- the invention further relates to control of temperatures of coral reefs.
- GHG Green House Gases
- Carbon Dioxide, Methane, etc. in turn these higher GHG concentrations have changed the energy balance of Earth; with net incoming energy estimated to now be in the range of 0.8 to 1.2 W/m 2 , leading to higher accumulation of heat.
- the increased accumulation of heat on Earth’s surface is predicted to inexorably change the climate, with average temperatures already increasing, and melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice masses leading to higher sea levels. This runaway process is already underway and many claim that cataclysmic changes cannot be averted.
- Coral reefs are formed by simple invertebrates that grow their exoskeleton by depositing layers of calcium carbonate, these living animals are brightly colored due to colonies of algae symbionts that live with the corals and photosynthesize to provide the required food and energy for the colony.
- Coral reefs are extremely important ecosystems covering roughly 300,000 square km (3x10 11 sq. m), which is only roughly 1% of the world oceans area, yet they are home for nearly 25% of marine fish species and are an important source of seafood for global community, besides providing many other economical benefits such as hospitality and other job creation through tourism.
- Reefs have shallow waters (ranging between 1 to 20 meters) and their temperatures are determined by the thermal balance between solar heating, and removal of energy via latent heat of evaporation that is amplified by surface winds, along with lateral convection current and wave driven transfer of water between the ocean and the reef.
- GHG concentration of GHG in atmosphere
- extra atmospheric heat to the tune of 1 W/sq-m is being added to these shallow waters, in addition due to more frequent occurrence of local marine heat wave - where pockets of hotter water with still air conditions sustain for prolonged periods, these weather patterns have started to become more frequent due to climate change and warm these waters much more than in the past.
- the increased temperatures exerts extra thermal stress on the corals and that disrupts the symbiotic relationship between the corals and their algal symbionts, due to the stress these alga are expelled by the corals leading to bleaching of the corals, in turn the corals are unable to get food and repeated such stress can cause the reef colony to eventually die off.
- the shallow reef and shoal waters warm quickly during day and typically cool down with inrush of cooler water from oceans during high tide.
- Detailed thermal model of the reefs accounting for hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and local meteorology including theoretical modeling, simulations and collection of experimental data, show the partitioning of energy between air, water and the ground or substrate.
- the incoming radiation from sun and due to Green House Gases (GHG) are balanced with losses related to infrared radiation from the surface, thermal transfer via convection from water to air, evaporation of water, lateral advection, convection into the underlying water and finally conduction to the bottom of reef.
- GSG Green House Gases
- the first term to consider is the convection of sensible heat from water surface into the overlaying air. This is dependent on the density and heat capacity of the air, the nature of boundary layer characteristics i.e. laminar or turbulent flow and clearly the difference in the temperature of water surface and the air.
- H BT (W/m 2 ) Rho * C P * Ch * U * (Tss - Ta) (1 )
- Tss is the Temperature of Sea Surface in Kelvin
- Ta is the Temperature of of overlaying air in Kelvin
- U is the wind speed on surface in m/s
- C P is Specific Heat of Air is taken as 1 .005 in kJ/kg-K
- the coefficient Ch represents the characteristics of sensible heat transfer across the boundary layer taken to be roughly 0.001 .
- Lambda is the latent heat of Vaporization taken as 2458 kJ/kg
- the coefficient Ce represents the characteristics of evaporative heat transfer across the boundary layer taken to be roughly 0.00091 .
- the net radiation RNET is given by equation 4 having terms related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radition due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions
- RNET (1 - Alpha Ssoiar + Epsilon*LAtm - Epsilon* Sigma* Tss 4 (4)
- Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, for that particular value the term (1 - Alpha) means 94% of incident radiation is absorbed.
- l_Atm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket.
- Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97
- Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O' 8 (W/m 2 -K 4 )
- Divergence F is the heat advected by currents or flowing water taking energy away from the heating area either moving it horizontally or vertically.
- the storage term S corresponds to heating the water giving an increase in temperature.
- DML is the depth of the mixed layer, equal to the depth of water or reefs but is limited to lesser than 100 m in open ocean due to strong stratification of water due to changes in density, salinity and temperature with depth.
- Rhosw the density of sea water is taken to be 1020 kg/m 3
- the temperature rise in water Delta_T is calculated by knowing the incident solar radiation, temperature of air Ta, local relative humidity, wind speed U, l_Atm the backradiation from atmosphere, water depth D L etc.
- Rho_H20 The local relative humidity or Rho_H20 is taken to be fixed at 0.02 here but can be changed as estimated from other models or measurements. The following parameters are considered for various scenarios to elucidate their significance and impact.
- Wind Speedier wind blowing across the surface of reef waters in meter/second (m/s), The Maximum intensity of radiation during the day in Watts per square-meter (W/sqm), The Depth of the reef waters in meters (m), The range of water height due to tides and marked Tide Amplitude in meters (m), The Tide Phase in hours (hr) is the time difference between high tide and peak sunlight, Deep Ocean Temperature in Centigrade (°C) is the temperature in the surrounding open ocean and is the temperature of water coming in with the tide, Cooling in (W/sq-m) is the uniform cooling by an external heat pump run continuously, finally the Current is the flow of water through the reef in (m/s).
- An example case chosen was a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds, with Wind Speed set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is assumed to be only 1.5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, no external Cooling is done here and there is no steady reef current present.
- the invention consists of three main constituent groups of apparatus and methods. Firstly, machineries and apparatus are needed that can do work to physically cool the reef waters, and do so with various aspects as described below herein. Secondly, a set of apparatus and sensors are needed to ensure that measurements are collected and used to determine the correct functioning of the machineries and methods, with various aspects of data collection, storage and information processing to ensure robust and resilient performance. Finally, a method to control the system is needed with controllable forcing function and requisite feedback to provide correction as required to reach a desired goal.
- the inventions consists of apparatus for cooling the waters of the coral reefs, where renewable energy is applied to work to counteract the impact of global warming on the temperatures, humidity, wind and ocean currents impacting the reef area.
- This apparatus consists of building machineries to reduce the water temperatures and thus avoid bleaching of corals due to thermal stress, by pumping the cooler ocean waters into the reef to keep the temperature below damaging limits.
- the apparatus to avoid coral bleaching consists of building machineries to move heat away from the surface waters of the reef, by using heat pumps for pushing the heat accumulating in the shallow reef waters out to deeper ocean, where the extra energy impacts the temperature only slightly.
- the machines used to cool the reef water would to be use closed cycle heat pumps that move a thermic fluid to carry the heat; the thermic process transports higher heat capacity so a smaller volume has to be pumped around. Heat pumps are preferred because of their energy efficiency to move the heat from the surface to deeper ocean to counter the heating of coral reef surface.
- the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures by reducing the incoming radiation heating up the shallow waters by installing floating mirrors that shade the reef waters and reflect off a significant fraction of incident sunlight.
- the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperature by removing heat via radiation of extra energy from the water surface into the space through infrared radiators operating in the atmospheric optical window for the electro-magnetic radiation in the long wavelength infrared spectral regime where wavelengths are in the range of 8 microns to 13 microns.
- the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures from the solar radiation by occluding, absorbing and reflecting off sunlight by extra water vapor and low clouds that are artificially generated by water vapor mist created by machines such as misters and humidifiers that are run using renewable energy.
- machines create extra humidity and mist droplets in addition to naturally occurring processes such that vapors rise with warm air in early day and noon to increase the humidity & water vapor concentration in the air column and create clouds at low altitude, these clouds in turn reflect off some sunlight in late afternoon to reduce the overall radiation flux incident on the reef waters during a day. This reduces the overall energy available in a day to heat the waters and thus reduce the peak water temperatures thereby minimizing chances of coral bleaching.
- the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures by using renewable energy to generate wind across surface of the reef, for a given temperature the evaporation from reef water depends on the relative humidity of air just above the water, so as stronger wind blows over the surface of the water and that reduces the effective humidity in the air just above the water and thus increases the evaporation from water.
- the evaporation process takes the latent heat of evaporation from the reef waters and effectively removes heat from the waters to cool down and reduce the temperatures of the water, enhancing evaporation with a wind across surface can then be used to avoid coral bleaching.
- the shallow waters of the reef are kept cooler by ensuring sufficient depth of water is maintained and this is done by artificially increasing the height of the fringing reef and enclose deeper waters with the reef boundary acting like a retaining wall for the retreating tidal water.
- renewable energy powered pump can be used to flow in tidal water to cool down the reef waters and limit minimum depth during low tide.
- the invention mainly uses renewable energy sources to drive machines, pumps and heat pumps. Electricity is generated using wind turbines, solar panels and/or ocean current turbines. The wind turbines and solar power systems are built on floating pontoons structures, rigs or manmade islands, by combining the counteracting mechanical requirements of solar and wind structures for overall balance and cost optimization.
- the invention uses a local network of sensor arrays to measure and collect data over large reef area, the data is of properties such as reef water temperature, surface relative humidity, wind speeds, ambient temperature, water salinity, current flow directions.
- the sensor nodes with automated calibration and operational modes, communicate with base stations or between the various stations in a mesh using wireless or wired network.
- the collected data is collated at the edge and at centers of network to allow local data validation and crosschecking then stored in specialized distributed database.
- Regular data sanitization is performed in the local regions with indexing and labeling and data synthesis performed to provide four dimensions (space + time) 4D- GIS for variables of interest along with their key statistics.
- the invention will design the array of control stations that are spread across the reef and the functioning of their machines and pumps coordinated across long distances.
- the system can affect large areas while each individual device distributed in the array is handling reasonable size of energy or area.
- Each element in the array breaks down the problem of control to its local region of influence, however the overall and bigger impact is coordinated by control of each station in the array to modify the ensemble as a whole. Similarly the long-term trend is impacted and controlled by sequence of designed temporal perturbations.
- the invention designs the placement of the machines in the array in the reef, so as to be most efficacious and this is done by using gridding patterns, densities and algorithms as developed in numerical computing.
- numerical hydrological modeling simulations use the data of wind and surface temperatures collected over large areas and that data is used to refine numerical prediction.
- the simulation models are calibrated against historical and episodic data, and refined based on the derived fits.
- the prediction algorithms are then used with designed controlled perturbations deployed through the array of control stations.
- the results of predictions are then compared to the experimental observations that result from the forced perturbations, thus completing the information and control feedback loop for further refining the algorithms.
- the dynamic algorithms will evolve using distributed machine learning and deep learning methods to the refine the predictive capabilities and control. These predictive algorithms are then used to drive larger area and longer term coordinated perturbations that are engineered to guide the weather and climate to a desired state.
- FIG. 1 Daily Variation of reef temperature with solar heating
- FIG. 2.B Daily variation of reef temperature with solar heating and non-uniform cooling, aligned to solar energy.
- FIG. 2.C Daily variation of reef temperature with solar heating and non-uniform cooling, aligned to tides.
- FIG. 3 Impact of Reef Depth on maximum temperature with diurnal heating
- FIG. 4.A depicts one embodiment of a control station system using a renewable energy sources to generate electricity energy and using that energy to drive machineries and do work in a plurality of ways to impact a plurality of reef weather parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. This is called a Renewable Energy powered Control Station.
- FIG. 4.B depicts one embodiment of a control station system using a renewable energy sources to generate thermo mechanical energy and using that energy to drive machineries and do work in a plurality of ways to impact a plurality of reef weather parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 5 depicts one embodiment of a system a renewable energy control station for generating energy for doing work using renewable sources such as combination of solar, wind, ocean currents and waves, and performing computing and information processing and communicating the data in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 6 depicts one embodiment of a system for an engineered interaction between reef waters, open ocean and atmosphere comprising a plurality of machines to modify a plurality of parameters such as pressure, temperature, humidity, concentrations and currents and depth and height profiles of these parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 7 depicts one embodiment of a system for cooling the surface of the ocean and atmosphere by using a plurality of pumps to bring cold ocean water to the reef surface or moving reef water by inducing or modifying currents at different positions, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 8 depicts one embodiment of a system design of Heat pump to move heat from Reef water into the Ocean and cooling the surface of reef and atmosphere by using plurality of heat pumps using a closed loop design of thermic fluid and exchangers to move heat from the surface to cooler depths, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 9 depicts one embodiment of a system design of mirrors to cool and move heat from Reef water by radiating back into the open atmosphere and cooling the surface of reef.
- FIG. 10 depicts one embodiment of a system design of infrared radiators to move heat from Reef water by radiating back into the open atmosphere and cooling the surface of reef.
- Fig.11 embodiment to cool by creating low clouds that occlude sunlight that uses misters and bubblers to increase the relative humidity of the air next to the surface and then covect this water upwards, so as to induce higher water absorption of sunlight and low lying clouds thus reduce the solar energy reaching the reef waters
- Fig. 12 Infrastructure to ensure depth of reef waters is above a critical threshold.
- Fig. 12 shows an embodiment that recognizes the fact that shallower waters are the cause of high temperatures in the reef and therefore averts this rise in temperature by ensuring that the water depth is kept high either by pumping in waters or artificially building barriers ensuring sufficient water remains even for low tide.
- FIG. 13 depicts one embodiment of a system for collecting data using a system for collecting data using a plurality of types of multiple sensors to measure a plurality of parameters for atmosphere and ocean at different depths and positions, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- Distributed database with Edge computation for cross-check and collating and validation depicts one embodiment of a system where the data from plurality of sensors is used to cross check, signal process, re-compute and statistically validate the incoming measurements and information processing is done at the station to extract relevant structure and summarize the data which is stored in a distributed manner to ensure correctness, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 14 depicts one embodiment of a system for designing an array of control stations positioned at different locations which then act in a coordinated to manner the placement of the stations in the array is determined to maximize the efficacy of coordinated action to collect data and force changes in climate ensure larger area or duration perturbation, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 15 depicts one embodiment of a system for control of reef parameter where the data from sensor network is logged with wide area coverage and finer granularity is used to calibrate the modeling and better predict the features of observed weather pattern, and modify the controller algorithms to better force changed in accordance with an aspect of the present invention
- FIG. 16 depicts one embodiment of a system which uses advanced data science and Artificial intelligence techniques of Machine Learning and Deep Learning to provide feedback and feed forward from the measured response to a forcing of climate and then to further refine reef parameter prediction system and design next round of forcing in a continual improvement manner, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention; and depicts one embodiment of a system that forces changes in sea surface temperature over reefs and oceans using renewable energy sources that drive machines performing weather modifying work, that is coordinated over large reef area, leveraging naturally occurring currents to modify the weather, using Numerical Weather Prediction along with Artificial Intelligence techniques to refine and control long term climate direction, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
- solar photovoltaic As used herein, the terms “solar photovoltaic”, “PV system” “PV modules” and “solar cells” are used interchangeably, and unless otherwise specified include any solar cells, cables, DC-DC convertors or inverters along with electronics controllers, housing, frames, structures, etc., having one or more electricity generating components for converting energy from sunlight to electricity suitably converted and generated.
- Flowing across the heat exchanger refers to water passing across the outside of the conductive tubing forming the one or more water flow paths around the exchanger tubing mesh, while flowing through the heat exchanger refers to the coolant (e.g. liquid) passing through the heat exchangers one or more coolant flow paths formed by the conductive tubing.
- coolant e.g. liquid
- liquid coolant employed in a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger is water.
- the concepts disclosed herein are readily adapted to use with other types of liquid coolant.
- one or more of the liquid coolants may comprise a brine, a fluorocarbon liquid, a liquid metal, or other similar coolant, or refrigerant, while still maintaining the advantages and unique features of the present invention.
- FIG. 1 depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef.
- the diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 100A and 100B.
- Panel 100A shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis.
- the case shown here is for a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds.
- Wind Speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s
- the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day
- the depth of reef waters is only 1 .5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters
- the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters
- the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations
- the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C
- no external Cooling is done here and there is no steady reef current present.
- the SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide.
- Panel 100A shows the component of heat removed from surface either as Latent heat of Evaporation and Sensible Heat transferred to the Air above the surface. These components are negligible in this model due to near zero wind speed, making it difficult to either remove the saturated water vapor from the surface or the heat flux, yet it can be seen that these components increase with the SST.
- the accumulated heat into the water body matches the Net Radiation as expected.
- the net radiation RNET is related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radiation due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions as summarized earlier in Equation 4, where Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day, Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, with 94% of incident radiation is absorbed. LAtm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket. Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97, and Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O' 8 (W/m 2 -K 4 ). Note that the radiation to open nigh sky is roughly - 100 W/sq-m, as is seen during non-solar hours. Panel 100B again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
- the panel 100A and 100 B show different multiple regions marked as 101 through 117. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 101 and 110 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 100A and 100B respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 100B as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen. Phases 102 and 111 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning prior to the sunrise.
- the sunrise is seen with non-zero radiation in phases 103 and 112 where the radiation rises but temperature changes little as the tide is still is coming in with cooler waters, but when the tides starts going out reducing the depth of water the temperature increases.
- the peak temperature is seen in the phase 104 and 113, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down.
- Phase 105 and 114 corresponds to steep reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide.
- Phase 106 and 115 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature.
- Phase 107 and 116 further cool down due to ocean water finally brings the reef temperature close to the open ocean waters as seen in phase 108 and 117, that line up with phases 102 and 111 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
- Table 1 summarizes the different time intervals marked as 101 through 117 in Fig. 1 highlighting the changing balance of energy and water, with changes in temperature due to the heat or cooler ocean water coming in giving changes in SST.
- SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST.
- the peak temperature seen is 31.7 °C that is an increase of 3.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C.
- Fig, 2.A One aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.A, where the underlying reef system whose data shown in Fig. 1 is modified with the present invention to force external cooling uniformly throughout the day.
- the uniform cooling of the system by100 W/sq-m leads to overall lower temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for all the time periods.
- the various time periods or phases are numbered 201 through 217 similar to the phases 101 through 117 seen in Fig. 1.
- FIG. 2.A depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef.
- the diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200A and 200B.
- Panel 200A shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis.
- There are heat pump machineries, which provide external cooling with uniform heat removal an example is shown here fori 00 W/sq-m throughout the day, the value can range from 10 W to 500 W/sq-m depending on the requirements of the system.
- panel 200A shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 750 W/sq-m, while the incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes additional 100 W/sq-m from the reef and this reduces the net flux significantly and also leads to negative flux during the night time.
- the SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide. The accumulated heat into the water body matches the Net Radiation and heat removed by heat pump machinery as expected.
- the net radiation RNET is related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radiation due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions as summarized earlier in Equation 4, where Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day, Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, with 94% of incident radiation is absorbed. l_Atm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket. Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97, and Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O' 8 (W/m 2 -K 4 ). Panel 200B again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
- the panel 200A and 200 B show different multiple regions marked as 201 through 217. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 201 and 210 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200A and 200B respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200B as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen. Phases 202 and 211 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning prior to the sunrise.
- the sunrise is seen with non-zero radiation in phases 203 and 212 where the radiation rises but temperature changes little as the tide is still is coming in with cooler waters, but when the tides starts going out reducing the depth of water the temperature increases.
