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Can jet engines clean up Delhi's air?
- chha 10y agoWouldn't replacing the power plants be cheaper (and better) in the run rather than running jet engines to get rid of the pollution? Why isn't that an option in this case?
- camtarn 10y agoIndeed... the idea of burning more fossil fuels to blow away the emissions from burning dirty fossil fuels seems pretty crazy, but I guess that's the nature of short-term solutions. I assume that the cost of building new power plants and buying enormous quantities of more expensive fuel for them probably vastly outweighs the cost of getting a few retired jet engines and tankers full of jet fuel.
- jessriedel 10y agoThis has nothing to do with carbon and global warming. It has to do with smog, which kills millions of people through respiratory problems and decreases quality of life. The additional carbon emitted from running the jet engine is negligible compared to the carbon emitted by the plant.
- camtarn 10y agoFair enough.
- cstejerean 10y agoA large part of the worst pollution days in dehi is not from burning fossil fuels but from burning agricultural fields because farmers don't have a more effective way of preparing the fields for the next year. This means that in November the air is the worst, and it slowly starts getting better in December. Even if you just address this problem it will make a huge difference in the air quality.
- camtarn 10y agoAh, I see.
- jessriedel 10y agoNo. A new jet engine is ~$10M, so a retired jet engine is probably ~$1M. The article says a single jet engine can handle a 1GW plant, translating to less than 1% of the cost of the power plant. (Electric capacity is of order $1/W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_per_watt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_per_watt ) Some cleaning retrofits are do-able and worthwhile (just like the jet engine), but making power plants clean to developed-world standards is an order-unity fraction of the cost.
- throwanem 10y agoDoesn't this just make the smog somebody else's problem? Unless I'm missing something - which is quite possible - it appears to be perhaps the purest expression yet of the "not in my backyard" concept.
- gambiting 10y agoIt does. What's worse, people who pollute in Delphi won't have any incentive to stop doing it now, the air will be clean no matter what they do, so might as well continue burning rubbish.
- Retric 10y agoSmog is made of up several things, but some of it is only stable over relatively short time frames. Move that to the upper atmosphere and it does not nessisarily end up in anyone's back yard. EX: Ozone is not heathy, but it's useful in the upper atmosphere. It's formed in part from Nox compounds, but they both end up as N2 and O2 the two main components of the atmosphere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide PS: This seems unlikely to work well. However, one option to break up the heat inversion might be to change surface coloration over a relatively large area to create large updrafts / downdrafts.
- astrodust 10y agoThe jet engine idea is absurd. Why not build a taller stack that pokes through the inversion layer? Non-trivial to engineer, but guaranteed to work if constructed. In the end using coal is probably a super bad idea. Hopefully other methods come online soon.
- baldfat 10y ago> In the end using coal is probably a super bad idea. Hopefully other methods come online soon. The only use of coal is for electricity in the power plants already there. Coal makes the majority of the fuels used to power India.
- akerro 10y agoIt's not really cleaning, it's more like wiping under a blanket.
- mirekrusin 10y agoExactly, cleaning spilled coffee on the table by smashing it with palm of your hand - table looks cleaner, room - not so much.
- Neliquat 10y agoIn short, no. How is this being upvoted?
- akerro 10y agoControversial way of "cleaning pollution" by making it your neighbours problem.
- fuzzy2 10y agoBecause people feel like this is worth thinking (read: getting worked up) about. I think so, too, because I cannot image how this is a good idea. Blowing pollutants into the upper(-ish) atmosphere, what could possibly go wrong?
- jdavis703 10y agoI don't think upvotes and downvotes are saying you agree disagree, it's a way to keep the community great. For example don't downvote a comment because you disagree with the politics, downvote it because it seemed abusive (e.g. ad hominem attacks). The same goes for stories.
- elihu 10y agoSometimes dumb-sounding ideas actually work. Pollution is a serious problem for many cities, so it's sensible to at least consider whether this idea might actually have merit. Even if the answer is no, at least those of us who read the article and comments here have perhaps a better understanding of the problem.
