3 ms·

How do you destroy methane straight in the atmosphere?

by jjtheblunt 4y ago

verdverm 4y ago
combustion typically, but I'm also curious what GP actually means
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Probably by pulverizing some catalyzer. Water on the high atmosphere looks like a good choice. But it needs some simulation to know if the water won't stay there long enough to create a greenhouse problem of the same size.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Vapourizing it, but yeah. I replied to the GP post with some brief discussion. We're working in the lower troposphere (like 0-50 m). The stratosphere frightens me (and the folks who want to spray sulphur compounds up there are terrifying. Water in the upper troposphere (AKA Marine Cloud Brightening) like Silver Lining is trying to do feels like a pretty good cooling approach. I wrote a jokey paper in the 80s about giant volcano-powered teakettles spewing steam into the upper atmosphere but the much simpler approach of simply spraying seawater into the air is clever.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Indeed, using existing ships as platform to vaporize salty water on the low atmosphere in the open ocean (I got it correctly?) is very clever. Congratulations on the project.
gumby 4y ago
Turns out about 15-20% of the methane is destroyed by the atmosphere at the ocean surface (the bulk is destroyed by hydroxyl reactions over the land). There are some other natural processes that catalyze those reactions. So we are working on augmenting the supply of catalyst over the deep ocean (far away from land). The reason for the open ocean is that it is remarkably free of topographic features :-) and much more uniform. Close to shore there are all sorts of other things going on, from runoff to life activity and it makes predicting anything quite hard. Doing it on the other 75% of the earth's surface is a lot easier. If you go to our crappy web site (www.bluedotchange.com) and click on the science you can read some refereed papers on the subject. We are looking for some MEs and ChemEs and a couple of EEs and software people if you're interested.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Thank you for the thoughtful explanation....reading...

How do you destroy methane straight in the atmosphere?

verdverm 4y ago

combustion typically, but I'm also curious what GP actually means

marcosdumay 4y ago
Probably by pulverizing some catalyzer. Water on the high atmosphere looks like a good choice. But it needs some simulation to know if the water won't stay there long enough to create a greenhouse problem of the same size.
- gumby 4y ago
  Vapourizing it, but yeah. I replied to the GP post with some brief discussion. We're working in the lower troposphere (like 0-50 m). The stratosphere frightens me (and the folks who want to spray sulphur compounds up there are terrifying. Water in the upper troposphere (AKA Marine Cloud Brightening) like Silver Lining is trying to do feels like a pretty good cooling approach. I wrote a jokey paper in the 80s about giant volcano-powered teakettles spewing steam into the upper atmosphere but the much simpler approach of simply spraying seawater into the air is clever.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Indeed, using existing ships as platform to vaporize salty water on the low atmosphere in the open ocean (I got it correctly?) is very clever. Congratulations on the project.

gumby 4y ago

Turns out about 15-20% of the methane is destroyed by the atmosphere at the ocean surface (the bulk is destroyed by hydroxyl reactions over the land). There are some other natural processes that catalyze those reactions. So we are working on augmenting the supply of catalyst over the deep ocean (far away from land). The reason for the open ocean is that it is remarkably free of topographic features :-) and much more uniform. Close to shore there are all sorts of other things going on, from runoff to life activity and it makes predicting anything quite hard. Doing it on the other 75% of the earth's surface is a lot easier. If you go to our crappy web site (www.bluedotchange.com) and click on the science you can read some refereed papers on the subject. We are looking for some MEs and ChemEs and a couple of EEs and software people if you're interested.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Thank you for the thoughtful explanation....reading...