- the peak temperature is seen in the phase 204 and 213, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down.
- Phase 205 and 214 corresponds to steep reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide.
- Phase 206 and 215 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature.
- Table 2 summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
- FIG. 2.B Another aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.B, where the underlying reef system whose data was shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.A it is further modified with the present invention to force external cooling done non-uniformly during the day.
- the non-uniform cooling of the system cools selectively during parts of the day by using renewable energy to do work and remove heat with power ranging between 10 W/sq-m and 500 W/sq-m, and for example done here with peak power of 300 W/sq-m and leads to overall lower peak temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for selected time periods.
- the various time periods or phases are numbered 220 through 237.
- FIG. 2.B depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef with non-uniform cooling or heat removal.
- the diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200C and 200D.
- Panel 200C shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis.
- panel 200C shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 800 W/sq-m, which is the slightly lower than the case without any cooling as in Fig.1 , mainly because the cooling has stopped by that time.
- the incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes up to additional 300 W/sq-m from the reef during the time when tide is coming in and this reduces the net heat flux significantly and also leads to some negative flux during the night time.
- the SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide.
- Panel 200D again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
- the panel 200C and 200 D show different multiple regions marked as 220 through 217. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 220 and 230 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200C and 200D respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200D as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen.
- Phases 221 and 231 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning along with sunrise and in this particular case has the external cooling turned ON with removal of heat at magnitude of 300W/sq-m.
- the peak sunshine is seen in phases 222 and 232 where the radiation rises and the temperature rises quickly as the tide starts going out reducing the depth of water.
- the peak temperature is seen in the phase 223 and 233, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down, along with external cooling with power of 300 W/sq-m.
- Phase 224 and 234 corresponds to evening after sunset and show steeper reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide along with external cooling with power of 300 W/sq-m.
- Phase 225 and 235 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature. With next coming in of tide in Phase
- Table 3 summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
- SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST.
- the peak temperature seen is 30.7 °C that is an increase of only 2.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C.
- the non-uniform cooling leads to the lowest temperature being 27.3 °C that is lower than the open ocean temperature.
- FIG. 2.C Another aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.C, where the underlying reef system whose data was shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.A it is further modified with the present invention to force external cooling done non-uniformly during the day to minimize the temperature rise with least amount of energy expended to cool down the high temperature.
- the non-uniform cooling of the system cools selectively during parts of the day by using renewable energy to do work and remove heat with power ranging between 10 W/sq-m and 500 W/sq-m, and for example done here with peak power of 200 W/sq-m and leads to overall lower peak temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for selected time periods.
- the various time periods or phases are numbered 240 through 257.
- FIG. 2.C depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef with non-uniform cooling or heat removal.
- the diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200E and 200F.
- Panel 200E shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis.
- wind speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s
- the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day
- the depth of reef waters is only 1.5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters
- the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters
- the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations
- the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, here and there is no steady reef current present.
- In panel 200E shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 700 W/sq-m, which is the lower than the case without any cooling as in Fig.1 , mainly because of the external cooling is active during the ebb tide and solar noon.
- the incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes up to additional 200 W/sq-m from the reef during the time when tide is going out and this reduces the net heat flux significantly and also leads to some negative flux during the night time.
- the SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide.
- Panel 200F again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
- the panel 200E and 200 F show different multiple regions marked as 240 through 247. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 240 and 250 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200E and 200F respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200F as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen, and in this particular case has the external cooling turned ON with removal of heat at magnitude of 200W/sq-m. Phases 241 and 251 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning before sunrise.
- phase 242 and 252 The sunshine is seen in phases 242 and 252 where the radiation rises and the temperature rises slowly and the depth of water is nearly constant.
- the temperature rise is seen in the phase 243 and 253, where the increase in radiation coincides with outgoing water from the ocean but this is rise is slowed external cooling with power of 200 W/sq-m.
- Phase 244 and 254 corresponds to late afternoon with incoming cooler ocean water from tide which brings the temperature quickly down.
- the fall in temperature continues in Phase 245 and 255 after sunset where cooling is mainly due to radiation to open sky.
- the temperature shows steeper reduction in Phase 246 and 256 due to external cooling with power of 200 W/sq-m, while water recedes in ebb tide.
- phase 247 and 257 With next coming in of tide in, temperature further cools down below that of the open ocean water due to external cooling of water, as seen in phase 247 and 257, that line up with phases 241 and 251 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
- SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST.
- the peak temperature seen is 30.7 °C that is an increase of only 2.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C.
- the non-uniform cooling leads to the lowest temperature being 27.5 °C that is lower than the open ocean temperature.
- the energy used by non-uniform cooling can be lesser when compared to the uniform cooling case, as the cooling can be done only to reduce the temperature peak with optimal timing.
- Table 4 summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
- Fig. 3 shows the variation of the maximum Sea Surface Temperature as a function of the depth of the reef waters, with different curves with wind speed as the running parameter.
- the average reef depth value is varied from 1.5 meter to a maximum of 5 meter, while the wind speed is varied from 0 to 4 m/s for the different curves.
- Higher depth means that the volume of water to be heated is higher, thus as expected temperature rises lesser due to the solar heating when water is deeper.
- the maximum temperature is 30.2 °C, following the solid curve shown for the same radiation, wind and tidal conditions the maximum temperature is only 29.3 °C when the depth is 5 meters.
- FIG. 3 also shows multiple curves as different kind of lines, which are calculated for different wind speeds varied between 0 to 4 m/s.
- higher wind speed means increased evaporation of water from the surface and that increases the removal of latent heat of evaporation, effectively reducing the sensible heat, giving lesser rise of reef water temperature.
- the maximum temperature for reef depth of 1 .5 m reduces from 30.2 °C down to 29.65 °C when wind increases from 0 m/s to 4 m/s, while for a reef depth of 5 m the temperature reduces from 29.3 °C to 28.9 °C.
- the rise in temperature over the surrounding ocean waters is therefore strongly affected by the average depth of the reef-waters and the wind speed near the water surface.
- the present invention minimizes overheating of reef water by solar radiation so as to avoid coral bleaching; and uses a thermo-hydro-dynamic modeling of reef to optimize the system and reduce the required work to remove heat from shallower areas and maintain safe peak temperatures across the reef and does that with appropriately engineered water flow pumped between different reef areas.
- using engineered surface winds generated by renewable energy to increase the extraction of surface heat from the reef waters can reduce the increase of the temperatures.
- renewable energy source are tapped and converted to electricity using renewable energy conversion methods, the electricity thus generated is used to drive machinery used to modify the local weather properties.
- renewable energy source are tapped but are converted to thermo-mechanical energy using renewable energy conversion methods, which is then used to drive machinery used to modify the local weather properties.
- the incident renewable energy in form of sunlight is converted to electricity using photovoltaic system or solar cells and modules 401.
- Energy from wind is converted to electricity using wind turbines 402, and renewable energy in ocean currents and waves is converted to electricity using ocean vanes and turbines 403.
- the electrical energy can be directly used or excess stored in electrical storage 404 such as batteries, ultra-capacitors or circuits for later use.
- the energy from 401 , 402, 403 and 404 can be pooled and shared across multiple machineries and circuits, these machineries include horizontal pumps 405, that are used to pump water in horizontal direction to create, enhance or attenuate water currents 410 or deflect naturally occurring current 411 and these could be placed at varying reef depths to create a desired profile of currents. These currents can be used to force mixing for modifying surface temperatures or changing the spatial spread of the water as required with different flows at different times.
- the energy can be also used for vertical pumps 406, which pump water in vertical direction to create flow vertically for purpose of vertical mixing in terms of upwelling or down-welling 412, and churning 413 or redistributing matter and by doing this moving cooler deep water to surface to reduce the surface temperature increase the surface density, acidity and salinity, in effect changing the reef profiles.
- FIG 4.A Another use of energy shown in FIG 4.A is to transport thermal energy done using closed or open cycle heat pumps 407.
- the heat pump design described herein below transports heat without incurring the energy cost of transporting large amount of matter.
- the thermal energy can be moved laterally 415 to move it out of a shallow area such as coral reefs, alternatively the heat can be moved deeper into ocean 414 changing temperature profiles and slowing the rise of the reef temperature.
- Another use of energy is to change the salinity profile by using devices, which reduce the ionic concentration with osmotic pumps 408 to remove ions or adding salts or ionic chemicals to modify the salinity and acidity 416 as desired to minimize the loss of coral reef structure due to chemical decomposition.
- Another use of energy is to change the humidity 417 at the surface of ocean by using machineries such as mister (misting devices) or de-humidifiers 409. These devices by modifying the immediate vicinity of humidity can cause extra interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere especially layers of air right above the ocean and modify the water content as the surface wind rises upward. These allow the coupling of energy between air and ocean to be engineered as required. As discussed in FIG.3 the extra evaporation helps in removal of latent heat of evaporation and can reduce the surface temperature.
- the incident renewable energy in form of sunlight is converted to thermal energy using solar thermal system 418, or converted to mechanical energy by driving a turbine.
- Wind energy can be converted to mechanical energy using wind turbines 419, and renewable energy in ocean currents and waves is converted to mechanical energy using ocean vanes and turbines 420.
- the kinetic mechanical energy can be directly used or excess stored in thermo-mechanical storage 421 such as flywheels or thermal storage such as phase change material or high thermal capacity matter for later use, where the thermal energy is converted back to mechanical with turbines driven by heat.
- the energy from 418, 419, 420 and 421 can be pooled and shared across multiple machineries and circuits, these machineries include horizontal pumps 422, that are used to pump water in horizontal direction to create, enhance or attenuate water currents 427 or deflect naturally occurring current 428 and these could be placed at varying ocean depths to create a desired profile of currents. These currents can be used to force mixing for modifying reef temperatures or changing the spatial spread of the water as required at different times.
- the energy can be also used for vertical pumps 423, which pump water in vertical direction to create flow vertically for purpose of vertical mixing in terms of upwelling or down-welling 429, and churning 430 or redistributing matter and by doing this moving cooler deep water to surface to reduce the surface temperature in or acidity and salinity in effect changing the reef profiles
- FIG 4.B Another use of wok done as shown in FIG 4.B is to transport thermal energy done using closed or open cycle heat pumps 424.
- the heat pump design described herein below transports heat without incurring the energy cost of transporting large amount of matter.
- the thermal energy can be moved laterally 432 to move it out of a shallow area such as coral reefs, alternatively the heat can be moved deeper into ocean 431 and slowing the rise of the surface reef temperature.
- Another use of work done is to change the salinity profile using devices that reduce the ionic concentration with osmotic pumps 425 to remove ions or adding salts or ionic chemicals to modify the salinity or acidity 423 as desired to minimize the loss of coral reef structure due to chemical decomposition.
- Another use of energy is to change the humidity 434 at the surface of ocean by using machineries such as mister (misting devices) or de-humidifiers 226. These devices by modifying the immediate vicinity of humidity can cause extra interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere especially layers of air right above the ocean and modify the water content as the surface wind rises upward. These allow the coupling of energy between air and ocean to be engineered as required. As discussed in FIG.3 the extra evaporation helps in removal of latent heat of evaporation and can reduce the surface temperature.
- mister mister
- de-humidifiers 226 de-humidifiers
- the sources and machineries are all located in a physical co-located cluster and structure referred as Control Station, a functional embodiment of that 500 is shown in FIG. 5.
- the Control Station consists of a plurality of Power Sources 501 , including those using wind 502, solar 503, ocean 504, waves 505, and batteries for storage 506. These power sources 501 through 506, are used to generate useable energy from respective renewable resources.
- Such as 502 consists of wind turbines driven to extract mechanical energy from wind and either convert to electricity or used directly as mechanical energy.
- 503 converts solar energy into useable form of electrical, thermal or mechanical energy
- Ocean turbines convert ocean energy 504, while wave turbines and motors convert wave energy 505, finally batteries and storage systems are used to capture excess power for later use.
- These power sources 501 through 506 are used to drive machineries and systems 507, consisting of pumps 508, fans 509, heat pumps 510, radiative cooler 511 , humidity control devices 512, and gas exchangers 513.
- Pumps 508 are used to move water around to modify the thermal, salinity and density profiles or water currents.
- the fans 509 are turbines used in reverse to drive changes in wind patterns and affect the mixing of atmosphere and its interaction with ocean.
- Heat pumps 510 are used to move mainly heat from one location to another to modify the temperature profiles vertically or horizontally.
- Radiative coolers 511 are devices that take electrical energy and emit in infrared around 9 micrometer wavelengths and thus cool by radiating the extra energy to outer space.
- Humidity control devices 512 such as misting and dehumidifying machines change the relative humidity in the proximity and thus impact the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere, this can be used to modify precipitation patterns and control air temperatures and winds.
- Gas exchangers 513 can be used to change the amount of gas interacting with oceans affecting the coupling of energy and nature and concentrations of gases and nutrients in the ocean impacting the biosphere.
- the control station 500 can be used in the manner described in Fig. 4A and Fig. 4.B to engineer the temperature and acidity profiles across large reef areas.
- Control station 500 Another key set of systems in the Control station 500 are the communication and computing systems 514. These systems are used to collect the data and establish communications with a distributed information system via satellite communications 515 or wireless or wired sensor network 516 and connected with other stations using undersea optical or copper cables and other means of connectivity. In addition by using onboard computers 518 and data storage 519 the data collected can be validated and cross-checked before and after communication and complete information processing done 520.
- control station are engineered to be self sufficient to deliver the functional requirements laid out in 500.
- the control stations In order to be able to work at a rate high enough to influence the local weather, or the trend and long term climate, the control stations have to do meaningful work at a scale large enough and over durations of days and months, thus the energy generation systems have to provide large amount of energy.
- These control station are proposed to be powered by renewable energy that can be stored using batteries, so that they can operate for decades altogether, and to ensure that energy is not a limitation for type and quantity of the work to be done.
- the specific renewable energy sources can be combination of Wind, Solar, waves, or Oceanic currents, depending on location and time of the day or year.
- the primary source of power may be wind, as technology for offshore windmills is maturing and costs are coming down to make it viable.
- winds are present near the coasts and in the open sea, the wind power across the oceans averages around 500 W/m 2 , however depending on the location, geography and the season.
- Generation at a site can be predictably estimated and the historical information is available and in most regions the energy from wind is plentiful for our purpose.
- winds are not strong, one such area is in the sub tropical Pacific: the infamous windless ‘doldrums’. Stations located in these specific areas are designed to not depend on wind instead they use solar power in combination with oceanic current and or waves.
- the engineering systems size and design should be consistent with prevailing capabilities and system sizes that are commercially available.
- Recent designs of offshore wind platforms are targeted around 5 to 10 MW.
- One embodiment of the station uses sizes of around 5 to 10 MW in size, so that the design of turbine and platform can be similar.
- the systems should be sized to be around 5 to 10 MW driven by renewable energy sources. To generate 10 MW using winds along the coast range there is sufficient power across the globe (500 W/m 2 ), albeit it depends on the seasons. The data shows that in the open oceans winds are strong enough to generate most of required power from them.
- Solar power generation is possible across most of the regions, however solar is key where winds are low (doldrum latitudes). But, solar panels require large areas, for instance a 1 MW plant capacity requires typically 5000 square meters of area. This may be possible by covering all available surfaces of station buildings and turbine towers, or by building a floating array on a pontoon or platform of say 80 m x 80 m. For larger capacities it will be necessary to use large fields of floating arrays. Since solar power varies with time of the day, the power generated can be best used in conjunction with storage, which will allow it to be dispatched when needed and used optimally. In many areas across the globe there constant ocean currents present, these currents and the energy in them can be used to drive underwater turbines, giving continual generation.
- FIG.6 shows the control station functional purpose to engineer interactions between Reef, Ocean and Atmosphere.
- the functional description 600 consists of Atmosphere 601 and Reef & Ocean 602, with the system to engineer controlled interactions 603.
- the parameters for Atmosphere consist of wind speed and height profiles 604, relative humidity and precipitation rates 605, and the temperature height profiles 606.
- the reef and oceanic parameters are reef and ocean currents with their depth profiles 617, salinity profile 618, vertical currents both upward and downward welling 619 and finally the temperatures 620 both the SST and the depth profile.
- the control stations engineer additional interactions 603, between the ocean and atmosphere including enhanced wind ocean coupling 607, energy transfer 608, and mass transfer 612.
- the transfer of motion and energy between wind and ocean is very inefficient in due to the difference in viscosities of the two fluids and also smooth interface that exists most of the time, this coupling between the wind and ocean can be directly enhanced 607 by using windmills to drive the ocean currents or vice versa the additional wind or ocean energy can also be used to modify the other parameters as required.
- Energy transfer 608 can be in the forms of direct kinetic energy by enhancing motion 609, or driving turbulent churning 610 or simply in form of heat addition or removal 611.
- the mass transfer 612 between ocean and atmosphere can be enhanced and controlled by using various machines to force air through the ocean to create bubbles 613 which lead to better gas absorption by the ocean water, conversely water from ocean can be sprayed into the air increasing local evaporation 614 this can increase or change the humidity 615 on the surface which can get convected to other parts of atmosphere with vertical and horizontal winds forming low clouds.
- the bubbles 613 and spraying 614 can also be used to control the gas exchange of atmospheric gases such as Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon dioxide, impacting their local and large area concentrations to impact the atmospheric properties and the local reef water acidity.
- FIG. 7 depicts the system designed for a particular reef system for pumping water so as to control water temperature in the reef.
- the overall layout consists of the reef 701 , with a shallow lagoon 702 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open ocean 703 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean.
- the example reef has barriers 706 and 707 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 704 and 705 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters.
- the example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 708 coming from the North West.
- the invention uses a placement of renewable energy sources 709 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched area.
- the renewable energy is used in the system to power pumps that modify the water flow either to augment the natural currents with inline pumping as shown in 710, or deflecting the currents as shown in 711 , or opposing the flow to create turbulence as in 712 or 713.
- the warmer reef waters from shallower areas are pumped 714, 715 to force circulation and pull in cooler water or pumped deeper into the cold ocean 716 or colder water is pumped in from cold ocean as shown in 717 and 718.
- the barriers 706 and 707 can be modified with designed walls and blocks to ensure that the depth of water in the enclosed reef is never allowed to drop below a critical value.
- FIG. 8.A A more efficient method to cool is to move the heat using heat pump is shown in FIG. 8.A using a closed cycle heat pumps that move a thermic fluid to carry the heat; the thermic process transports high heat capacity so a smaller volume has to be pumped around. Heat pumps are preferred because of their energy efficiency to move the heat from the surface away from coral reef surface or to deeper ocean.
- the heat pump 800 shown in FIG.8.A consists of the surface heat exchanger tube network 801 , which absorbs energy from the surface reef water reducing the surface sea temperature; this heat is used to evaporate a thermic fluid, which is being pumped out through a pressure control valve 802 by a vacuum pump 803.
- the low pressure pump 803 is sucking out the thermic fluid from the heat exchanger 801 and causing fluid evaporation and removal of heat of evaporation from surface and thus moving the heat down through insulated piping 804 from where it is moved to outside the reef preferably to the lower depths of the ocean using second stage pumping 805, that extracts the fluid and compresses it to higher pressure through the one way valve 806.