- arkj 10y agoThe author has a strange notion of cleaning up.
- mitchtbaum 10y agoJet engines seem like they have good potential if applied effectively. They could use the engines as an intake into a maze of water walls[0]. They could also use them near passive air cleaners during slow winds[1]. What else? 0: http://www.kineticfountains.com/blog/do-water-fountains-clean-indoor-air/ http://www.kineticfountains.com/blog/do-water-fountains-clea... 1: http://gizmodo.com/5992764/this-giant-mesh-wall-acts-like-an-air-filter-for-mexico-city http://gizmodo.com/5992764/this-giant-mesh-wall-acts-like-an...
- ad_a 10y agoThis is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever read.
- cpncrunch 10y agoIt sounds kind of plausible until you spend a few minutes thinking it through.
- ricardobeat 10y agoWhy not point it the other way around into a filter instead of just moving the smog further into the atmosphere?
- ipreferhumans 10y agoWhen you ignore problems until they reach a crisis level, all solutions are short-term. This is just another symptom of our global situation that's similarly being collectively ignored. But hey, mars!
- kbart 10y agoWhy not mount engines on the top of chimney itself? It looks more logical and effective than trailer on a ground. Though, I'm still skeptical as this is not a solution to a problem, but more a cover up of it. Coal in XXI century is not an acceptable power source.
- ohitsdom 10y agoI'd guess that the airflow through the engine is greater than the output of the chimney. So if you put it directly over the chimney, it'd draw more from the chimney than the power plant is designed for, throwing off efficiency. With the jet away from the chimney, it will naturally draw from surrounding air without messing up the exhaust flow.
- VLM 10y agoI've stood a few hundred feet downrange (downwind?) from small bizjet engines and its noticeable but hardly overwhelming, which makes the whole discussion very strange in that the inversion must not be broken mechanically or fluid dynamically or it must be incredibly close to the ground. Clearly concentrated heat from the exhaust doesn't crack the inversion of the chimneys would "naturally" take care of the problem. My immediate assumption is this has gone thru the journalist filter too many times... decades ago we were able to make catalytic converters that ate hydrocarbons so effectively that car exhausts were cleaner on average than California air. Heck its even been run thru a particulate filter before the carburetor. Now I'm not sure this is the case as cat conv are only a little better and California air is so much cleaner its nearly transparent, so I'm told. Anyway, jet engines usually run pretty lean so I figured somewhat more CO2 could be traded for zilch hydrocarbon leading to zero to no smog if you blew all the air in a city thru an operating jet engine.
- stuckagain 10y agoWhy not just design the chimney properly in the first place? Chimneys are supposed to have enough updraft to do this by themselves.
- Johnny555 10y ago
- YoDawg 10y agoBetteridge's Law.
- Derbasti 10y agoI wonder how they plan to keep the engines maintained. Jet engines aren't exactly cheap, and maintenance, spare parts, and fuel aren't free, either.
- jdavis703 10y agoMy guess is they only turn these on during the most polluted days. In many colder climates they have power plants of last resort that are basically old jet engines. They only fire them up when power demand hits peak of the peak levels.
- robszumski 10y agoI agree with your thought that these are part time, but for a different reason. I think they'll only be turned on when the temperature/env conditions are right to form the inversion. Fire the jet up for a day or two to prevent the smog from getting trapped under the inversion layer, then turn the jet off once the conditions subside. None of this 20mm a year business will end up happening.
- pp19dd 10y agoIndeed. Though I don't think they intend to maintain them. The article cites donated 'retired' engines. So this is an experiment, or a P.R. stunt. But if they'd take this seriously, it'd be so weird to estimate the maintenance costs. $5 mil per engine, 3-4 months uptime, 2 months downtime for rebuild so you'd need multiple engines, constant sandblasting by particles sucked in the turbines.