- the compressed thermic liquid condenses in the exchanger tube mesh 807 releasing its heat of condensation in the colder ocean depths, from where the liquefied thermic fluid is pulled out by deep-water pumps 808 which pumps it to the top surface through insulated pipes
- the apparatus 800 shown in FIG.8.A which consists of a large area mesh of tubes conducting the surface thermic fluid, using this fluid the heat from shallow reef water is transferred through the thermally conducting tube walls into the thermic fluid carried inside the tubes.
- This is extending the concept of heat pipe or a closed loop heat engine cycle.
- we use the mesh 801 and 807 at the different depths for exchanging heat with surrounding water, but use hollow insulated pipes 804 and 809 (or use metal lined concrete to reduce cost) that allow a thermic fluid to be piped from surface to the desired depths. It is this thermic fluid that moves the heat from surface collecting heat at one end, and transporting and releasing it at the other end, as is done in a refrigerator or heat pump.
- the heat exchanger on surface 801 which is the hot end of the pipe, will be used as an evaporator absorbing the heat as latent heat of evaporation of the fluid.
- This hot fluid is pumped down where it is compressed and condenses releasing the heat to the deeper waters via another exchanger 809.
- Valves 802 and 806 ensure one-way flows, while pumps 803, 805 are creating low-pressure vacuum ensuring evaporation of fluid, while liquid pumps 808 and 812 control the flow in liquid form.
- Pumps 805 and 808 are specially designed so they can be placed in deep ocean waters, while pumps 803 and 812 are placed near the surface of the ocean. Insulated pipes 804 and 809 allow unimpeded fluid flow.
- the amount of fluid to be pumped is determined by the total heat to be transported divided by the latent heat of evaporation.
- One embodiment uses water as the fluid; mainly because of safety in case of leakage also it has very high latent heat of vaporization that is roughly 2440 kJ/kg. The relevant properties of water for the temperature range are given below
- the amount of heat to be removed from reef areas ranges from 100 W/sq-m to 400 W/sq-m as discussed in Fig. 2. Since a square kilometer equals 1 Million squaremeters, so the total heat to be removed from a square kilometer ranges from 100 MW to 400 MW. For doing the work to conduct away 100 MW of heat given the latent heat of vaporization as 2440 kJ/kg, we need to evaporate water at the rate of ⁇ 50 kg/s. The required water flow at 25°C is about 50 liters/s or 3000 standard liters per minute.
- the evaporation-condensation cycle is done in a closed loop system like shown in Fig.8.A
- the evaporator is near the surface at temperatures greater than 20 °C, while the condenser is deeper down in the ocean with temperatures below 5°C.
- the corresponding volume of the steam is 43000 times bigger at 25 C so it is 603 cu-m/s or 36 million standard liters per minutes! If the steam is moving at speeds around 40 meters per second this requires cross section area of 15 square meters, but that area can be as low as 15 square meters and that requires a diameter of 4.4 m at 25C and this diameter increases to requirement of 8 m diameter at the bottom near the compressor where temperatures are close to 5 °C.
- the first component of the work required to be done is the work done by a vacuum pump to remove the vapor out from evaporator, where in case of an ideal scenario the work done is given by thermodynamic calculation of d(PV)/dt. In this case with calculated energy of 130 to 140 kJ/kg for the 14 kg/s water flow the work required is on the order of 2 MW, accounting for frictional losses and taking realistically achievable efficiencies we assume that required work could be as high as 5 to 6 MW.
- One aspect of this invention is to use floating mirrors to occlude the underlying seawater and reduce the total light incident and thus slow the increase of reef water temperature.
- the heat required to be removal ranges from 50 W/sq-m to 150 W/sq-m, given the open sky intensity at noon is 1000 W/sq-m.
- the temperature reduces as the mirrors reflect the light back. This method is equivalent of cooling during the day as illustrated in Fig. 2.B.
- Fig. 9 shows a reef system 900.
- the overall layout consists of the reef 901 , with a shallow lagoon 903 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 902 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean.
- the example reef has barriers 906 and 907 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 904 and 905 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters.
- the example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 908 coming from the North West.
- the invention uses a placement of renewable energy sources 909, 910, 911 , & 912 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched area. These area are covered with floating structures such as one illustrated in 913, where the circular ring structure is similar to that used for marine aquaculture, consisting of a ring or torus of hollow pipe 914, made out of material such as HDPE (high density poly propylene) which provides mechanical support and buoyancy.
- HDPE high density poly propylene
- the overall system has sufficient buoyancy, and flexibility to last for decades in the open sea, while providing good reflectivity using membrane mirrors that are coated with hydrophobic coatings to avoid fouling, soiling and reduction of reflectance despite being left in the open marine environment.
- the ring area 916 has solar power source 918 that can provide continual energy and power to robotic cleaners 919 that are tethered and used to regularly clean the mirror 917.
- the robotic cleaner 919 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the mirror area 917 but operates regularly to keep the mirrors clean.
- FIG. 920 Another embodiment of such a system of floating mirrors is shown in 920, where a pontoon 921 is built to mechanically support the platform 923 with trusses 922 to ensure sufficient height over the sea surface.
- the platform 923 supports plain mirrors 924 providing requisite mechanical strength and reliability.
- Solar power sources 925 are used to provide power to automated robotic cleaner 926 to ensure regular cleaning of the mirror 924, the robotic cleaner 926 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the mirror area.
- Systems of mirrors 913 and 920 suffer from the overall cost, as they are required to have high reflectivity, resilience in harsh marine environment and moored to allow variation in depth due to tide and currents.
- the reef area waters can be cooled using infrared radiation devices that emit energy preferentially in the long wave infrared spectral regime with wavelengths between 8 microns to 13 microns, which is a spectral window in the atmosphere that allows the radiation energy to pass through to outer space (estimated to be seen at 3 Kelvin), and this outward radiation cools the membranes and surrounding areas by removal of the heat.
- the invention consists of use of reflecting and cooling membranes that reflect the incident energy perfectly in the visible spectrum, and can absorb and emit perfectly in the long wavelength infrared regime of 8 microns to 13 microns.
- Selective emitting spectrum can be made using radiative cooling materials these are engineered to reflect back all the incident visible light, in addition they emit out radiation in long wave infrared spectral regime.
- the ideal spectral response of the material is shown in Fig. 10 as 1001 where the material has perfect 100% reflectivity in the visible and infrared spectrum with wavelength ranging up to 7 to 8 microns, and then changing sharply down to zero reflectivity and instead the absorption increases sharply to 100% for long wavelength IR specifically between 8 microns to 13 microns wavelengths.
- such materials can also engineered by use of non-uniformities in the dielectric properties varying at nanometer and microns level but providing quasi periodic pattern at micrometer levels, aligned with wavelengths of interest.
- the nano-engineered materials use nanometer or microns sized particles 1008 or cavities 1007 in a dielectric matrix 1009 to create interaction between materials, electromagnetic energy, and thermal energy of solids (as quasi particles namely phonons) giving emissions in the wavelengths of interest.
- FIG. 10 shows a reef system 1010.
- the overall layout consists of the reef 1011 , with a shallow lagoon 1013 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 1012 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean.
- the example reef has barriers 1016 and 1017 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 1014 and 1015 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters.
- the example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 1018 coming from the North West.
- the invention uses a placement of thermal cooling membrane and infrared sources 1019 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched areas.
- FIG. 1027 Another embodiment of such a system of floating infrared emitter is shown in structures such as one illustrated in 1027, where the circular ring structure is similar to that used for marine aquaculture, consisting of a ring or torus of hollow pipe 1028, made out of material such as HDPE (high density poly propylene) which provides mechanical support and buoyancy.
- HDPE high density poly propylene
- the overall system has sufficient buoyancy, and flexibility to last for decades in the open sea, while providing good reflectivity using membrane emitters that are coated with hydrophobic coatings to avoid fouling, soiling and reduction of reflectance or emissivity despite being left in the open marine environment.
- the ring area 1031 has solar power source 1030 that can provide continual energy and power to robotic cleaners 1033 that are tethered and used to regularly clean the mirror 1032. These robotic cleaners 1033 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the area with infrared membranes 1032 and these clean the membrane regularly.
- the engineered membranes with high reflectivity and emissivity in special spectral regions are much more expensive than simple mirrors as they also are engineered to have high resilience in harsh marine environment, but the overall system cost per area does not increase significantly as other sub-systems are majority of the overall cost, such as mechanical structures to provide structural stability in harsh marine environment, including mooring that allows for variation in depth due to tide and currents, or the robotic cleaning system to ensure clean surfaces all the time.
- FIG. 11 shows a reef system 1100.
- the overall layout consists of the reef 1101 , with a shallow lagoon 1103 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 1102 with depth increasing quickly to that for a deep ocean.
- the example reef has barriers 1106 and 1107 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 1104 and 1105 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters.
- the example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 1108 coming from the North West.
- the invention uses a placement of renewable sources and machineries 1109 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched areas.
- a mister 1110 consists of atomizers or aspirator and other spraying design an example embodiment is using a pump 1112 submerged in water 1111 and pumping at high pressure through piping 1113 and forcing it through a nozzle jet to create mist 1114 that forms small droplets or with water drawn into the jet of fast moving air because of Venturi effect or other means such as electrostatic or ultrasonic pumping, use of centrifugal forces all approaches giving fine jet of small droplets.
- a bubbler 1115 consists of a submerged air pump 1116 sitting in the reef water 1117, the air pump takes in air from the surface through an inlet 1118 and pushes the air deep into the water with pipes 1119 and then pushing it through a narrow nozzle 1120 to create bubbles that rise to the surface.
- the air saturated with water vapor and mist having high relative humidity will build up on the surface of the water and lead to a steady state of evaporation and increased loss of energy.
- fans 1121 that will blow the water vapor vertically up against the gravitation or even buoyancy forces.
- These vertically oriented fans 1124 will force the vapors upward 1125 and cause a turbulent suction field around it in all directions as shown in 1122 and 1123 causing the water spray and misting to take place along with extra bubbling and frothing.
- These fans are arranged in an array 1126 consisting of multiple rows and columns of fans 1127 arranged to cover large areas of water surface.
- the main aim of the arrangement of machineries is to be organized together to increase evaporation, enhance the vertical convection of vapor, and increase the water vapor content in the air above the reef to create mists and nucleate them to form low-lying clouds.
- system 1140 which consists of bubbler 1128 along with mister 1129, with multiple fans 1130, the machines increase the formation of saturated water vapor and require external work to be done by machineries using external source of renewable energy on a platform 1131 with sources such as solar 1132, wind turbines 1133 on a tower 1134 and turbine driven by currents and tide 1136, and along with mechanism to store the energy 1135 for use throughout the day and night and overcome the intermittency of the renewable energy sources.
- sources such as solar 1132, wind turbines 1133 on a tower 1134 and turbine driven by currents and tide 1136, and along with mechanism to store the energy 1135 for use throughout the day and night and overcome the intermittency of the renewable energy sources.
- the enhanced evaporation of water vapor and forced convection leads to formation of clouds 1137 and presence of such clouds 1138 leads to occlusion of the solar radiation 1139 thus reducing the energy reaching the surface of the reefs.
- This vertical column of water absorbs extra sunlight (in the range of 1% to 10% of solar energy) and if the column rises can nucleate to form clouds that are relatively low lying, but can reflect sunlight and further reduce solar energy reaching the surface. Even if these vapor clouds are not be dense but the extra water vapor absorb the sunlight while resultant heat makes it rise further just like fog rising.
- the absorption of sunlight with water vapor reduces the actual energy reaching the surface of reef waters and this effectively reduces the heating of the reef water.
- the amount of energy lost due to this extra water vapor can be in the range of 1% to 10% depending on amount of water forced to evaporate.
- Another aspect of this invention is to measure, extract and process information about the reef temperature so as to measure it and control it using the machineries of the system.
- the first portion consists of measurement as shown in Fig.12 embodiment designs a global network of sensor arrays 1200 to measure and collect data over large area of properties such as wind speeds & direction temperature, salinity, current flow directions and measuring these parameters extending the information in vertical directions to get height & depth profiles, key parameters will be collected both for Reef & Oceans 1202 and Atmosphere 1201.
- fixed nodes 1200 are sited on platforms or man-made islands in open sea to collect data for Atmosphere 1201 and Oceans 1202 that have a cluster of sensors 1204 for atmosphere and 1207 for Oceans, these clusters are designed to be resilient and with built in redundancies 1205 and 1208, to ensure continual valid data.
- the sensors are designed to collect multiple data to give height profile 1203 for the air parameters and depth profile 1206 for the waters.
- the control stations have tools with communication systems, linked together to transmit and receive information. Each control stations monitors velocity 1220 of atmosphere and ocean water, ocean currents are measured using hydrophones 1221 and special clusters to characterize eddies 1222 separating out translational velocity from the eddy rotational components.
- Atmospheric pressure 1209 is measured using plurality of barometers 1212, temperature of atmosphere 1210 is measured using plurality of thermometers 1213, and similarly temperature of reef and ocean 1217 is measured with submerged thermometers 1218. Station also measures the humidity 1211 at heights using hygrometers 1214, and salinity 1215 at different depths using ionic concentration measurement tools 1216. Chemical analysis will measure the Gas concentrations 1219. All these parameters as a function of temperature and pressure will be collected on the surface and at various predetermined depths and heights.
- the system will have multiple clusters of thermometers, anemometers, salinity measurements, hygrometers, hydrophones and ocean current measurement sensors which are festooned and hanging via cables to collect information from different depths and transmitting via a satellite communication, mesh network 316, and cables for coordinated collection and collation for real time offline analysis using onboard system.
- the sensor nodes with automated calibration and operational modes, communicate with base stations or between the various stations in a mesh using wireless or wired network.
- the collected data is collated at the edge using computers and storage and at centers of network to allow local data validation and crosschecking then is stored in specialized distributed database.
- regular information is processed from the Control sensors and appropriately stored.
- information processing system 1300 which has the Sensor system 1301 , Data collection 1302 and Information processing 1303.
- Sensors 1301 have built in testing routines 1304 to ensure correct operation of sensor systems, and ensure self-calibration 1305 of sensor ensuring correctness of the data. Any failure of test routines may bring in use of backup systems as the design necessarily uses redundant 1306 sub-systems and by doing so it ensures resilient operation 1307 that means long term operation with minimal maintenance requirements.
- the data collected 1302 is then processed as a high frequency time series 1308, which is then processed to identify signals for specific events 1309, and this is ensured with appropriate statistical validation 1310 of the signals.
- Data sanitization is performed in the local regions with cross checking across clusters on a control station 1311 and across control stations 1312, the data is then collated across the network 1313 and indexing and labeling and data synthesis performed to provide 4D (space + time) GIS for variables of interest along with their key statistics.
- Physics based time series evolution models 1314 are extracted and the key parameters also shared to ensure correctness and validity of the signals.
- the invention will design the array of control stations that are spread across the reef and the functioning of their machines and pumps coordinated across sufficient distances.
- the system can affect large reef areas while each device distributed in the array is impacting practical size of power (1 to 5 MW) or area (1000 to 100000 sq. meters), as shown in FIG.14 as a table 1400 with columns 1401 to 1413 and rows 1414 to 1421.
- Each element or cell in the array breaks down the problem of control to its local region of influence, which interacts with the neighbouring cells that may coordinate with it to amplify or nullify the impact as desired.
- the overall data system 1500 consists of the monitoring network that provides invaluable data logging information about the state of the reef and ocean 1501 , this raw data is synthesized 1502 to extract maximal information about history and expected future behavior using statistical and Machine Learning methods, next enhanced modeling 1503 using Machine Learning and Neural Networks are used allowing prediction of expected future behavior.
- These numerical model simulations use the data collection of wind, surface temperature over large areas to refine numerical weather prediction. These simulation models are then calibrated against historical and episodic data, and refined based on the derived fits.
- the prediction algorithms 1504 are then used with designed engineered forcing perturbations deployed through the array of control stations 1505.
- Experimental data from the array is collected 1501 , and the information fed forward, including the step of synthesizing the results of predictions that are compared to the experimental observations resulting from the forced perturbations, thus completing the information feedback loop for further refining the algorithms.
- This continual loop and advanced machine learning and deep learning algorithms allow improvement in performance refine the algorithms to deliver better control and desired parameters close to target values.
- FIG.16 shows another embodiment with interconnected learning cycle, and depicts one embodiment of a system which uses advanced data science and Artificial intelligence techniques of Machine Learning and Deep Learning to provide feedback and feed forward from the measured response to a forcing of climate and then to further refine reef parameter prediction system and design next round of forcing in a continual improvement manner, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention; and depicts one embodiment of a system that forces changes in sea surface temperature over reefs and oceans using renewable energy sources that drive machines performing weather modifying work, that is coordinated over large reef area, leveraging naturally occurring currents to modify the weather, using Numerical Weather Prediction along with Artificial Intelligence techniques to refine and control long term climate direction, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention.
- Data Logging as shown in 1601 is important for the large volume of data, this data is synthesized 1602 information being fed-forward as a relationship denoted 1610, both 1601 and 1602 are used for Modeling 1603 these relationships are shown 1611 and 1620 respectively.
- the output from 1603 is fed via 1612 into control algorithms 1604, which engineers the forcing 1605 via modeled relationship 1613 and that produces a new set of data 1601 via function 1614.
- control algorithms 1604 which engineers the forcing 1605 via modeled relationship 1613 and that produces a new set of data 1601 via function 1614.
- the synthesized data or models may drive collection of additional data denoted as feedback 1615, or in case of engineered forcing 1605 driving some additional data collection 1614.
- Data synthesis 1602 also accounts for the information from modeling and controller algorithms by relationships shown as 1616 and 1625.
- the Modeling 1603 is affected by Data 1620, Synthesis 1611 , and Algorithms 1617.
- the relationships for controller algorithm allow it to learn from Data 1621 , Synthesized information 1624, Modeling 1612, and engineered forcing 1618.
- the forcing functions 1605 are chosen and affected by the data 1619, synthesized information 1625, modeling 1635, and algorithm 1645.
- the overall system has multiple feedback and feed-forward information subsystems allowing dynamic and speedy response, learning and modification of the characteristics.
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Abstract
Control of temperatures in coral reef waters is described herein by deploying machines and renewable energy stations using methods in a system of distributed array of control stations for dynamically adjusting the atmospheric, terrestrial, reef and oceanic properties. The control stations modify the humidity, currents, wind flows and heat removal rate of the surface and facilitate cooling and control of large area of coral reef surface temperatures. The energy system is installed at control stations, with multiple machines to change the local parameters of the ocean. These stations are powered using renewable energy (RE) sources including solar, ocean currents, wind, waves and batteries to store energy and provide sufficient power and energy as required and available at all hours. These systems are used to reduce the temperatures of coral reefs, and prevent the bleaching of the corals, which permanently destroys the reef ecosystem.
Description
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REDUCING TEMPERATURE OF WATER IN CORAL REEF AND ADJACENT OCEAN
Priority Claim
This application claims priority from India Non-Provisional Patent application number 202041047529, filed on 30 October 2020, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REDUCING TEMPERATURE OF WATER IN CORAL REEF AND ADJACENT OCEAN”, naming as inventor Sunit Tyagi, and is incorporated it its entirety herewith, to the extent not inconsistent with the disclosure of the instant application.
TECHNICAL FIELD:
The present invention relates to a method of controlling the reef water temperature rise driven by the accumulation of heat due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and further relates to the permanent damage to reef systems due to the bleaching of coral reef. The invention further relates to weather modification and engineering systems and machineries used to modify wide reef area properties of atmosphere, ground, oceans and reef waters. The invention further relates to design of renewable energy generation sources and systems to provide continual energy to drive local weather modification machineries. The invention further relates to the continual sensing, monitoring, simulation and modeling of atmospheric and surface properties and coordinated storage and synthesis of the information in distributed and centralized information system. The invention further relates to design, control of temporal and spatial coordination of a large array of such weather modification machineries with algorithms for learning and dynamic modification of response. The invention further relates to control of temperatures of coral reefs.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION:
Anthropogenic emissions have increased the atmospheric concentration of Green House Gases (GHG) such as Carbon Dioxide, Methane, etc. and in turn these higher GHG concentrations have changed the energy balance of Earth; with net incoming energy estimated to now be in the range of 0.8 to 1.2 W/m2, leading to higher accumulation of heat. The increased accumulation of heat on Earth’s surface is predicted to inexorably change the climate, with average temperatures already increasing, and melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice masses leading to higher sea levels. This runaway process is already underway and many claim that cataclysmic changes cannot be averted.
A large body of research and scientific thinking has gone in to address the global challenge of climate change; and much of it has focused on reducing the GHG emissions, so as to slow down the process, by encouraging renewable energy generation, higher efficiency devices as well clean carbon technologies.
In addition, since concentrations of GHGs in Earth’s atmosphere have already increased due to past emissions, that have led to irrevocable changes in energy balance, to counter these baked-in emissions, research is ongoing on technologies to decarbonize, or reducing the GHG in atmosphere by capturing and sequestering carbon and other compounds. However, these technologies for clean generation, cleaning the air and efficient consumption are all expensive - increasing the cost of energy by 25% to
50%, making their adoption slow and difficult. The challenge is to develop technologies that are not only more affordable but also do not force energy austerity on billions of global citizens who are trying to improve their lifestyles, and in doing so will necessarily increase their need for higher quantity and quality energy. It is not possible; or fair, to limit the energy use in developing economies, as energy use increases concomitantly as standards of living improve. To enforce reduced energy use or affordability on under developed sections is to deny freedom to grow.
In this application, we present technology of a completely different paradigm, adopting approaches to actively control the climate, leveraging on recent discoveries in climate science, and accounting for both local and global impact of anthropogenic collateral impact. We go beyond the paradigm of emission reduction, namely technologies focused only to address the direct root cause of GHG accumulation. Instead we suggest that for the given cost, resources required and time available, it is better to develop counter measures to negate the local & global effects, for both short term and long term timeframes, and these approaches will evolve to provide both medium and long term solution path forward. Our invention extends technologies to counter local impacts such increasing surface temperatures of oceans and land, specifically coral reefs and, reducing the acidification of oceans etc. and recommend using these in a coordinated manner to actually shape the local climate of the reef. The goal is to deliver a system that will not only counter the ill effects of climate change, but also change the paradigm so as to have a pro-active coral reef climate control for future.
Here we briefly share the relevant scientific details of measurements and models, all of which go to define our thesis and guide our action plan. The advent of industrial revolution and burgeoning world population has led to significant increase in burning of fossil fuels, and as a result the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased steadily and is now over 50% higher than that of the pre-industrial age. Higher GHG concentration in the atmosphere gives higher back radiation from the green house gas that act like a blanket for the atmosphere this gives higher energy imbalance, and accumulation of heat on Earth’s surface. With the higher GHG concentration energy imbalance on planet surface has steadily increased and the current estimates range from 0.8 W/m2 to 1 .2 W/m2. The higher energy imbalance has led to increasing surface temperature of the Earth over the past century with the surface temperature increase is clear in the recent decades emerging from the decadal natural variations, and rising roughly 0.7 degrees Centigrade in last 50 years, for an average rise of 0.14 degrees/decade.
Coral reefs are formed by simple invertebrates that grow their exoskeleton by depositing layers of calcium carbonate, these living animals are brightly colored due to colonies of algae symbionts that live with the corals and photosynthesize to provide the required food and energy for the colony. Coral reefs are extremely important ecosystems covering roughly 300,000 square km (3x1011 sq. m), which is only roughly 1% of the world oceans area, yet they are home for nearly 25% of marine fish species and are an important source of seafood for global community, besides providing many other economical benefits such as hospitality and other job creation through tourism.
Reefs have shallow waters (ranging between 1 to 20 meters) and their temperatures are determined by the thermal balance between solar heating, and removal of energy via latent heat of evaporation that is amplified by surface winds,
along with lateral convection current and wave driven transfer of water between the ocean and the reef. With the increased concentration of GHG in atmosphere, extra atmospheric heat to the tune of 1 W/sq-m is being added to these shallow waters, in addition due to more frequent occurrence of local marine heat wave - where pockets of hotter water with still air conditions sustain for prolonged periods, these weather patterns have started to become more frequent due to climate change and warm these waters much more than in the past. The increased temperatures exerts extra thermal stress on the corals and that disrupts the symbiotic relationship between the corals and their algal symbionts, due to the stress these alga are expelled by the corals leading to bleaching of the corals, in turn the corals are unable to get food and repeated such stress can cause the reef colony to eventually die off.
The shallow reef and shoal waters warm quickly during day and typically cool down with inrush of cooler water from oceans during high tide. Detailed thermal model of the reefs accounting for hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and local meteorology including theoretical modeling, simulations and collection of experimental data, show the partitioning of energy between air, water and the ground or substrate. The incoming radiation from sun and due to Green House Gases (GHG) are balanced with losses related to infrared radiation from the surface, thermal transfer via convection from water to air, evaporation of water, lateral advection, convection into the underlying water and finally conduction to the bottom of reef. The first term to consider is the convection of sensible heat from water surface into the overlaying air. This is dependent on the density and heat capacity of the air, the nature of boundary layer characteristics i.e. laminar or turbulent flow and clearly the difference in the temperature of water surface and the air.
Thus the bulk sensible heat transfer is given by equation 1 below,
HBT (W/m2) = Rho * CP * Ch * U * (Tss - Ta) (1 )
Here Tss is the Temperature of Sea Surface in Kelvin,
Ta is the Temperature of of overlaying air in Kelvin, U is the wind speed on surface in m/s,
CP is Specific Heat of Air is taken as 1 .005 in kJ/kg-K
The coefficient Ch represents the characteristics of sensible heat transfer across the boundary layer taken to be roughly 0.001 .
Similarly the transfer of bulk heat due evaporation of water is given by equation 2, Latent_EBT (W/m2) = Lambda * Ce *U *(Rhoss - Rho_H2G) (2)
Here Lambda is the latent heat of Vaporization taken as 2458 kJ/kg
The coefficient Ce represents the characteristics of evaporative heat transfer across the boundary layer taken to be roughly 0.00091 .
Rhoss is the saturated vapor density of water at temperature Tss, given based on the Saturated Partial pressure Pss = 0.6104* exp(17.625*T)/(T+ 243.04) (3) while Rho_H20 is the steady state vapor density of water at the surface.
The net radiation RNET is given by equation 4 having terms related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radition due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions
RNET = (1 - Alpha Ssoiar + Epsilon*LAtm - Epsilon* Sigma* Tss4 (4)
Here Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day
Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, for that particular value the term (1 - Alpha) means 94% of incident radiation is absorbed. l_Atm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket.
Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97
Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O'8 (W/m2-K4)
If we take G as energy stored or available for heating of water and the underlying substrate, the balance of energy requires that
G = RNet — HBT — Latent_EBT (5)
Where G = Storage S + Divergence F (6)
Where Divergence F is the heat advected by currents or flowing water taking energy away from the heating area either moving it horizontally or vertically.
The storage term S corresponds to heating the water giving an increase in temperature.
S = DML * Rhosw * Csw* Delta T (7)
DML is the depth of the mixed layer, equal to the depth of water or reefs but is limited to lesser than 100 m in open ocean due to strong stratification of water due to changes in density, salinity and temperature with depth.
Rhosw the density of sea water is taken to be 1020 kg/m3
While Csw is specific heat of sea water and taken to be 3900 J/kg-K
Equation 7 i.e. S = DML * Rhosw * Csw* Delta_T is rearranged to calculate temperature rise Delta_T as
Delta T = S/(DML * Rhosw* Csw) (8)
Combining equations 1 through 8 the temperature rise in water Delta_T is calculated by knowing the incident solar radiation, temperature of air Ta, local relative humidity, wind speed U, l_Atm the backradiation from atmosphere, water depth D L etc.
For the analysis shared here some of these numbers are assumed as follows l_Atm is taken to be 334 W/m2 consistent with reported in the literature, this radiation corresponds to the cloud emissions at temperature of 277 K, and is related to the Green House Gas (GHG) effect. The local relative humidity or Rho_H20 is taken to be fixed at 0.02 here but can be changed as estimated from other models or measurements. The following parameters are considered for various scenarios to elucidate their significance and impact.
Wind Speedier wind blowing across the surface of reef waters in meter/second (m/s), The Maximum intensity of radiation during the day in Watts per square-meter (W/sqm), The Depth of the reef waters in meters (m), The range of water height due to tides and marked Tide Amplitude in meters (m), The Tide Phase in hours (hr) is the time difference between high tide and peak sunlight, Deep Ocean Temperature in Centigrade (°C) is the temperature in the surrounding open ocean and is the temperature of water coming in with the tide, Cooling in (W/sq-m) is the uniform cooling by an external heat pump run continuously, finally the Current is the flow of water through the reef in (m/s).
An example case chosen was a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds, with Wind Speed set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is assumed to be only 1.5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is
taken as 28 °C, no external Cooling is done here and there is no steady reef current present. The results show that starting at a reasonable temperature of 28 °C, over the course of next hundred hours the temperature increases during each day accumulating heat during the daytime, but cooling down at night and due to the influx of cold ocean water with incoming tide or flood tide, note that the during ebb tide the temperature of the water changes consistent with heat being removed or added to the water. The SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide. Some amount of heat is removed from surface either as Latent heat of Evaporation or as Sensible Heat transferred to the Air above the surface. These components are negligible due to near zero wind speed, making it difficult to either remove the saturated water vapor from the surface or the heat flux these components increase with the SST. The heat accumulated into the water body then matches the Net Radiation. The relationship in time of tide and incoming radiation impacts this temporal alignment between the tide and radiation, and affects how quickly the water heats up and shows as expected that the shallower water heats up much faster for a given net input of heat. The temperature rise depends on the amount of sunshine accounting for clouds, the average and minimum water depth, wind speed, and the average surface temperature of ocean water.
During a marine heat wave near a reef, with conditions of little or no wind, the surface seawater waters warms up even in the surrounding ocean going up to 30°C and above. If there are low current flows and no wind, there will be little wind driven mixing of water and that leads to stratification of the still water and giving sustained and continual increase of SST. The ocean water heats up more than normal and so the average reef water temperature also increases and this leads to faster and higher increase in temperature of the reef water in the daily cycles, and that exacerbates the bleaching of the corals when temperature in reefs rises well above 30°C reaching over 34°C for sustained times.
Another problem due to the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the increasing acidity of the seawater and that leads to higher dissolution of the calcium carbonate, thus weakening the exoskeleton and slowing down the growth of the reef structures. So that the corals will take longer to grow and revive the reefs if colonies die off due to bleaching driven by excessive temperatures.
Finally, higher average temperatures across the globe will cause the sea level to rise and thus flood the coral structures deeper which keeps the corals flooded with higher depths. While this may help with temperature overshoot but it also means lesser light available for photosynthesis, which along with acidity further weakens the growth of the colony and reef structure.
We present in this invention, a set of systems driven by renewable energy sources that are either engineered to reduce the heat accumulating in the reef waters or remove the extra heat from the shallow area when temperatures exceed a threshold. This will ensure that the water of reefs does not heat up significantly and by controlling the temperature overshoot to acceptable levels episodes of coral bleaching can be avoided to ensure healthy coral colonies that continue to build the reefs. The system is also to be engineered to reduce the acidity of the seawater by active neutralization and aiding in growth of the reef structure with active electrolysis. Finally, with the
unavoidable rise in sea level due to GHG, were the coral reefs to survive to that time, the extra water depths actually make the thermal and acidity stress less extreme, yet the lesser light reaching the corals will impact further growth.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Increasing Green House Gases concentration in atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions is leading to an additional energy accumulation of roughly 0.6 to 1 W/m2, and today this is causing an increase in global temperatures by roughly 0.17 °C per decade. The common suggested approach to address this trend, and to avert worst-case cataclysmic impact, has been to reduce the emissions by not using fossil fuels and using renewable energy instead. There are several issues with this approach firstly the adoption of renewable energy is still slow and thus today it provides only a minor fraction of the total generation sources. The low adoption is mainly due to their high cost, also since the renewable sources are affected by incoming natural sources, the variability in generation is very high and less predictable, this impacts adoption and this concern is being addressed by using energy storage such as batteries but that adds to the expense. Secondly another concern with adopting only the strategy of reducing fossil fuel consumption is that the accumulated amount of GHG already emitted and in the atmosphere today, this will continue heating the planet and increasing the temperatures, so even stopping the emissions today will not reverse the trends underway. The technologies for carbon capture from atmosphere are under development but are expensive today costing upwards of 1000 US dollars for removal of every ton of CO2, requiring investment equaling annual global GDP so as to reduce the GHG concentrations down to acceptable levels, and this will necessarily take a long time to counteract the ongoing emission and then remove the decades of accumulated gases from the atmosphere. So with the currently adopted approaches the planet warming trends cannot be reversed. One very important impact of the GHG driven global warming and climate change is the increasing frequency of occurrence of coral reef bleaching episodes. The bleaching causes coral colonies dying off and collapse of wide swathes of global reefs and that loss of ecosystem can wipe out many species of marine life, significantly impact food supplies world over, and close down many economies dependent on tourism.
The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantages are provided by this invention, the invention consists of three main constituent groups of apparatus and methods. Firstly, machineries and apparatus are needed that can do work to physically cool the reef waters, and do so with various aspects as described below herein. Secondly, a set of apparatus and sensors are needed to ensure that measurements are collected and used to determine the correct functioning of the machineries and methods, with various aspects of data collection, storage and information processing to ensure robust and resilient performance. Finally, a method to control the system is needed with controllable forcing function and requisite feedback to provide correction as required to reach a desired goal.
In one aspect the inventions consists of apparatus for cooling the waters of the coral reefs, where renewable energy is applied to work to counteract the impact of global warming on the temperatures, humidity, wind and ocean currents impacting the reef area. This apparatus consists of building machineries to reduce the water
temperatures and thus avoid bleaching of corals due to thermal stress, by pumping the cooler ocean waters into the reef to keep the temperature below damaging limits.
In another aspect, the apparatus to avoid coral bleaching consists of building machineries to move heat away from the surface waters of the reef, by using heat pumps for pushing the heat accumulating in the shallow reef waters out to deeper ocean, where the extra energy impacts the temperature only slightly. In another aspect, the machines used to cool the reef water would to be use closed cycle heat pumps that move a thermic fluid to carry the heat; the thermic process transports higher heat capacity so a smaller volume has to be pumped around. Heat pumps are preferred because of their energy efficiency to move the heat from the surface to deeper ocean to counter the heating of coral reef surface.
In another aspect, the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures by reducing the incoming radiation heating up the shallow waters by installing floating mirrors that shade the reef waters and reflect off a significant fraction of incident sunlight.
In another aspect, the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperature by removing heat via radiation of extra energy from the water surface into the space through infrared radiators operating in the atmospheric optical window for the electro-magnetic radiation in the long wavelength infrared spectral regime where wavelengths are in the range of 8 microns to 13 microns.
In another aspect, the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures from the solar radiation by occluding, absorbing and reflecting off sunlight by extra water vapor and low clouds that are artificially generated by water vapor mist created by machines such as misters and humidifiers that are run using renewable energy. These machines create extra humidity and mist droplets in addition to naturally occurring processes such that vapors rise with warm air in early day and noon to increase the humidity & water vapor concentration in the air column and create clouds at low altitude, these clouds in turn reflect off some sunlight in late afternoon to reduce the overall radiation flux incident on the reef waters during a day. This reduces the overall energy available in a day to heat the waters and thus reduce the peak water temperatures thereby minimizing chances of coral bleaching.
In another aspect, the apparatus consists of machines to reduce the reef water temperatures by using renewable energy to generate wind across surface of the reef, for a given temperature the evaporation from reef water depends on the relative humidity of air just above the water, so as stronger wind blows over the surface of the water and that reduces the effective humidity in the air just above the water and thus increases the evaporation from water. The evaporation process takes the latent heat of evaporation from the reef waters and effectively removes heat from the waters to cool down and reduce the temperatures of the water, enhancing evaporation with a wind across surface can then be used to avoid coral bleaching.
In another aspect, the shallow waters of the reef are kept cooler by ensuring sufficient depth of water is maintained and this is done by artificially increasing the height of the fringing reef and enclose deeper waters with the reef boundary acting like a retaining wall for the retreating tidal water. In another aspect, renewable energy powered pump can be used to flow in tidal water to cool down the reef waters and limit minimum depth during low tide.
In further aspect the invention mainly uses renewable energy sources to drive machines, pumps and heat pumps. Electricity is generated using wind turbines, solar panels and/or ocean current turbines. The wind turbines and solar power systems are built on floating pontoons structures, rigs or manmade islands, by combining the counteracting mechanical requirements of solar and wind structures for overall balance and cost optimization.
In another aspect to measure the impact of work being done, the invention uses a local network of sensor arrays to measure and collect data over large reef area, the data is of properties such as reef water temperature, surface relative humidity, wind speeds, ambient temperature, water salinity, current flow directions. The sensor nodes with automated calibration and operational modes, communicate with base stations or between the various stations in a mesh using wireless or wired network. The collected data is collated at the edge and at centers of network to allow local data validation and crosschecking then stored in specialized distributed database. Regular data sanitization is performed in the local regions with indexing and labeling and data synthesis performed to provide four dimensions (space + time) 4D- GIS for variables of interest along with their key statistics.
In a further aspect, the invention will design the array of control stations that are spread across the reef and the functioning of their machines and pumps coordinated across long distances. By using an array of large number of pumps or devices the system can affect large areas while each individual device distributed in the array is handling reasonable size of energy or area. Each element in the array breaks down the problem of control to its local region of influence, however the overall and bigger impact is coordinated by control of each station in the array to modify the ensemble as a whole. Similarly the long-term trend is impacted and controlled by sequence of designed temporal perturbations.