- notahacker 10y agoIn theory there's no shortage of engines available for scrap value because they're obsolete and/or their expensive moving parts have reached their life limit for airworthy aircraft, and most of them will keep running for a while yet. The fuel bill is a bigger deal than the supply of old engines I still agree with the people here that think this is a colossally stupid idea.
- bryan11 10y agoBy sending all those soot particles high into the atmosphere, will they create an effect similar to that of a volcano where the soot reflects sunlight?
- preek 10y agoI might be missing something, but this sounds like an idea taken from the movie Idiocracy.
- audunw 10y agoI'm conflicted: On one hand this sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. Why would you try to make coal less smoggy, rather than focusing 100% on replacing the plant? On the other hand, if it works, it will probably improve the health of a lot of people living in the city. Is it ethical to make people suffer, if it's for the sake of giving the people and the government more motivation to phase out coal power plants?
- merpnderp 10y agoI think the logic likely goes like this. Coal power is cheap and cheap power allows industry to grow faster. Faster economic growth means faster growth of the people out of poverty. And since poverty kills through lack of education, nutritious food, good jobs and safe infrastructure, bad coal is still better than no energy, or energy so expensive it slows growth.
- reacharavindh 10y agoI'm Indian. I'' concerned about the air quality for my fellow citizens in Delhi, but an idea like this should never be allowed without proper scientific research of impact. What if blasting pollution to the upper atmosphere causes an even bigger problem? India being a developing economy wouldn't have the money to fix that as well :-( and the coal plants would continue to run up Jet engines until it becomes another crisis because it makes business sense for them. I can't see this idea ending well. Because a thorough scientific evaluation of impact isnt going to be cheap.. India might as well make deals for Nuclear plants for that money, or keep extending the already good use of solar and wind power setups.
- alimbada 10y agoSo what happens when it rains?
- mirekrusin 10y agoStupid question - could jet engines be used by rich middle-east states as floating platforms on the sea/s to create clouds/rain on dry/desert?
- blondie9x 10y agoMake Delhi air tolerable but make climate change on Earth worse. This masks the bigger problem, fossil fuels and the changes they cause to the entire planet. Pushing smog from one place to another sounds like a terrible red herring.
- y04nn 10y agoYes, this is just a way to push the problem further away (in time and place). The best thing to do is probably to add some decent filters to capture small particules before they arrive in the air. I wonder why this is not a solution, maybe a prohibitive cost, or patents.
- mattmaroon 10y agoI was kind of wondering that as I read the article. I went in expecting it to be some sort of modified jet engine that sucks crap out of the air and sequesters it or something. Then reading I thought "wait, are they just shoving all the pollution further away?"
- sliverstorm 10y agoI initially assumed it was to be like an incinerator for smog, burn all the incompletely combusted particulate. Jet engines being far better than trash fires at combustion.
- tn13 10y agoClimate change is not a priority for India where people are already dying of polluted air. It is pointless to think about "clean air for future generations" when the current generation itself is dying at rapid rate. As an Indian I will leave that problem for Californians and New Yorkers.
- sliverstorm 10y agoWell, OR you could try to fix both problems. You can blow the pollution somewhere else OR couldn't you instead clean up the sources of pollution? India doesn't even have to develop many of the solutions, scrubbers for coal plants, catalytic converters, 4 stroke engines, and a plethora of other technologies have already been developed and refined.
- stillworks 10y agoWill it not simply create a blue colored hole in the sky for the duration the jet engine is turning and then when the engine is turned off the hole will soon turn grey again ? Assuming they fire the engine during daytime. I hope they do it in the day time as that will be simply awesome and better due to the possibility of sonic boom (from the gaseous fluid in the jet exhaust going near supersonic) or the noise otherwise will prevent people from sleeping within a couple mile radius.
- hyperpape 10y agoI don't know if this is a good idea (really, I know very little about this, save having read about the concept a long time ago), but everyone jumping to the conclusion that this must be a bad idea should look up thermal inversions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology). As I understand them, they prevent the dispersion of smog, and create much denser pockets of pollution than would exist in a city that didn't have a thermal inversion. So it seems like one reading of the situation is that most cities "make the pollution someone else's problem" in the sense that their pollutants disperse in a way that pollutants from cities like Delhi don't.
- aaron695 10y agoHmmm a lot of comments from rich white people ATM saying let the Indians in big cities continue to die because we want less CO2 in the atmosphere even though we used it for years to get this rich and probably use more CO2 for our lattes per person than this life saving measure might do.
- st3v3r 10y agoWhy should the rest of us have to deal with it? They caused the problem, and they did it AFTER seeing everything the west went through. They did not have to follow the same way we went down, but they chose to anyway. Not to mention, it does nothing to address the actual sources of pollution. Fix that first.
- hashnsalt 10y agoThird world countries don't have the liberty to make choices based on their perceived good-ness - they can't choose renewable energy sources based purely on the fact that they are better for the environment. They kinda sorta had to go down that road of fossil fuels because economics is crucial. I think that if there were a breakthrough that made renewables vastly cheaper than coal, India would be the first country to adopt the new tech.
- shripadk 10y agoYou are wrong about facts. India did industrialize ALONG WITH the West and not AFTER it. The pace of industrialization was impeded by British colonialism. Whatever India you see today is actually the impact of industrialization post Independence from British Raj (1947). During that time there was no alternative to non-renewable energy so there was no "they did not have to follow the same way we went down, but they chose to anyway". USA/Europe have still not migrated to complete clean energy. Emission per capita is 16.5t and 6.7t in comparison to India's 1.8t. That is pretty crazy considering that the population of US is not even 1/3rd of India. If US isn't serious about moving to clean energy why would India be? Solar energy prices dropped to around parity with coal for the first time this year, hitting 4.34 rupees (about 6 US cents) a kilowatt-hour (kWh), while coal tariffs range usually range in between 3–5 rupees/kWh (about 5–8 US cents). It wasn't possible until April of this year to even consider Solar a viable alternative. With prices dropping (and hopefully continuing to drop until at least 2030) we can now think of installing new power plants backed by solar. But don't think for a second that we will be able to magically replace the coal plants. The infrastructure spending on these coal plants have gone into billions of dollars and retrofitting them isn't as easy or cheap. So no. India is a energy hungry Nation and we will go ahead with whatever it takes to provide energy to the entire population (be it nuclear/coal/solar/wind etc). If you want us to adopt clean energy entirely then pay up for it. After-all the climate crisis is caused by the first world countries as they ignored (and continue to ignore) pleas to move to clean energy for the past few decades. If you can't pay up then move along. Don't even bother to advice us. You'll only be ridiculed. Trump has already said that he will withdraw from the Paris Climate Deal on the first day of taking office. So when the West, which is the biggest polluter in the World after China, cannot take this step why should India take the initiative? After-all, even if India did go 100% clean energy (which is highly impractical and an extremely costly affair), it won't have any impact on reversing Climate Change with the West backing out. So it is a lose-lose for India.
- jpollock 10y agoI was expecting a story about changing a coal fired plant for a gas turbine plant to reduce CO2 and particulate emissions. I was not expecting using old jet engines to blow away the coal exhaust! Guess this is a opex vs capex thing?
- ascotan 10y agoSo according to google a 747 can through 36,000 gallons of fuel in a 10 hour trip. Being conservative and you only need half as much for 2 engines at full throttle, that means that you would need ~40K gallons of fuel a day? Google tells me that jet fuel ranges from $4-$8 a gallon, therefore the operating costs for a single truck is around a quarter million dollars a day ($250,000)? Even if the operating cost is only 1/5 of this ($50,000 a day), that's 20 million dollars a year in fuel costs. If India has 20 million a year to spend on fuel for this contraption, why wouldn't they just spend that money to clean up the power plants instead? My guess is that the operating costs of this terrible idea are so large, they would hardly ever turn it on. I agree that this seems like a PR stunt rather than a real idea.