In yet another aspect, the invention designs the placement of the machines in the array in the reef, so as to be most efficacious and this is done by using gridding patterns, densities and algorithms as developed in numerical computing.
In a further aspect, numerical hydrological modeling simulations use the data of wind and surface temperatures collected over large areas and that data is used to refine numerical prediction. The simulation models are calibrated against historical and episodic data, and refined based on the derived fits. The prediction algorithms are then used with designed controlled perturbations deployed through the array of control stations. The results of predictions are then compared to the experimental observations that result from the forced perturbations, thus completing the information and control feedback loop for further refining the algorithms. The dynamic algorithms will evolve using distributed machine learning and deep learning methods to the refine the predictive capabilities and control. These predictive algorithms are then used to drive larger area and longer term coordinated perturbations that are engineered to guide the weather and climate to a desired state.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The subject matter that is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the
following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
FIG. 1 Daily Variation of reef temperature with solar heating
Temperature variation of reef waters with solar heating during day
FIG. 2.A Daily variation of reef temperature with solar heating and uniform cooling,
FIG. 2.B Daily variation of reef temperature with solar heating and non-uniform cooling, aligned to solar energy.
FIG. 2.C Daily variation of reef temperature with solar heating and non-uniform cooling, aligned to tides.
FIG. 3 Impact of Reef Depth on maximum temperature with diurnal heating
FIG. 4.A depicts one embodiment of a control station system using a renewable energy sources to generate electricity energy and using that energy to drive machineries and do work in a plurality of ways to impact a plurality of reef weather parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. This is called a Renewable Energy powered Control Station.
Fig. 4.B Renewable Energy powered Control Station
FIG. 4.B depicts one embodiment of a control station system using a renewable energy sources to generate thermo mechanical energy and using that energy to drive machineries and do work in a plurality of ways to impact a plurality of reef weather parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig.5 RE Control Stations: Combination of Solar, Wind, Ocean and Waves
FIG. 5 depicts one embodiment of a system a renewable energy control station for generating energy for doing work using renewable sources such as combination of solar, wind, ocean currents and waves, and performing computing and information processing and communicating the data in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 6. Engineered Interaction and Controlled Perturbation
FIG. 6 depicts one embodiment of a system for an engineered interaction between reef waters, open ocean and atmosphere comprising a plurality of machines to modify a plurality of parameters such as pressure, temperature, humidity, concentrations and currents and depth and height profiles of these parameters, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 7 Cooling Coral Reef by pumping ocean water
FIG. 7 depicts one embodiment of a system for cooling the surface of the ocean and atmosphere by using a plurality of pumps to bring cold ocean water to the reef surface or moving reef water by inducing or modifying currents at different positions, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 8.A Design of Heat pump to move heat from Reef water into the Ocean
Fig. 8.B Heat pump to cool the Coral Reef water
FIG. 8 depicts one embodiment of a system design of Heat pump to move heat from Reef water into the Ocean and cooling the surface of reef and atmosphere by using plurality of heat pumps using a closed loop design of thermic fluid and exchangers to move heat from the surface to cooler depths, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 9 Cooling of Coral Reef waters with Mirrors
FIG. 9 depicts one embodiment of a system design of mirrors to cool and move heat from Reef water by radiating back into the open atmosphere and cooling the surface of reef.
Fig. 10 Radiative Cooling of Coral Reef waters
FIG. 10 depicts one embodiment of a system design of infrared radiators to move heat from Reef water by radiating back into the open atmosphere and cooling the surface of reef.
Fig. 11 Cooling of Coral Reef waters with low lying clouds generated with misters
Fig.11 embodiment to cool by creating low clouds that occlude sunlight that uses misters and bubblers to increase the relative humidity of the air next to the surface and then covect this water upwards, so as to induce higher water absorption of sunlight and low lying clouds thus reduce the solar energy reaching the reef waters
Fig. 12 Infrastructure to ensure depth of reef waters is above a critical threshold.
Fig. 12 shows an embodiment that recognizes the fact that shallower waters are the cause of high temperatures in the reef and therefore averts this rise in temperature by ensuring that the water depth is kept high either by pumping in waters or artificially building barriers ensuring sufficient water remains even for low tide.
Fig. 13 Sensor Network: Measure, collect, validate and collate data FIG. 13 depicts one embodiment of a system for collecting data using a system for collecting data using a plurality of types of multiple sensors to measure a plurality of parameters for atmosphere and ocean at different depths and positions, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention; Distributed database with Edge computation for cross-check and collating and validation, depicts one embodiment of a system where the data from plurality of sensors is used to cross check, signal process, re-compute and statistically validate the incoming measurements and information processing is done at the station to extract relevant structure and summarize the data which is stored in a distributed manner to ensure correctness, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 14 Array Ensemble Forcing Designed Array for ensemble driven modification FIG. 14 depicts one embodiment of a system for designing an array of control stations positioned at different locations which then act in a coordinated to manner the placement of the stations in the array is determined to maximize the efficacy of coordinated action to collect data and force changes in climate ensure larger area or duration perturbation, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 15 Complete learning cycle
FIG. 15 depicts one embodiment of a system for control of reef parameter where the data from sensor network is logged with wide area coverage and finer granularity is used to calibrate the modeling and better predict the features of observed weather pattern, and modify the controller algorithms to better force changed in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
Fig. 16 Interconnected learning cycle
FIG. 16 depicts one embodiment of a system which uses advanced data science and Artificial intelligence techniques of Machine Learning and Deep Learning to provide feedback and feed forward from the measured response to a forcing of climate and then to further refine reef parameter prediction system and design next round of forcing in a continual improvement manner, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
and depicts one embodiment of a system that forces changes in sea surface temperature over reefs and oceans using renewable energy sources that drive machines performing weather modifying work, that is coordinated over large reef area, leveraging naturally occurring currents to modify the weather, using Numerical Weather Prediction along with Artificial Intelligence techniques to refine and control long term climate direction, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
As used herein, the terms “solar photovoltaic”, "PV system” “PV modules” and “solar cells” are used interchangeably, and unless otherwise specified include any solar cells, cables, DC-DC convertors or inverters along with electronics controllers, housing, frames, structures, etc., having one or more electricity generating components for converting energy from sunlight to electricity suitably converted and generated.
As used herein, seawater flows 'across the heat exchanger’ and coolant flows “through the heat exchanger”. Flowing across the heat exchanger refers to water passing across the outside of the conductive tubing forming the one or more water flow paths around the exchanger tubing mesh, while flowing through the heat exchanger refers to the coolant (e.g. liquid) passing through the heat exchangers one or more coolant flow paths formed by the conductive tubing. One example of liquid coolant employed in a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger is water. However, the concepts disclosed herein are readily adapted to use with other types of liquid coolant. For example, one or more of the liquid coolants may comprise a brine, a fluorocarbon liquid, a liquid metal, or other similar coolant, or refrigerant, while still maintaining the advantages and unique features of the present invention.
Reference is made below to the drawings, which are not drawn to scale for reasons of understanding, wherein the same reference numbers used throughout different figures designate the same or similar components.
FIG. 1 depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef. The diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 100A and 100B. Panel 100A shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis. The case shown here is for a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds. Here Wind Speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is only 1 .5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, no external Cooling is done here and there is no steady reef current present.
The results show that starting at a reasonable temperature of 28 °C, over the course of next 30 hours the temperature increases each day accumulating heat during the daytime, but cooling down at night and due to the influx of cold ocean water with incoming tide or flood tide, note that the during ebb tide the temperature of the water changes consistent with heat being removed or added to the water.
In panel 100A shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to nearly 850 W/sq-m, while the incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the infrared radiation radiating upwards reduces the net flux significantly and also leads to negative flux during the night time. The SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide. Panel 100A shows the component of heat removed from surface either as Latent heat of Evaporation and Sensible Heat transferred to the Air above the surface. These components are negligible in this model due to near zero wind speed, making it difficult to either remove the saturated water vapor from the surface or the heat flux, yet it can be seen that these components increase with the SST. The accumulated heat into the water body matches the Net Radiation as expected.
The net radiation RNET is related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radiation due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions as summarized earlier in Equation 4, where Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day, Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, with 94% of incident radiation is absorbed. LAtm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket. Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97, and Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O'8 (W/m2-K4). Note that the radiation to open nigh sky is roughly - 100 W/sq-m, as is seen during non-solar hours. Panel 100B again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
The panel 100A and 100 B show different multiple regions marked as 101 through 117. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 101 and 110 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 100A and 100B respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 100B as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen. Phases 102 and 111 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning prior to the sunrise. The sunrise is seen with non-zero radiation in phases 103 and 112 where the radiation rises but temperature changes little as the tide is still is coming in with cooler waters, but when the tides starts going out reducing the depth of water the temperature increases. The peak temperature is seen in the phase 104 and 113, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down. Phase 105 and 114, corresponds to steep reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide. Phase 106 and 115 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature. With next coming in of tide in Phase 107 and 116, further cool down due to ocean water finally brings the reef temperature close to the open ocean waters as seen in phase 108 and 117, that line up with phases 102 and 111 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
Table 1 below summarizes the different time intervals marked as 101 through 117 in Fig. 1 highlighting the changing balance of energy and water, with changes in temperature due to the heat or cooler ocean water coming in giving changes in SST.
Table 1. Observations from Figure 1 panels 100A and 100B.
The relationship in time of tide and incoming radiation can be seen in Fig. 1 , where the peak in radiation does not match with either the deepest or the shallowest water depths. Therefore the phase relationship between tide and radiation affects how quickly the water heats up, as expected shallower water heats up much faster for a given net input of heat.
The nature of SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST. The balance changes over time and the different conditions were shown in Fig.1 . The peak temperature seen is 31.7 °C that is an increase of 3.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C.
One aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.A, where the underlying reef system whose data shown in Fig. 1 is modified with the present invention to force external cooling uniformly throughout the day. The uniform cooling of the system by100 W/sq-m leads to overall lower temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for all the time periods. Here the various time periods or phases are numbered 201 through 217 similar to the phases 101 through 117 seen in Fig. 1.
FIG. 2.A depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef. The diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200A and 200B. Panel 200A shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis. There are heat pump machineries, which provide external cooling with uniform heat removal an example is shown here fori 00 W/sq-m throughout the day, the value can range from 10 W to 500 W/sq-m depending on the requirements of the system.
The case shown here is for a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds. Here same as Fig. 1 the wind Speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is only 1 .5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood
tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, here and there is no steady reef current present.
The results show that starting at a reasonable temperature of 28 °C, over the course of next 24 hours the temperature increases each day accumulating heat during the daytime, but cooling down at night and due to the influx of cold ocean water with incoming tide or flood tide, note that the during ebb tide the temperature of the water changes consistent with heat being removed or added to the water.
In panel 200A shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 750 W/sq-m, while the incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes additional 100 W/sq-m from the reef and this reduces the net flux significantly and also leads to negative flux during the night time. The SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide. The accumulated heat into the water body matches the Net Radiation and heat removed by heat pump machinery as expected. The net radiation RNET is related to incident solar radiation with atmospheric radiation due to GHG subtracting the upward infrared emissions as summarized earlier in Equation 4, where Ssoiar is the incident solar radiation that varies through the day, Alpha is albedo of the water surface and is taken to be 0.06, with 94% of incident radiation is absorbed. l_Atm is the infrared radiation radiated downward by the atmospheric layer that defines the greenhouse effect related thermal blanket. Epsilon is the Emissivity of water taken as 0.97, and Sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is 5.67x1 O'8 (W/m2-K4). Panel 200B again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
The panel 200A and 200 B show different multiple regions marked as 201 through 217. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 201 and 210 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200A and 200B respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200B as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen. Phases 202 and 211 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning prior to the sunrise. The sunrise is seen with non-zero radiation in phases 203 and 212 where the radiation rises but temperature changes little as the tide is still is coming in with cooler waters, but when the tides starts going out reducing the depth of water the temperature increases. The peak temperature is seen in the phase 204 and 213, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down. Phase 205 and 214, corresponds to steep reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide. Phase 206 and 215 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature. With next coming in of tide in Phase 207 and 216, further cool down due to ocean water finally brings the reef temperature close to the open ocean waters as seen in phase 208 and 217, that line up with phases 202 and 211 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
As in the Fig. 1 , the nature of SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST. The balance changes over time and the different conditions were shown in Fig.2. The peak temperature seen is 30.7 °C that is an increase of only 2.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C. Note that the uniform cooling leads to the lowest temperature being 27.5 °C that is lower than the open ocean temperature. The energy used to get this temperature profile by uniform cooling is 100 W x 24hours = 2400 W- hours.
Table 2 below summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
Table 2. Observations from Figure 2.A panels 200A and 200B.
Another aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.B, where the underlying reef system whose data was shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.A it is further modified with the present invention to force external cooling done non-uniformly during the day. The non-uniform cooling of the system cools selectively during parts of the day by using renewable energy to do work and remove heat with power ranging between 10 W/sq-m and 500 W/sq-m, and for example done here with peak power of 300 W/sq-m and leads to overall lower peak temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for selected time periods. Here the various time periods or phases are numbered 220 through 237.
FIG. 2.B depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef with non-uniform cooling or heat removal. The diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200C and 200D. Panel 200C shows the Temperature (in
°C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis. There is external cooling here with non-uniform heat removal up to maximum of 300 W/sq-m, the cooling system is run intermittently shown here not aligned to solar cycle but roughly aligned to flood tide, when the tidal height increases and gives faster cooling of the shallower water column, leading to lower temperatures. The case shown here is the same as in Fig. 1 for a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds. Here wind speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is only 1.5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, here and there is no steady reef current present.
The results show that starting at a reasonable temperature of 28 °C, over the course of next 24 hours the temperature increases each day accumulating heat during the daytime, but cooling down at night and due to the influx of cold ocean water with incoming tide or flood tide, and additional cooling by machineries. Note that during ebb tide the temperature of the water changes consistent with heat being removed or added to the water.
In panel 200C shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 800 W/sq-m, which is the slightly lower than the case without any cooling as in Fig.1 , mainly because the cooling has stopped by that time. The incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes up to additional 300 W/sq-m from the reef during the time when tide is coming in and this reduces the net heat flux significantly and also leads to some negative flux during the night time. The SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide. Panel 200D again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line with values on the right axis given in meters.
The panel 200C and 200 D show different multiple regions marked as 220 through 217. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 220 and 230 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200C and 200D respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200D as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen. Phases 221 and 231 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning along with sunrise and in this particular case has the external cooling turned ON with removal of heat at magnitude of 300W/sq-m. The peak sunshine is seen in phases 222 and 232 where the radiation rises and the temperature rises quickly as the tide starts going out reducing the depth of water. The peak temperature is seen in the phase 223 and 233, where the reduction of radiation coincides with incoming water from the ocean that is cooler and starts to cool the reef down, along with external cooling with power of 300 W/sq-m. Phase 224 and 234, corresponds to evening after sunset and show steeper
reduction in the temperature due to cooler ocean water coming in with the tide along with external cooling with power of 300 W/sq-m. Phase 225 and 235 show slowing down of cooling as the tidal peak is reached and water recede with cooling due to radiation to open night sky gives slow reduction in temperature. With next coming in of tide in Phase
226 and 236, temperature further cools down due to ocean water and external cooling of water makes the reef temperature cooler than open ocean waters. As seen in phase
227 and 237, that line up with phases 221 and 231 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
Table 3 below summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
Table 3. Observations from Figure 2.B panels 200C and 200D.
Again the nature of SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST. The balance changes over time and the different conditions were shown in Fig.2. The peak temperature seen is 30.7 °C that is an increase of only 2.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C. Note that the non-uniform cooling leads to the lowest temperature being 27.3 °C that is lower than the open ocean temperature. For the same peak temperature the energy used in non-uniform cooling is calculated as 300 Watts for 12 Hours = 3600 Wh. Although this work done is more than the calculated earlier for uniform cooling case, that is because the idea of cooling aligned to incoming tide gives excessive cooling even when temperatures are low during nights and this wasted effort can be avoided. Also the power used during cooler times can be reduced depending on temperature and radiation measurements with feedback. Thus the total energy used for
cooling can be lesser when compared to the uniform cooling case, as the cooling can be done only to reduce the temperature peak with optimal timing.
Another aspect of the present invention is shown in Fig, 2.C, where the underlying reef system whose data was shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.A it is further modified with the present invention to force external cooling done non-uniformly during the day to minimize the temperature rise with least amount of energy expended to cool down the high temperature. The non-uniform cooling of the system cools selectively during parts of the day by using renewable energy to do work and remove heat with power ranging between 10 W/sq-m and 500 W/sq-m, and for example done here with peak power of 200 W/sq-m and leads to overall lower peak temperature compared to those in Fig. 1 for selected time periods. Here the various time periods or phases are numbered 240 through 257.
FIG. 2.C depicts the daily variation profiles of parameters of a shallow water reef with non-uniform cooling or heat removal. The diurnal profiles for 24 hours of the day are shown in the two panels, 200E and 200F. Panel 200E shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line and value is shown on the left vertical axis, while the Net Radiation incident (in W/square-meters) is shown as dashed line with values on the right axis. There is external cooling here with non-uniform heat removal up to maximum of 200 W/sq-m, the cooling system is run intermittently shown here not aligned to solar cycle but aligned to ebb tide, when the tidal height decreases and gives faster cooling of the shallower water column, leading to lower temperatures. The case shown here is the same as in Fig. 1 for a series of bright sunny days with no wind and no clouds. Here wind speed is set to be nearly zero at 0.01 m/s, the maximum insolation near noon is of 1000 W/sq-m as can be expected on clear cloud free day, the depth of reef waters is only 1.5 meters, typical for shallow reef waters, while the difference in water depth between high and low tides is 1 meters and the flood tide is at its mid point at hour 0 (zero) of the simulations, while the deep ocean temperature is taken as 28 °C, here and there is no steady reef current present.
The results show that starting at a temperature of 27.5 °C, that is lower compared to surrounding ocean, over the course of next 24 hours the temperature increases each day accumulating heat during the daytime, but cooling down at night and due to the influx of cold ocean water with incoming tide or flood tide, and additional cooling by machineries during ebb tide. Note that during ebb tide the temperature of the water changes consistent with heat being removed or added to the water.
In panel 200E shows the trend for SST, and the Net radiation during the day peaking around noon to 700 W/sq-m, which is the lower than the case without any cooling as in Fig.1 , mainly because of the external cooling is active during the ebb tide and solar noon. The incident radiation is 1000 W/sq-m the radiating outwards of infrared radiation also the heat pump removes up to additional 200 W/sq-m from the reef during the time when tide is going out and this reduces the net heat flux significantly and also leads to some negative flux during the night time. The SST increases when the Net radiation accumulates as heat during the day and then decreases due to the nighttime radiation and most significantly due to in rush of cold tidal water during flood tide.
The net radiation RNET is as described earlier with absorption and back radiation. Panel 200F again shows the Temperature (in °C) curves is solid line with its value shown on the left vertical axis, while the depth of water is shown as dashed grey line
with values on the right axis given in meters.
The panel 200E and 200 F show different multiple regions marked as 240 through 247. These time periods are referenced to specific time-dependent events; either given by nature of tide or the radiation, and are partitioned similarly and repeated on both the panels, for instance periods 240 and 250 are one and the same time duration but marked uniquely as they are in panels 200E and 200F respectively, both define the same time duration when the tide is ebbing during the night, as seen on 200F as a reduction in the depth of water with no radiation seen, and in this particular case has the external cooling turned ON with removal of heat at magnitude of 200W/sq-m. Phases 241 and 251 correspond to the time period where the incoming tide during early morning before sunrise. The sunshine is seen in phases 242 and 252 where the radiation rises and the temperature rises slowly and the depth of water is nearly constant. The temperature rise is seen in the phase 243 and 253, where the increase in radiation coincides with outgoing water from the ocean but this is rise is slowed external cooling with power of 200 W/sq-m. Phase 244 and 254, corresponds to late afternoon with incoming cooler ocean water from tide which brings the temperature quickly down. The fall in temperature continues in Phase 245 and 255 after sunset where cooling is mainly due to radiation to open sky. The temperature then shows steeper reduction in Phase 246 and 256 due to external cooling with power of 200 W/sq-m, while water recedes in ebb tide. With next coming in of tide in, temperature further cools down below that of the open ocean water due to external cooling of water, as seen in phase 247 and 257, that line up with phases 241 and 251 to begin the next diurnal cycle.
Again the nature of SST curve depends on the incoming net heat, the depth of water at that time and also when the rising flood tide brings the water from ocean into the reef where the mixing with incoming water temperature determines the resultant SST. The balance changes over time and the different conditions were shown in Fig.2.C. The peak temperature seen is 30.7 °C that is an increase of only 2.7 °C over the open ocean temperature of 28 °C. Note that the non-uniform cooling leads to the lowest temperature being 27.5 °C that is lower than the open ocean temperature. The energy used by non-uniform cooling can be lesser when compared to the uniform cooling case, as the cooling can be done only to reduce the temperature peak with optimal timing. Here the energy used is 200 Watts x 12 Hours = 2400 Wh.
Although this work done is nearly the same as the value calculated earlier for uniform cooling case, because here also cooling was aligned to tide in this case to ebbing or outgoing tide. This again gives excessive cooling even when temperatures are low during nights and this wasted cooling effort can be avoided. Also the power used during cooler night times can be reduced depending on temperature and radiation measurements with feedback to throttle the power used then. Thus the total energy used for cooling can be reduced with appropriate control system where the cooling can be done only to reduce the temperature peak with optimal timing.
Table 4 below summarizes the observations for the various time periods, noting the phase names that are equivalent in the two panels, the direction of tidal water flow, whether solar heat is present or not (day or night), the trends for Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and any other relevant remarks.
Table 4. Observations from Figure 2.C panels 200E and 200F.
Fig. 3 shows the variation of the maximum Sea Surface Temperature as a function of the depth of the reef waters, with different curves with wind speed as the running parameter. The average reef depth value is varied from 1.5 meter to a maximum of 5 meter, while the wind speed is varied from 0 to 4 m/s for the different curves. Higher depth means that the volume of water to be heated is higher, thus as expected temperature rises lesser due to the solar heating when water is deeper. For example when wind speed in zero and the depth is only 1.5 meters, the maximum temperature is 30.2 °C, following the solid curve shown for the same radiation, wind and tidal conditions the maximum temperature is only 29.3 °C when the depth is 5 meters. Fig. 3 also shows multiple curves as different kind of lines, which are calculated for different wind speeds varied between 0 to 4 m/s. For a given depth of water, higher wind speed means increased evaporation of water from the surface and that increases the removal of latent heat of evaporation, effectively reducing the sensible heat, giving lesser rise of reef water temperature. The maximum temperature for reef depth of 1 .5 m reduces from 30.2 °C down to 29.65 °C when wind increases from 0 m/s to 4 m/s, while for a reef depth of 5 m the temperature reduces from 29.3 °C to 28.9 °C. As expected the rise in temperature over the surrounding ocean waters is therefore strongly affected by the average depth of the reef-waters and the wind speed near the water surface.
The present invention minimizes overheating of reef water by solar radiation so as to avoid coral bleaching; and uses a thermo-hydro-dynamic modeling of reef to optimize the system and reduce the required work to remove heat from shallower areas and maintain safe peak temperatures across the reef and does that with appropriately engineered water flow pumped between different reef areas. In addition, using engineered surface winds generated by renewable energy to increase the extraction of surface heat from the reef waters can reduce the increase of the temperatures.
In one embodiment, shown in FIG. 4.A, renewable energy source are tapped and converted to electricity using renewable energy conversion methods, the electricity thus generated is used to drive machinery used to modify the local weather properties. In another embodiment, shown in FIG. 4.B, renewable energy source are tapped but are converted to thermo-mechanical energy using renewable energy conversion methods, which is then used to drive machinery used to modify the local weather properties.
In FIG 4.A, the incident renewable energy in form of sunlight is converted to electricity using photovoltaic system or solar cells and modules 401. Energy from wind is converted to electricity using wind turbines 402, and renewable energy in ocean currents and waves is converted to electricity using ocean vanes and turbines 403. The electrical energy can be directly used or excess stored in electrical storage 404 such as batteries, ultra-capacitors or circuits for later use.
The energy from 401 , 402, 403 and 404 can be pooled and shared across multiple machineries and circuits, these machineries include horizontal pumps 405, that are used to pump water in horizontal direction to create, enhance or attenuate water currents 410 or deflect naturally occurring current 411 and these could be placed at varying reef depths to create a desired profile of currents. These currents can be used to force mixing for modifying surface temperatures or changing the spatial spread of the water as required with different flows at different times.
The energy can be also used for vertical pumps 406, which pump water in vertical direction to create flow vertically for purpose of vertical mixing in terms of upwelling or down-welling 412, and churning 413 or redistributing matter and by doing this moving cooler deep water to surface to reduce the surface temperature increase the surface density, acidity and salinity, in effect changing the reef profiles.
Another use of energy shown in FIG 4.A is to transport thermal energy done using closed or open cycle heat pumps 407. The heat pump design described herein below, transports heat without incurring the energy cost of transporting large amount of matter. With heat pumps the thermal energy can be moved laterally 415 to move it out of a shallow area such as coral reefs, alternatively the heat can be moved deeper into ocean 414 changing temperature profiles and slowing the rise of the reef temperature.
Another use of energy is to change the salinity profile by using devices, which reduce the ionic concentration with osmotic pumps 408 to remove ions or adding salts or ionic chemicals to modify the salinity and acidity 416 as desired to minimize the loss of coral reef structure due to chemical decomposition.
Another use of energy is to change the humidity 417 at the surface of ocean by using machineries such as mister (misting devices) or de-humidifiers 409. These devices by modifying the immediate vicinity of humidity can cause extra interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere especially layers of air right above the ocean and modify the water content as the surface wind rises upward. These allow the coupling of energy between air and ocean to be engineered as required. As discussed in FIG.3 the extra evaporation helps in removal of latent heat of evaporation and can reduce the surface temperature.
In FIG 4.B, the incident renewable energy in form of sunlight is converted to thermal energy using solar thermal system 418, or converted to mechanical energy by driving a turbine. Wind energy can be converted to mechanical energy using wind turbines 419, and renewable energy in ocean currents and waves is converted to
mechanical energy using ocean vanes and turbines 420. The kinetic mechanical energy can be directly used or excess stored in thermo-mechanical storage 421 such as flywheels or thermal storage such as phase change material or high thermal capacity matter for later use, where the thermal energy is converted back to mechanical with turbines driven by heat.
The energy from 418, 419, 420 and 421 can be pooled and shared across multiple machineries and circuits, these machineries include horizontal pumps 422, that are used to pump water in horizontal direction to create, enhance or attenuate water currents 427 or deflect naturally occurring current 428 and these could be placed at varying ocean depths to create a desired profile of currents. These currents can be used to force mixing for modifying reef temperatures or changing the spatial spread of the water as required at different times.
The energy can be also used for vertical pumps 423, which pump water in vertical direction to create flow vertically for purpose of vertical mixing in terms of upwelling or down-welling 429, and churning 430 or redistributing matter and by doing this moving cooler deep water to surface to reduce the surface temperature in or acidity and salinity in effect changing the reef profiles
Another use of wok done as shown in FIG 4.B is to transport thermal energy done using closed or open cycle heat pumps 424. The heat pump design described herein below, transports heat without incurring the energy cost of transporting large amount of matter. With heat pumps the thermal energy can be moved laterally 432 to move it out of a shallow area such as coral reefs, alternatively the heat can be moved deeper into ocean 431 and slowing the rise of the surface reef temperature.
Another use of work done is to change the salinity profile using devices that reduce the ionic concentration with osmotic pumps 425 to remove ions or adding salts or ionic chemicals to modify the salinity or acidity 423 as desired to minimize the loss of coral reef structure due to chemical decomposition.
Another use of energy is to change the humidity 434 at the surface of ocean by using machineries such as mister (misting devices) or de-humidifiers 226. These devices by modifying the immediate vicinity of humidity can cause extra interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere especially layers of air right above the ocean and modify the water content as the surface wind rises upward. These allow the coupling of energy between air and ocean to be engineered as required. As discussed in FIG.3 the extra evaporation helps in removal of latent heat of evaporation and can reduce the surface temperature.
In one aspect of invention the sources and machineries are all located in a physical co-located cluster and structure referred as Control Station, a functional embodiment of that 500 is shown in FIG. 5. The Control Station consists of a plurality of Power Sources 501 , including those using wind 502, solar 503, ocean 504, waves 505, and batteries for storage 506. These power sources 501 through 506, are used to generate useable energy from respective renewable resources. Such as 502 consists of wind turbines driven to extract mechanical energy from wind and either convert to electricity or used directly as mechanical energy. Similarly 503 converts solar energy into useable form of electrical, thermal or mechanical energy, while Ocean turbines convert ocean energy 504, while wave turbines and motors convert wave energy 505, finally batteries and storage systems are used to capture excess power for later use.
These power sources 501 through 506 are used to drive machineries and systems 507, consisting of pumps 508, fans 509, heat pumps 510, radiative cooler 511 , humidity control devices 512, and gas exchangers 513. Pumps 508 are used to move water around to modify the thermal, salinity and density profiles or water currents. The fans 509 are turbines used in reverse to drive changes in wind patterns and affect the mixing of atmosphere and its interaction with ocean. Heat pumps 510 are used to move mainly heat from one location to another to modify the temperature profiles vertically or horizontally. Radiative coolers 511 are devices that take electrical energy and emit in infrared around 9 micrometer wavelengths and thus cool by radiating the extra energy to outer space. This is because by emitting in the atmospheric absorption window range of wavelength between 8 urn to 10 urn no absorption takes place in the atmosphere and the radiation is directly sent to outer space, which is lot more efficient as a cooler. Humidity control devices 512 such as misting and dehumidifying machines change the relative humidity in the proximity and thus impact the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere, this can be used to modify precipitation patterns and control air temperatures and winds. Similarly Gas exchangers 513, can be used to change the amount of gas interacting with oceans affecting the coupling of energy and nature and concentrations of gases and nutrients in the ocean impacting the biosphere. The control station 500 can be used in the manner described in Fig. 4A and Fig. 4.B to engineer the temperature and acidity profiles across large reef areas. Besides temperature, other local properties such as humidity can be controlled with work done by misting devices or conversely dehumidifiers. Similarly using reverse osmosis or mixing surface waters with deeper water can change salinity and acidity of the surface waters. Another approach would be to use renewable energy for doing work that does not heat the surface, such as driving chemical electrolysis or other endothermic reactions, for instance using hydrolysis for large scale hydrogen production that uses a high amount of energy, in doing so removes it from the surface heating. Another type of work that can be done would be to convert the energy to infrared that is then radiated back to the deep space through the known atmospheric spectral window of light wavelengths between 9 to 13um!
Another key set of systems in the Control station 500 are the communication and computing systems 514. These systems are used to collect the data and establish communications with a distributed information system via satellite communications 515 or wireless or wired sensor network 516 and connected with other stations using undersea optical or copper cables and other means of connectivity. In addition by using onboard computers 518 and data storage 519 the data collected can be validated and cross-checked before and after communication and complete information processing done 520.
In another aspect of the invention the control station are engineered to be self sufficient to deliver the functional requirements laid out in 500. In order to be able to work at a rate high enough to influence the local weather, or the trend and long term climate, the control stations have to do meaningful work at a scale large enough and over durations of days and months, thus the energy generation systems have to provide large amount of energy. These control station are proposed to be powered by renewable energy that can be stored using batteries, so that they can operate for decades altogether, and to ensure that energy is not a limitation for type and quantity of the work to be done. The
specific renewable energy sources can be combination of Wind, Solar, waves, or Oceanic currents, depending on location and time of the day or year. The primary source of power may be wind, as technology for offshore windmills is maturing and costs are coming down to make it viable. In addition, winds are present near the coasts and in the open sea, the wind power across the oceans averages around 500 W/m2, however depending on the location, geography and the season. Generation at a site can be predictably estimated and the historical information is available and in most regions the energy from wind is plentiful for our purpose. However, there are areas where winds are not strong, one such area is in the sub tropical Pacific: the infamous windless ‘doldrums’. Stations located in these specific areas are designed to not depend on wind instead they use solar power in combination with oceanic current and or waves. In order to have reasonable and significant impact and to cause the required amount of perturbation in the local conditions, it is imperative to have significant amount of power. On the other hand, the engineering systems size and design should be consistent with prevailing capabilities and system sizes that are commercially available. Recent designs of offshore wind platforms are targeted around 5 to 10 MW. One embodiment of the station uses sizes of around 5 to 10 MW in size, so that the design of turbine and platform can be similar. With these two considerations, the systems should be sized to be around 5 to 10 MW driven by renewable energy sources. To generate 10 MW using winds along the coast range there is sufficient power across the globe (500 W/m2), albeit it depends on the seasons. The data shows that in the open oceans winds are strong enough to generate most of required power from them. These winds can be intermittent and do vary significantly during the day, with differences in ocean and air temperatures driving local changes between day and night, these effects are strongly modulated with proximity to land masses, yet larger changes are seen due to seasons. In terms of the size of the turbine itself, larger sizes allow reduction in cost of the system and also its operational cost with lower fraction spent on overheads such as superstructure to hold the turbines and also circuits for power evacuation or station control. Industry capability trends the wind turbines of 10 MW will be possible in next decade and these can be with 50 meters to 150 meter high masts and diameters of 50 meter to 150 meter. Depending on the depth of waters different types of the platform or pedestal for the turbines are designed and used. By using large 10 MW station the cost of these structures is better amortized for the station.
Solar power generation is possible across most of the regions, however solar is key where winds are low (doldrum latitudes). But, solar panels require large areas, for instance a 1 MW plant capacity requires typically 5000 square meters of area. This may be possible by covering all available surfaces of station buildings and turbine towers, or by building a floating array on a pontoon or platform of say 80 m x 80 m. For larger capacities it will be necessary to use large fields of floating arrays. Since solar power varies with time of the day, the power generated can be best used in conjunction with storage, which will allow it to be dispatched when needed and used optimally. In many areas across the globe there constant ocean currents present, these currents and the energy in them can be used to drive underwater turbines, giving continual generation. The tapping off of the energy from the current can also be used to slow it down and it doing so deflects them from natural course in a controllable manner, and by using this method to change the local temperature and current.
One aspect of this invention consists of recognizing that reef surface sea temperature (SST) is the key factor determining the problems of coral reef bleaching, and a way to control SST will slow down the immediate temperature rise in reefs due to climate change. FIG.6 shows the control station functional purpose to engineer interactions between Reef, Ocean and Atmosphere. The functional description 600, consists of Atmosphere 601 and Reef & Ocean 602, with the system to engineer controlled interactions 603. The parameters for Atmosphere consist of wind speed and height profiles 604, relative humidity and precipitation rates 605, and the temperature height profiles 606. The reef and oceanic parameters are reef and ocean currents with their depth profiles 617, salinity profile 618, vertical currents both upward and downward welling 619 and finally the temperatures 620 both the SST and the depth profile. The control stations engineer additional interactions 603, between the ocean and atmosphere including enhanced wind ocean coupling 607, energy transfer 608, and mass transfer 612. The transfer of motion and energy between wind and ocean is very inefficient in due to the difference in viscosities of the two fluids and also smooth interface that exists most of the time, this coupling between the wind and ocean can be directly enhanced 607 by using windmills to drive the ocean currents or vice versa the additional wind or ocean energy can also be used to modify the other parameters as required. Energy transfer 608 can be in the forms of direct kinetic energy by enhancing motion 609, or driving turbulent churning 610 or simply in form of heat addition or removal 611. The mass transfer 612 between ocean and atmosphere can be enhanced and controlled by using various machines to force air through the ocean to create bubbles 613 which lead to better gas absorption by the ocean water, conversely water from ocean can be sprayed into the air increasing local evaporation 614 this can increase or change the humidity 615 on the surface which can get convected to other parts of atmosphere with vertical and horizontal winds forming low clouds. The bubbles 613 and spraying 614 can also be used to control the gas exchange of atmospheric gases such as Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon dioxide, impacting their local and large area concentrations to impact the atmospheric properties and the local reef water acidity.
FIG. 7 depicts the system designed for a particular reef system for pumping water so as to control water temperature in the reef. The overall layout consists of the reef 701 , with a shallow lagoon 702 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open ocean 703 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean. The example reef has barriers 706 and 707 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 704 and 705 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters. The example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 708 coming from the North West. The invention uses a placement of renewable energy sources 709 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched area. The renewable energy is used in the system to power pumps that modify the water flow either to augment the natural currents with inline pumping as shown in 710, or deflecting the currents as shown in 711 , or opposing the flow to create turbulence as in 712 or 713. The warmer reef waters from shallower areas are pumped 714, 715 to force circulation and pull in cooler water or pumped deeper into the cold ocean 716 or colder water is pumped in from cold ocean as shown in 717 and 718. The barriers 706 and 707 can be modified with designed walls and
blocks to ensure that the depth of water in the enclosed reef is never allowed to drop below a critical value. As shown in FIG.3 the deeper waters over the corals do not heat as fast or to that high a maximum value, increasing the water depth by few meters reduces the temperatures by significant amounts, the containment of water during low tide by barriers can also be made more effective by pumping in more water from the deep ocean.