- photogrammetry 10y agoIt is colossally stupid to do this jet engine experiment rather than spend their $20 million on, say, preventing the city's poor from burning trash. But why address the root cause of a problem when you can treat the symptom in an extremely stupid, expensive, and temporary way?
- Declanomous 10y ago20 million dollars does not go a long way as far as civic infrastructure goes. Someone farther up pointed out that this is equates to $2 per person per year. Someone else pointed out that the fuel cost of jet engines is around a quarter of what the parent comment estimated. So, all in all, I'd say it's a somewhat reasonable approach.
- photogrammetry 10y agoThey could bribe those poor people with $2 a year not to burn trash.
- selectodude 10y agoJet fuel in 747 quantities at an airport is about $1.75/gal.
- 10y ago
- manishsharan 10y agoPower plants are not the only source of pollution in Delhi or India.They burn garbage as well as manure for fuel. And the land-fill also caught fire. On my last visit, I saw this up close: http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/delhi-pollution-panel-sends-notice-to-civic-body-over-fire-at-garbage-dumping-ground-1397971 http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/delhi-pollution-panel-sends-n... My dad and I have allergic asthma and this just makes it worse for us.
- hashnsalt 10y agoSo I see that alternative energy sources are talked about a lot when discussing climate change. Why isn't there just as much R&D and discussion going on about the other half of the equation - reversing climate change or reducing the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere or making megacities smog-free?
- philipkglass 10y agoWe already know a lot about making megacities smog-free. That's why London and Los Angeles had absolutely dreadful air in the mid-20th century but it's much better now. As for why Delhi hasn't followed the example of richer cities in cleaning up the air, I'd say it is mostly due to lack of funds for infrastructure and enforcement. There is also research about reducing the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere. Here's one of my recent favorite papers: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/2639B3403ED947729B86FA1B2275AFD9/article%20Taylor%20et%20al%20(2015).pdf http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/cont... The reason that emissions-free energy sources get discussed more than carbon dioxide reduction from the atmosphere is that reducing emissions appears to be significantly less expensive and more scaleable for dealing with the bulk of the problem. Once you bolt on the extras necessary to make coal plants low-CO2, the electricity costs more than if you'd just eliminated coal altogether, so there's no point to it. For an example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project
- photonwins 10y agoThere is no silver bullet, govt is probably trying a multi thronged approach to address the problem. A Solar power plant is being built in Rajastan, Western India[0], one more in neighbouring Gujarat [1] & one more just got completed in South India [2], and there are nuclear power plants being built or in the initial design phase. These things take time, but there needs to be some interim solutions as well. Don't you think? [0] - http://www.rrecl.com/PDF/Solar%20Park%20Bhadla%20Presentation%203.pdf http://www.rrecl.com/PDF/Solar%20Park%20Bhadla%20Presentatio... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat_Solar_Park [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuthi_Solar_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuthi_Solar_Power_Project
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- ebbv 10y agoI learned as a kid that moving the mess into the closet doesn't count as cleaning.
- Havoc 10y agoBurning more fuel...brilliant plan.
- module0000 10y agoWe're going to reduce fossil fuel waste by...burning more fossil fuels(jet engines don't run on water)? I hope this works, but within my small knowledge sphere, don't think that it will. Please prove me wrong India :)
- CodeSheikh 10y agoWhy not just ban the usage of fireworks for various festivities such as Diwali or enforce stricter vehicle inspection code during annual registration? I am sure there will be "some" folks jumping through/going-around the enforced laws but it can make a significant difference when a good majority starts following them and such following gradually increases every year. In this way more and more cities start implementing similar routines. Sometimes we get so much caught up in "cool" or "fun" projects that it becomes easy to ignore simple yet basic implementations that lies in front of our eyes all-along :)
- disposablezero 10y agoJet engine silver bullet rather than holistic, comprehensive smog abatement. Yeah, right.
- analognoise 10y agoAt least they're trying something badass. This seems one step above "We're going to have Todd do a gnarly Tornado kick at the smog."