A more efficient method to cool is to move the heat using heat pump is shown in FIG. 8.A using a closed cycle heat pumps that move a thermic fluid to carry the heat; the thermic process transports high heat capacity so a smaller volume has to be pumped around. Heat pumps are preferred because of their energy efficiency to move the heat from the surface away from coral reef surface or to deeper ocean. The heat pump 800 shown in FIG.8.A consists of the surface heat exchanger tube network 801 , which absorbs energy from the surface reef water reducing the surface sea temperature; this heat is used to evaporate a thermic fluid, which is being pumped out through a pressure control valve 802 by a vacuum pump 803. The low pressure pump 803 is sucking out the thermic fluid from the heat exchanger 801 and causing fluid evaporation and removal of heat of evaporation from surface and thus moving the heat down through insulated piping 804 from where it is moved to outside the reef preferably to the lower depths of the ocean using second stage pumping 805, that extracts the fluid and compresses it to higher pressure through the one way valve 806. The compressed thermic liquid condenses in the exchanger tube mesh 807 releasing its heat of condensation in the colder ocean depths, from where the liquefied thermic fluid is pulled out by deep-water pumps 808 which pumps it to the top surface through insulated pipes
809 with flow control valve 810, extra thermic liquid is stored in reservoir 811 , from where it is pumped using surface pumps 812 expanding the fluid volume into the heat exchanger tube mesh 801 where the low pressure leads to the evaporation of the liquid into gas and completing the closed loop for the thermic fluid.
Thus the apparatus 800 shown in FIG.8.A is used which consists of a large area mesh of tubes conducting the surface thermic fluid, using this fluid the heat from shallow reef water is transferred through the thermally conducting tube walls into the thermic fluid carried inside the tubes. This is extending the concept of heat pipe or a closed loop heat engine cycle. Here we use the mesh 801 and 807 at the different depths for exchanging heat with surrounding water, but use hollow insulated pipes 804 and 809 (or use metal lined concrete to reduce cost) that allow a thermic fluid to be piped from surface to the desired depths. It is this thermic fluid that moves the heat from surface collecting heat at one end, and transporting and releasing it at the other end, as is done in a refrigerator or heat pump. In this case, the heat exchanger on surface 801 , which is the hot end of the pipe, will be used as an evaporator absorbing the heat as latent heat of evaporation of the fluid. This hot fluid is pumped down where it is compressed and condenses releasing the heat to the deeper waters via another exchanger 809. Valves 802 and 806 ensure one-way flows, while pumps 803, 805 are creating low-pressure vacuum ensuring evaporation of fluid, while liquid pumps 808 and 812 control the flow in liquid form. Pumps 805 and 808 are specially designed so they can be placed in deep ocean waters, while pumps 803 and 812 are placed near the surface of the ocean. Insulated pipes 804 and 809 allow unimpeded fluid flow. The liquid flow control valve
810 along with reservoir 811 allows continual flow. The amount of fluid to be pumped is
determined by the total heat to be transported divided by the latent heat of evaporation. One embodiment uses water as the fluid; mainly because of safety in case of leakage also it has very high latent heat of vaporization that is roughly 2440 kJ/kg. The relevant properties of water for the temperature range are given below
The amount of heat to be removed from reef areas ranges from 100 W/sq-m to 400 W/sq-m as discussed in Fig. 2. Since a square kilometer equals 1 Million squaremeters, so the total heat to be removed from a square kilometer ranges from 100 MW to 400 MW. For doing the work to conduct away 100 MW of heat given the latent heat of vaporization as 2440 kJ/kg, we need to evaporate water at the rate of ~ 50 kg/s. The required water flow at 25°C is about 50 liters/s or 3000 standard liters per minute. For the water to boil at 25°C, it has to be under vacuum of lesser than 3000 Pascals, which is achieved by using vacuum pumps that moves the vapors towards the cold end through pipes, using second stage pump which pushes the fluid through one way valve, where the vapors are compressed and condensed back into liquid at temperatures lesser than 5°C then pumped up to close the cycle.
Table 5. Thermal properties of water and steam
The evaporation-condensation cycle is done in a closed loop system like shown in Fig.8.A The evaporator is near the surface at temperatures greater than 20 °C, while the condenser is deeper down in the ocean with temperatures below 5°C. The corresponding volume of the steam is 43000 times bigger at 25 C so it is 603 cu-m/s or 36 million standard liters per minutes! If the steam is moving at speeds around 40 meters per second this requires cross section area of 15 square meters, but that area can be as low as 15 square meters and that requires a diameter of 4.4 m at 25C and this diameter increases to requirement of 8 m diameter at the bottom near the
compressor where temperatures are close to 5 °C. The key components of work done to move the fluid in the closed cycle are as follows, the first component of the work required to be done, is the work done by a vacuum pump to remove the vapor out from evaporator, where in case of an ideal scenario the work done is given by thermodynamic calculation of d(PV)/dt. In this case with calculated energy of 130 to 140 kJ/kg for the 14 kg/s water flow the work required is on the order of 2 MW, accounting for frictional losses and taking realistically achievable efficiencies we assume that required work could be as high as 5 to 6 MW. The Second component of work, accounts for pressure loss due to finite conductance of the pipes, that is given by C = (nd3)/(128q/) where Conductance C = Q/(AP) = Q/(P2-PI). To keep this pressure drop low, which will affect the work done by pump and compressor it is important to increase the diameter of the pipes. This is a trade-off between material used for making the pipes broader or the work to be done for pumping. For now we estimate this extra work to be doubling the amount of power needed, so we estimate the needed power to be 10 MW! Finally, there is additional work done in compressing the vapors to liquid and then to move the liquid water back to the surface for evaporation under vacuum. The work required to move the 1 liter/s of water by about 1000 meters is roughly 10 kW, therefore to move 50 liters/second, requires only 500 kW of power. Therefore for one square kilometer of surface area and remove 100 MW of heat on average, with realistic efficiencies, we estimate need for 30 MW of power for pumping the fluid in the closed cycle system extending over 1000 m depth. In summary using a heat pipe like engine and efficient heat exchanger to remove 100 MW heat from surface for affecting a 1°C change, we have to pump about 50 liter/second of water and expend about 30 MW of power to do that. The Coefficient Of Performance (COP) is therefore in the range of 3 to 4. This is far more efficient than direct pumping of water from depths of 1000m to cool by 1°C, that requires 57 TW of power, the use of heat pump gives an improvement of over that approach by a factor of over 1000!
One aspect of this invention is to use floating mirrors to occlude the underlying seawater and reduce the total light incident and thus slow the increase of reef water temperature. As discussed the heat required to be removal ranges from 50 W/sq-m to 150 W/sq-m, given the open sky intensity at noon is 1000 W/sq-m. To reduce the absorbed energy by that amount requires covering areas with mirrors in the range of 5% to 15%, the temperature reduces as the mirrors reflect the light back. This method is equivalent of cooling during the day as illustrated in Fig. 2.B. This approach has benefits of being lowest in cost, yet requires a large fraction of areas to be covered so as to have an impact on the temperature, in addition the covering with mirrors blocks the light penetrating the waters and the permanent shading can impact the environment negatively impeding growth of the photosynthetic corals and along with unwanted growth of algal and bacterial mass in the shade. The invention consists of mirror that reflect majority of the incident energy, designed with floating membranes and fabrics on structures that survive dynamics and mechanical stresses due reef and ocean wave, tides and storms. Fig. 9 shows a reef system 900. The overall layout consists of the reef 901 , with a shallow lagoon 903 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 902 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean. The example reef has barriers 906 and 907 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 904 and 905 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef
waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters. The example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 908 coming from the North West. The invention uses a placement of renewable energy sources 909, 910, 911 , & 912 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched area. These area are covered with floating structures such as one illustrated in 913, where the circular ring structure is similar to that used for marine aquaculture, consisting of a ring or torus of hollow pipe 914, made out of material such as HDPE (high density poly propylene) which provides mechanical support and buoyancy. On top of this torus is build a solid platform or a tightly stretched membrane support 915, which has outer ring area 916 with drains, pumps and spatial distance from the edge to provide protection from the fouling for the mirror 917 ensuring that the reflectivity does not degrade due the spray of ocean water and fouling by algae and other living organisms. The overall system has sufficient buoyancy, and flexibility to last for decades in the open sea, while providing good reflectivity using membrane mirrors that are coated with hydrophobic coatings to avoid fouling, soiling and reduction of reflectance despite being left in the open marine environment. The ring area 916 has solar power source 918 that can provide continual energy and power to robotic cleaners 919 that are tethered and used to regularly clean the mirror 917. The robotic cleaner 919, maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the mirror area 917 but operates regularly to keep the mirrors clean.
Another embodiment of such a system of floating mirrors is shown in 920, where a pontoon 921 is built to mechanically support the platform 923 with trusses 922 to ensure sufficient height over the sea surface. The platform 923 supports plain mirrors 924 providing requisite mechanical strength and reliability. Solar power sources 925 are used to provide power to automated robotic cleaner 926 to ensure regular cleaning of the mirror 924, the robotic cleaner 926 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the mirror area. Systems of mirrors 913 and 920, however suffer from the overall cost, as they are required to have high reflectivity, resilience in harsh marine environment and moored to allow variation in depth due to tide and currents. In addition nearly 10% to 20% of the reef area 901 has to be covered by these mirrors in order to reduce the maximum reef temperature by 1 °C, which means they have significant negative impact on usability of the reef, finally this shading of the reef waters below will seriously affect the ecosystem impacting photosynthesis by coral and growth of unwanted predatory species such as seaweeds, kelp and algae better adapted to darker waters.
In another aspect of this invention, the reef area waters can be cooled using infrared radiation devices that emit energy preferentially in the long wave infrared spectral regime with wavelengths between 8 microns to 13 microns, which is a spectral window in the atmosphere that allows the radiation energy to pass through to outer space (estimated to be seen at 3 Kelvin), and this outward radiation cools the membranes and surrounding areas by removal of the heat. The invention consists of use of reflecting and cooling membranes that reflect the incident energy perfectly in the visible spectrum, and can absorb and emit perfectly in the long wavelength infrared regime of 8 microns to 13 microns. Selective emitting spectrum can be made using radiative cooling materials these are engineered to reflect back all the incident visible light, in addition they emit out radiation in long wave infrared spectral regime. The ideal spectral response of the material is shown in Fig. 10 as 1001 where the material has perfect 100% reflectivity in the visible and infrared spectrum with wavelength ranging up
to 7 to 8 microns, and then changing sharply down to zero reflectivity and instead the absorption increases sharply to 100% for long wavelength IR specifically between 8 microns to 13 microns wavelengths. Such materials required to have to give sharp changes in optical properties in the different spectral regimes, have to engineered and designed with stacks of dielectrics 1005 built up to sufficient thickness of greater than few microns to provide the reflection and emission characteristics, these stacked are made of layers ranging from few to 100s of nanometer thick shown as 1002, 1003, 1004, with multiple types of dielectrics can be layered to create the right optical properties and interfaces. Alternatively, as shown in 1006 such materials can also engineered by use of non-uniformities in the dielectric properties varying at nanometer and microns level but providing quasi periodic pattern at micrometer levels, aligned with wavelengths of interest. The nano-engineered materials use nanometer or microns sized particles 1008 or cavities 1007 in a dielectric matrix 1009 to create interaction between materials, electromagnetic energy, and thermal energy of solids (as quasi particles namely phonons) giving emissions in the wavelengths of interest.
Large-scale deployment of membranes made of such materials can be done designed with floating membranes and fabrics on structures that survive dynamics and mechanical stresses due reef and ocean wave, tides and storms. Fig. 10 shows a reef system 1010. The overall layout consists of the reef 1011 , with a shallow lagoon 1013 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 1012 with depth increasing quickly to that for deep ocean. The example reef has barriers 1016 and 1017 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 1014 and 1015 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters. The example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 1018 coming from the North West. The invention uses a placement of thermal cooling membrane and infrared sources 1019 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched areas.
These areas are covered with floating system of infrared emitter cooling membranes such as shown in 1020, where a pontoon 1021 is built to mechanically support the platform 1023 with trusses 1022 to ensure sufficient height over the sea surface. The platform 1023 supports plain membrane emitter 1024 providing requisite mechanical strength and reliability. Solar power sources 1025 are used to provide power to automated robotic cleaner 1026 to ensure regular cleaning of the mirror 1024, the robotic cleaner 1026 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the membrane area and operating to regularly clean it and avoid fouling of surface .
Another embodiment of such a system of floating infrared emitter is shown in structures such as one illustrated in 1027, where the circular ring structure is similar to that used for marine aquaculture, consisting of a ring or torus of hollow pipe 1028, made out of material such as HDPE (high density poly propylene) which provides mechanical support and buoyancy. On top of this torus is build a solid platform or a tightly stretched membrane support 1029, which has outer ring area 1031 with drains, pumps and spatial distance from the edge to provide protection from the fouling for the cooling membrane 1032 ensuring that the reflectivity and emissivity does not degrade due the spray of ocean water and fouling by algae and other living organisms. The overall system has sufficient buoyancy, and flexibility to last for decades in the open sea, while providing good reflectivity using membrane emitters that are coated with hydrophobic coatings to
avoid fouling, soiling and reduction of reflectance or emissivity despite being left in the open marine environment. The ring area 1031 has solar power source 1030 that can provide continual energy and power to robotic cleaners 1033 that are tethered and used to regularly clean the mirror 1032. These robotic cleaners 1033 maybe on guiderails or freely moving around the area with infrared membranes 1032 and these clean the membrane regularly.
One advantage of deployment of this type of cooling material that emits out in the long wavelength infrared regime is that it provides continual and uniform 24 hour cooling of the waters, which is consistent with example described in Fig. 2.A, where it was seen that a uniform cooling by 100 to 120 W/sq-m averaged across the area, can lower the maximum temperature by as much as 1 °C, which is sufficient required to avert coral bleaching. However the systems of reflecting and emitting membranes 1020 and 1027, also have significantly overall cost, comparable to that of simple mirrors discussed in 913 & 920. Although the engineered membranes with high reflectivity and emissivity in special spectral regions, are much more expensive than simple mirrors as they also are engineered to have high resilience in harsh marine environment, but the overall system cost per area does not increase significantly as other sub-systems are majority of the overall cost, such as mechanical structures to provide structural stability in harsh marine environment, including mooring that allows for variation in depth due to tide and currents, or the robotic cleaning system to ensure clean surfaces all the time.
While nearly 10% to 20% or more of the reef area 901 had to be covered by these mirrors 913 or 920, significantly impacting the usability of the reef, with shading of the reef waters negatively affecting the ecosystem. In the case of materials that emit in long wavelength infrared, which cool by roughly 100 W/sq-m to 200 W/sq-m, the area of membranes required is reduced by a factor of 0.9 to 0.8 respectively. So the area required is reduced from 10% to 8% or from 20% down to 16%. This area can halved significant if the cooling efficiency per area is increased to range of 200 W/sq-m to 400 W/sq-m.
Another embodiment of the invention is to force and enhance evaporation of water from reef surface and convection of this vapor to form high humidity water column and low lying clouds as shown in FIG. 11. Large-scale deployment of machines across the reef is used to generate extra water vapor mists and clouds that can cover the area and reduce the sunlight reaching the waters. Fig. 11 shows a reef system 1100. The overall layout consists of the reef 1101 , with a shallow lagoon 1103 with typical depth of less than 100 m, and open-ocean 1102 with depth increasing quickly to that for a deep ocean. The example reef has barriers 1106 and 1107 defining the shallow waters ranging from 10 to 50 meters and shallower coral colonies 1104 and 1105 extending close to the surface and having shallow reef waters ranging from 1 to 10 meters. The example barrier reef structure is shown here with a steady ocean current 1108 coming from the North West. The invention uses a placement of renewable sources and machineries 1109 in the relatively calm reef waters, spread across that area shown as hatched areas.
The water vapor is generated using machines that create saturated vapor concentration mist either blowing jets of high pressure liquid through an atomization jet nozzle to form small sized water droplets that can float in the air and rise up into the atmosphere by bubbling air through the water. A mister 1110 consists of atomizers or
aspirator and other spraying design an example embodiment is using a pump 1112 submerged in water 1111 and pumping at high pressure through piping 1113 and forcing it through a nozzle jet to create mist 1114 that forms small droplets or with water drawn into the jet of fast moving air because of Venturi effect or other means such as electrostatic or ultrasonic pumping, use of centrifugal forces all approaches giving fine jet of small droplets. Another embodiments is a bubbler 1115 consists of a submerged air pump 1116 sitting in the reef water 1117, the air pump takes in air from the surface through an inlet 1118 and pushes the air deep into the water with pipes 1119 and then pushing it through a narrow nozzle 1120 to create bubbles that rise to the surface. The air saturated with water vapor and mist having high relative humidity will build up on the surface of the water and lead to a steady state of evaporation and increased loss of energy. However to continually remove the energy from the surface it is necessary to force convection of the water vapor and this is done forcibly by using fans 1121 that will blow the water vapor vertically up against the gravitation or even buoyancy forces. These vertically oriented fans 1124 will force the vapors upward 1125 and cause a turbulent suction field around it in all directions as shown in 1122 and 1123 causing the water spray and misting to take place along with extra bubbling and frothing. These fans are arranged in an array 1126 consisting of multiple rows and columns of fans 1127 arranged to cover large areas of water surface. The main aim of the arrangement of machineries is to be organized together to increase evaporation, enhance the vertical convection of vapor, and increase the water vapor content in the air above the reef to create mists and nucleate them to form low-lying clouds. This is shown as system 1140, which consists of bubbler 1128 along with mister 1129, with multiple fans 1130, the machines increase the formation of saturated water vapor and require external work to be done by machineries using external source of renewable energy on a platform 1131 with sources such as solar 1132, wind turbines 1133 on a tower 1134 and turbine driven by currents and tide 1136, and along with mechanism to store the energy 1135 for use throughout the day and night and overcome the intermittency of the renewable energy sources. The enhanced evaporation of water vapor and forced convection leads to formation of clouds 1137 and presence of such clouds 1138 leads to occlusion of the solar radiation 1139 thus reducing the energy reaching the surface of the reefs. The higher relative humidity in the air column above the reef and these extra clouds limit the solar energy added to the reef water and thus reduce the temperature rise of the reef waters. The formation of clouds is driven by extra water vapor in the surface air due to the misting, bubbling and creation of spray by the fans used to push the wet air upwards. For a given temperature the saturated vapor pressure for water is given in Table 6 below. As can be seen for sea water temperature of 25 C forcing extra evaporation of 1 kg of water vapor removes 680 Wh from the sea water, if this is done from a square meter of surface area the 1 kilogram of extra evaporation across 1 square meter of surface area corresponds to 28 W/sq-m average uniform cooling operating continually during the 24 hour day, so to get the uniform cooling as shown in Fig. 2.A, the surface has to evaporate additional 4 kilograms of water per square meter every during the day.
Table 6. Heat of vaporization and saturated water vapor properties.
The extra water vapor and mist rises with work done by the fan pushing it upward and away from the surface. This vertical column of water absorbs extra sunlight (in the range of 1% to 10% of solar energy) and if the column rises can nucleate to form clouds that are relatively low lying, but can reflect sunlight and further reduce solar energy reaching the surface. Even if these vapor clouds are not be dense but the extra water vapor absorb the sunlight while resultant heat makes it rise further just like fog rising. The absorption of sunlight with water vapor reduces the actual energy reaching the surface of reef waters and this effectively reduces the heating of the reef water. The amount of energy lost due to this extra water vapor can be in the range of 1% to 10% depending on amount of water forced to evaporate. This translates to extra reduction of heating by 25 W/sq-m to 100 W/sq-m by reducing sunlight reaching the roof. This would correspond to the case shown in Fig. 2.B where cooling is aligned to the solar heating time. Together the extraction of heat for vaporization and the extra absorption in the water vapor can effectively cool the surface in the range of 20 to 200 W/sq-m, assuming there are uniform and non-uniform uses as shown in Fig. 2. A through C, and that amount of heat removal is sufficient to cool the waters by over 1 Degree Celsius or more. The energy required to do this work is extracted from Renewable energy sources (including solar, wind, ocean etc.) and this overall system is thus capable of running continually unattended.
Another aspect of this invention is to measure, extract and process information about the reef temperature so as to measure it and control it using the machineries of the system. The first portion consists of measurement as shown in Fig.12 embodiment designs a global network of sensor arrays 1200 to measure and collect data over large area of properties such as wind speeds & direction temperature, salinity, current flow
directions and measuring these parameters extending the information in vertical directions to get height & depth profiles, key parameters will be collected both for Reef & Oceans 1202 and Atmosphere 1201. Currently there are some systems in operation such as those using bathymetric cruises, or drifter buoys that transmit information out to Argos satellite, that data is collated and analyzed by many governmental agencies such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of United States of America, however since these drift around the globe the data is never from the same location. These systems established and deployed so far have tended to be sparse in terms of density or total numbers and temporary both in terms of being stationed at a location for long or survival of a node for long periods. In order to be able to model, predict and control weather, a large volume of data with long historical trends and systematic analysis is required. This requires thousands of nodes with sensors that are consistently designed and programmed to collect coordinated vital information. In one embodiment fixed nodes 1200 are sited on platforms or man-made islands in open sea to collect data for Atmosphere 1201 and Oceans 1202 that have a cluster of sensors 1204 for atmosphere and 1207 for Oceans, these clusters are designed to be resilient and with built in redundancies 1205 and 1208, to ensure continual valid data. The sensors are designed to collect multiple data to give height profile 1203 for the air parameters and depth profile 1206 for the waters. Additionally the control stations have tools with communication systems, linked together to transmit and receive information. Each control stations monitors velocity 1220 of atmosphere and ocean water, ocean currents are measured using hydrophones 1221 and special clusters to characterize eddies 1222 separating out translational velocity from the eddy rotational components. Atmospheric pressure 1209 is measured using plurality of barometers 1212, temperature of atmosphere 1210 is measured using plurality of thermometers 1213, and similarly temperature of reef and ocean 1217 is measured with submerged thermometers 1218. Station also measures the humidity 1211 at heights using hygrometers 1214, and salinity 1215 at different depths using ionic concentration measurement tools 1216. Chemical analysis will measure the Gas concentrations 1219. All these parameters as a function of temperature and pressure will be collected on the surface and at various predetermined depths and heights. The system will have multiple clusters of thermometers, anemometers, salinity measurements, hygrometers, hydrophones and ocean current measurement sensors which are festooned and hanging via cables to collect information from different depths and transmitting via a satellite communication, mesh network 316, and cables for coordinated collection and collation for real time offline analysis using onboard system. The sensor nodes with automated calibration and operational modes, communicate with base stations or between the various stations in a mesh using wireless or wired network. The collected data is collated at the edge using computers and storage and at centers of network to allow local data validation and crosschecking then is stored in specialized distributed database.
In another embodiment and aspect of invention regular information is processed from the Control sensors and appropriately stored. This is shown in FIG.13 as information processing system 1300, which has the Sensor system 1301 , Data collection 1302 and Information processing 1303. Sensors 1301 have built in testing routines 1304 to ensure correct operation of sensor systems, and ensure self-calibration
1305 of sensor ensuring correctness of the data. Any failure of test routines may bring in use of backup systems as the design necessarily uses redundant 1306 sub-systems and by doing so it ensures resilient operation 1307 that means long term operation with minimal maintenance requirements. The data collected 1302 is then processed as a high frequency time series 1308, which is then processed to identify signals for specific events 1309, and this is ensured with appropriate statistical validation 1310 of the signals. Data sanitization is performed in the local regions with cross checking across clusters on a control station 1311 and across control stations 1312, the data is then collated across the network 1313 and indexing and labeling and data synthesis performed to provide 4D (space + time) GIS for variables of interest along with their key statistics. Physics based time series evolution models 1314 are extracted and the key parameters also shared to ensure correctness and validity of the signals.
In a further aspect, the invention will design the array of control stations that are spread across the reef and the functioning of their machines and pumps coordinated across sufficient distances. By using an array of large number of pumps or devices the system can affect large reef areas while each device distributed in the array is impacting practical size of power (1 to 5 MW) or area (1000 to 100000 sq. meters), as shown in FIG.14 as a table 1400 with columns 1401 to 1413 and rows 1414 to 1421. Each element or cell in the array breaks down the problem of control to its local region of influence, which interacts with the neighbouring cells that may coordinate with it to amplify or nullify the impact as desired. Cells are identified here as (Row, Column) as illustrated (1414, 1401) and (1415, 1402) both of which have “X” entry are both increasing a parameter for instance the ocean current, while cell (1414, 1403) with entry “O”, opposes the flow. The white area in the array has mostly entries “X” while the gray area has entries of “O”. By coordinating multiple cells the gray areas can oppose and shut down a flow while white area can increase flow in the channel to increase the localization. With such coordination the overall impact can be much bigger impact and longer term. Thus the magnitude and direction of work of each cell is coordinated by control of each station in the array to modify the ensemble as a whole. Similarly the long-term trend is impacted and controlled by sequence of designed temporal perturbations
In another aspect of the invention, shown in FIG.15, the overall data system 1500, consists of the monitoring network that provides invaluable data logging information about the state of the reef and ocean 1501 , this raw data is synthesized 1502 to extract maximal information about history and expected future behavior using statistical and Machine Learning methods, next enhanced modeling 1503 using Machine Learning and Neural Networks are used allowing prediction of expected future behavior. These numerical model simulations use the data collection of wind, surface temperature over large areas to refine numerical weather prediction. These simulation models are then calibrated against historical and episodic data, and refined based on the derived fits. The prediction algorithms 1504 are then used with designed engineered forcing perturbations deployed through the array of control stations 1505. Experimental data from the array is collected 1501 , and the information fed forward, including the step of synthesizing the results of predictions that are compared to the experimental observations resulting from the forced perturbations, thus completing the information
feedback loop for further refining the algorithms. This continual loop and advanced machine learning and deep learning algorithms allow improvement in performance refine the algorithms to deliver better control and desired parameters close to target values.
FIG.16 shows another embodiment with interconnected learning cycle, and depicts one embodiment of a system which uses advanced data science and Artificial intelligence techniques of Machine Learning and Deep Learning to provide feedback and feed forward from the measured response to a forcing of climate and then to further refine reef parameter prediction system and design next round of forcing in a continual improvement manner, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention; and depicts one embodiment of a system that forces changes in sea surface temperature over reefs and oceans using renewable energy sources that drive machines performing weather modifying work, that is coordinated over large reef area, leveraging naturally occurring currents to modify the weather, using Numerical Weather Prediction along with Artificial Intelligence techniques to refine and control long term climate direction, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. Data Logging as shown in 1601 is important for the large volume of data, this data is synthesized 1602 information being fed-forward as a relationship denoted 1610, both 1601 and 1602 are used for Modeling 1603 these relationships are shown 1611 and 1620 respectively. The output from 1603 is fed via 1612 into control algorithms 1604, which engineers the forcing 1605 via modeled relationship 1613 and that produces a new set of data 1601 via function 1614. In addition there are relationships between the data logging 1601 and synthesis 1602, where the synthesized data or models may drive collection of additional data denoted as feedback 1615, or in case of engineered forcing 1605 driving some additional data collection 1614. Data synthesis 1602, also accounts for the information from modeling and controller algorithms by relationships shown as 1616 and 1625. The Modeling 1603 is affected by Data 1620, Synthesis 1611 , and Algorithms 1617. The relationships for controller algorithm allow it to learn from Data 1621 , Synthesized information 1624, Modeling 1612, and engineered forcing 1618. The forcing functions 1605 are chosen and affected by the data 1619, synthesized information 1625, modeling 1635, and algorithm 1645. The overall system has multiple feedback and feed-forward information subsystems allowing dynamic and speedy response, learning and modification of the characteristics.
While various aspects and embodiments have been disclosed herein, other aspects and embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The various aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are for purposes of illustration and are not intended to be limiting, with the true scope and spirit being indicated by the following claims.
Claims
1. A system for reducing the temperature and modifying other surface parameters of waters in a coral reef and in an ocean adjacent to the said reef, comprising: a first plurality of machines to remove heat, removing thermal power in the range of 20 to 500 W/square meter from the surface of waters of said coral reef and said adjacent ocean; a second plurality of machines to increase relative humidity of air right above waters on said coral reef to humidity range of 20% to 90%; a third plurality of machines to increase the cloud coverage above the reef and the adjacent ocean with cloud cover increased to range of 5% to 80%; the said machines being connected to and drawing energy from renewable energy sources required to be in the range of 40 to 1000 W/square meter of water to be cooled.
2. A system of claim 1 , with the renewable energy sources further comprising: a plurality of photovoltaic cells receiving sunlight, each of the said plurality of photovoltaic cells being connected to an energy generation unit; a plurality of wind turbines, driven by received wind, each of the said plurality of wind turbines being connected to the energy generation unit; a plurality of ocean turbines, each of said plurality of ocean turbines being connected to the energy generation unit; the said energy generation unit being able to generate and store energy requirement of 200 Wh to 24 kWh of energy per square meter of water area and operable to transfer and store said energy in a plurality of energy storage units.
3. A system of claim 2, wherein the energy generation unit is an electrical power generation unit and the said storage units are batteries.
4. A system of claim 2, wherein the energy generation unit is a thermomechanical energy generation unit and the storage units are thermo-mechanical storage units.
5. A system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of horizontal pumps operable to deflect, amplify or attenuate naturally occurring currents in the coral reefs; the said plurality of horizontal pumps being positioned to create a desired water current in coral reef to be in the range of 0.1 to 5 knots; the said plurality of horizontal pumps to change and manage the water depth inside the reef changing the depth by 0.1 to 1 meter; the said plurality of horizontal pumps being connected to and drawing energy from the generation and energy storage units.
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6. A system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of vertical pumps operable to pump water vertically to create a vertical flow of ocean water and coral reefs; the said vertical pumps being operated to churn and distribute matter thereby moving warmer surface water to cooler depths of the ocean; the said plurality of vertical pumps being connected to and drawing energy from the generation and storage units.
7. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of heat pumps to transport thermal power in the range of 20 to 1000 W/square-meter, the heat pumps being operable to obtain a desired temperature across lateral distance of hundreds of meters; the said plurality of heat pumps being connected to and drawing energy from the generation and storage units.
8. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of osmosis units operable to change salinity and acidity profile of the coral reef waters and ocean surface water as desired; the plurality of osmosis units being connected to and drawing power from the generation and storage units.
9. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a first plurality of systems that modify the rate and nature of energy transfer between winds and ocean; a second plurality of system that change mass transfer between atmosphere and ocean by generating bubbles and spray; a third plurality of humidity modification by machines that create misting and vaporization to change relative humidity profile of the surface air near coral reef and ocean surface water as desired; the said plurality of misting, vaporization units being connected to and drawing power from the generation and storage units; the said system is being used to control and change parameters of the ocean and atmosphere to a desired value using renewable energy.
10. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising:
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a first plurality of fan units operable to change relative humidity on the surface of water as desired; a second plurality of fan units operable to change horizontal wind profile on the surface of water as desired; a third plurality of fan units operable to push up vertically water vapor away from the surface; the said plurality of fan units being connected to and drawing power from the generation and storage units.
11. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify other surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of floating structures with mirrors to reflect back sunlight and cool the reef surface and surrounding environment.
12. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify the surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a plurality of floating long infrared wavelength radiation membranes and devices operable to emit out to outer space within the atmospheric window to cool the reef surface and surrounding environment as desired with cooling power ranging between 50 to 500 W/square-meter of membrane; the plurality of infrared emitter units being connected to and drawing power from the generation and storage units.
13. The system of claim 1 , with the machines to reduce the temperature and modify the surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, further comprising: a first floating control station unit connected to the said energy sources and the machines; the said control station further comprising communications and computing units to locally and remotely control components of the system.
14. The system of claim 13, further comprising: a first plurality of system for measurement, monitoring and data logging of atmospheric, coral reef and ocean parameters; a second plurality of barometers measuring atmospheric pressure, each of the said plurality of barometers being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit; a third plurality of hygroscopes measuring atmospheric relative humidity, each of the said plurality of hygroscopes being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit; a fourth plurality of anemometers measuring wind speed and direction, each of the said plurality of anemometers being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit; a fifth plurality of hydrophones measuring ocean current, each of the said plurality of hydrophones being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit;
a sixth plurality of sonar based Doppler measuring ocean current, each of the said plurality of Doppler instrument being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit; a seventh plurality of electric conductivity meters measuring salinity of ocean waters, each of the said plurality of conductivity meters being connected to a data aggregation and processing unit; a data acquisition and logging system; the said plurality of measurement sensors and equipment connected to the data aggregation and processing units further connected to the said data acquisition and logging system.
15. The system of claim 14, further comprising: an information and signal processing unit; wherein the data from different measurement sensors and equipment is aggregated by the said information and signal processing unit; wherein multiple sensors work to provide data redundancy and resilience; wherein the said data aggregation and processing unit is a computing processor and data storage system with built in calibration, computer memory redundancy and security; wherein the said data aggregation and processing unit is an information and signal processing system with statistical and time series modeling; wherein the said data aggregation and processing unit is an information processing system that validates data across the instrument clusters; wherein the said data aggregation and processing unit collates and collects the logged data; wherein the said data aggregation and processing unit validates the logged data; wherein the said data aggregated and processed is stored in a cloud based computing system and the unit fits the data to physics based numerical recipes and simulation models; the said information and signal processing unit is further connected to other information and signal processing units to communicate, validate and analyze the data.
16. A system of claim 15, further comprising; at least one of the system of claim 15; wherein adding the at least one system includes adding additional systems of claim 15 to a group of systems of claim 15; wherein the plurality of the systems work in coordination to provide extensive control of reef parameters across reef area.
17. A system of claim 16, further comprising: the plurality of the said systems are connected to a common control system; wherein, the system for computer simulation and physics based numerical prediction; wherein, an information processing network that controls the said plurality of the systems to modify the local parameters as per direction of the numerical control;
the said information processing network comprising extensive instrumentation with control for calibration and operations, and systems for communications between the plurality of such systems and the systems for communication with central control nodes, wherein information is stored in distributed database which conducts collation of sanitization of data; a plurality of the said information processing network systems for data synthesis, to create a geographical information system with space and time coordinates, deriving and storing of statistical information of the parameters; the said system further comprises enhanced data processing program for modeling of the weather and hydrodynamics of the reef with coupled reef, ocean and atmosphere physics and modeling of parameters for a local control; the said program used for modeling of historical and past data using known initial conditions, and fitting the observed evolution of the data fitting model parameters, further comprising; a data processing program to predict the response to change of control signals; a data processing program to calibrate the predictions of control change on plurality of parameters; a data processing program to control the reef parameter such as temperature across large areas using the said plurality of control stations, the said control stations operated to modify the local conditions as per said control signals; a system of plurality of said stations wherein the data is collected for plurality of parameters for a plurality of time to characterize the response on how it achieved the intended goals of parameter setting; and the control signals are coordinated across the plurality of stations; a system of plurality of said stations, wherein the data is collected for plurality of parameters for a plurality of time to characterize the temporal transient response of the system to the control changes made; a system of plurality of said stations wherein the data is collected for plurality of parameters for a plurality of time to characterize the long term temporal trend of the system to the control changes made; a system of plurality of said systems, wherein the information processing is done using computing, data storage and information network systems targeting future parameter values, wherein the data collected is processed to define feedback on the control systems; a system using a machine, wherein the machine can learn from past historical and incoming data to change the control signals generated; and a system refining the prediction model based on the said learning; the overall system providing control across large areas, data logging of plurality of parameters, with information processing and numerical prediction to define large area control signal distribution; wherein the said control changes are executed and response of the environment monitored, the observations used to learn and modifying the method of setting control signal choices.
18. A method for determining of geographical placement arrangement and operation of machines to reduce the temperature and modify the surface parameters of
reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, to control of large area environmental modification of reef parameters, further comprising: placing at least one of the said system in determined placement; wherein adding the at least one system includes adding additional systems to a group of systems; wherein the placement of plurality of the systems over large distances extending across the distance of over kilometers across the reef; wherein operating the plurality of said systems in a coordinated manner to impact and control the reef parameters, such as temperatures, humidity and cloud coverage over large area of the reef.
19. A method for control of large area reef parameters using machines to reduce the temperature and modify the surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, to control of large area environmental modification of reef parameters, further comprising: a plurality of data readings are collected on parameters for the reef waters, adjacent ocean and atmosphere from the network of plurality of systems; a method for processing and synthesis of the data to derive large scale trends and values from plurality of readings; a method for modeling of the impact of changing a parameter using a plurality of said systems; a method for determining the optimal value control parameters of the said plurality of systems; a method for changing the control parameters of the said plurality of systems and machines; a method for logging the data readings taken on parameters of the reef waters, adjacent ocean and atmosphere for the network of plurality of systems, to measure and calibrate the effect of changing the controls as modeled.
20. A method of claim 19, for control of large area reef parameters using machines to reduce the temperature and modify the surface parameters of reef waters and surrounding ocean surface, to control of large area environmental modification of reef parameters, further comprising: a plurality of data readings are collected on parameters for the reef waters, adjacent ocean and atmosphere from the network of plurality of systems; a method for processing and synthesis of the data to derive large scale trends and values from plurality of readings; a method for modeling of the impact of changing a parameter using a plurality of said systems; a method for determining the optimal value control parameters of the said plurality of systems; a method for changing the control parameters of the said plurality of systems and machines; a method for logging the data readings taken on parameters of the reef waters, adjacent ocean and atmosphere from the network of plurality of systems, to measure and calibrate the effect of changing the controls as modeled;
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a method for recording the observations to measure effect of the said control change on the said parameters; a method for comparing the observed changes to the modeled change and noting the deviation; a method for using the deviation in prediction and observations for modifying the control algorithms using methods and algorithms of deep and machine learning; a method using the said algorithms to predict the future control signals; a method using the data from the plurality of said systems to drive plurality of systems; a method for making each such changes in a stepwise manner; a method for repeating the data processing, using the modeling, the changing of the settings, the recording and data collection, the comparing the data collected to the desired targets, the using of the deviation between target and actual data, the using the said algorithms and the using the data to continually define the next stage and refine the prediction and control methods; a method for driving the controls using plurality of such steps to a desired final value of reef temperature, humidity, cloud cover, acidity and other parameters; a method for feeding back the impact of changes on the observed response; a method of feedback to give machine learning from the response and modifying the parameters for the control algorithm to refine the response matching the desired target.
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