USE OIL TO DIVERT OR WEAKEN HURRICANES

 

By:    Clarence L. Dulaney

          2226 Fairgreen Drive

          Missouri City, TX 77489

          cldtx1@sbcglobal.net

 

A.   INTRODUCTION

 

 

Most people will agree that hurricanes (and typhoons) are tropical storms gone wild.  They are immense heat engines.  Their distinguishing characteristic is an "eye" that has the storm's strongest winds circulating about a largely open area.  Eyes vary from 10-100 miles in diameter, and the circulating winds vary from 75 to over 200 mph. ( Note: English units are used throughout, since most of the hurricane literature uses these units.)  Destructive force of a hurricane varies almost exponentially with wind speed.  Generally speaking, the wind speed increases as the storm moves over warmer water, all other things being equal.

 

One characteristic of the eye-wall that is mentioned by all pilots that fly into eyes [1,2] is the profusion of water droplets, with the droplets becoming much more numerous and the size decreasing with higher wind speeds. 

 

ENERGY PRODUCTION IN HURRICANES

 

Energy is largely produced by evaporation and condensation of water vapor,  Most of the evaporation occurs from the droplets about the eye-wall. The condensation occurs in the cloud layers that surround the eye.   The rate of evaporation from the droplets is in direct proportion to the wind speed and the  temperature, and in inverse proportion to the particle diameter.  (.According to the "sandwich " theory of Lighthill [3], elaborated by Chorin et al [4,5,6[  water droplets form a "sandwich" between between the wave surface and the wind.  This causes a reduction of the turbulence, which in turn leads to an increase in the wind speed, roughly in proportion to the number of particles.)

 

In simple terms, the rate of evaporation and thus energy production is self-perpetuating.  Once the eye forms and moves over warmer water, the hurricane enevitably strenghthens, as long as no land surface or cooler water is encountered.   The eye and wind speed become larger, and the water droplets become more numerous and smaller [1,2.7].

 

PREVENTION OF STORM STRENGTHENING

 

`1.  Storms strengthen only slightly if no eye forms.  Water evaporates slowly from an unbroken surface.

2.        Turn storms somehow into cooler water surfaces.  (Was this done during the 2006 season? )

3.        Turn storms into land masses.

4.        Keep water particles from forming or keep them from getting smaller [5,6]

5.        Hundreds of others that have been proposed (and some tried)  such as cloud seeding, atomic explosions, soot, outer space mirrors, putting oil in front of the storm [4,5,7] to cut down on evaporation, etc. .

 

WHEN TO ATTACK HURRICANES

 

Obviously the time to attack hurricanes are when they are as small as possible.  However, because several areas rely on tropical storms for beneficial rainfall, it may not be politically expedient to attack before an eye is actually formed.  The minimum wind speed is 75mph, and this normally occurs about an eye that is 10 miles in diameter.  The forward speed of these storms is about 10 mph.  The wind moves in a counterclockwise direction about the eye. 

 

Hurricanes that form over the west coast of Mexico normally move off in a westerly direction to eventually be dissipated over the cold waters of the eastern Pacific.  Such a storm could be used for tests with minimal political involvement, provided it is attacked in international waters.

 

EXPERIMENTAL WORK- STATIC

 

A considerable amount of  work has been done by Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT [8] and his students, particularly  M. Alamaro [9,10].  Their work is an attempt to find the evaporation rate of water in a "Wind-Wave Tank" .  They found that a monolayer film of a long chain alcohol could cut the evaporation rate by up to 80% at wind speeds up to 25 mph.  Their experiments are very similar to a series of tests done on lakes in the US and Australia in the mid-1900's  [11,12].  These tests were largely abandoned because of the difficulty in getting perfect films of the alcohols, and the fact that these films were destroyed by microbial attack, and by moderate winds. 

 

DYNAMIC TESTS

 

In the 1750's, Benjamin Franklin and others [13] found that small amounts of oil (primarily olive, but also rapeseed, linseed, whale oil, cod liver oil and "tar") not only cut down on waves in ponds, but also reduced breakers in ocean storms.  Franklin's explanation of the effect of oil at sea did not reduce the swells, but "diminished the "wrinkle" raising capacity of the wind.  Wrinkles are the elements of future waves, and wrinkles are turned into waves by the wind."  "Finally, a film of oil diminishes the wind's wrinkle raising capacity:  Now I imagine that the wind blowing over water thus covered with a film of oil cannot easily catch upon it so as to raise the first wrinkles, but slides over it and leaves it as smooth as it finds it."  "When the wind blows fresh, there are continually rising on the back of every great wave a number of small ones, which roughens its surface and give the wind hold, as it were, to push it with greater force.  This hold is diminished by preventing the generation of the small ones." 

 

(It is recommended that you read the monograph by Joost Mertens[13] if you have not done so.  This paper tells how foundering ships were saved by application of relatively small amounts of oil.  This information has been essentially forgotten with the advent of steamships.  For example watch the weekly series "Storm Stories" on the cable TV Weather Channel.  These stories mostly involve foundering of even fairly large ships, and very hazardous rescue operations carried out by the US Coast Guard.)

 

PROPOSED EXTENTION OF THE FRANKLIN EXPERIMENT

 

It is not mentioned in reference 13 if any of the storms calmed by oil were hurricanes.  It would be desirable  to know if oil can actually suppress particle formation or influence at hurricane conditions.  By use of a high speed fan pointed in a proper direction, hurricane speed  winds should be generated, and by videotaping the results upon addition of oil, it should be possible to determine the results.  If particles are kept from forming by addition of oil, this should be incentive for attacking actual hurricanes.

 

One way of doing the experiment would be to attach an airplane propeller to a barge strongly anchored on the coast.  Of course it is realized that there would be political implications, but these should not be impossible to overcome.

 

ATTACK OF HURRICANES-DIVERSION ATTEMPTS

 

In all methods of attack in this paper, it is proposed that some kind of vegetable oil be spread at a nominal rate of 10 gallons per minute from a submarine running at 30 mph at periscope depth.   Supposing the oil spreads evenly to a width of 100 feet at right angles to the submarine path, there would be roughly 240 molecular layers.  See the Appendix.

 

It could be desirable to divert hurricanes to cooler water.  This would mean diverting them northward, generally.  A typical small storm may be nearly rectangular, possibly 100 miles long by 60 wide.  The submarine should be started at the northwest corner and should be run eastward along the northern edge for roughly half its length.  At this time, the sub should be re-directed to the northwest corner and the process repeated.  It should be possible by observation of satellite transmissions if any diversion occurs. 

 

ATTACK OF THE EYE-WALL

 

If it is decided to attack the eye, the submarine should  proceed in the shortest possible distance to the eye-wall, and then proceed in a counter-clockwise direction.  If the eye is 10 miles in diameter, it should have a circumference of 31.4 miles.  The sub will make a circuit in about 1 hour.  The sub should be kept in the area of the highest wind speed.  Hopefully at the very least the winds will be kept from increasing.  If necessary, repeat the treatment.  If the eye treatment works, it may be desirable to attempt to divert the storm to cooler waters 

 

REFERENCES 

 

1.     Pete Davies, "Inside the Hurricane", H. Holt, NY, 3000, p32, p119

2.     T. Beardsley, "Dissecting a Hurricane", Sci, Amer., Mar. 2000, p 80-85

3.     "Notes Concerning the Lighthill "Sandwich" Model of Tropical Cyclones", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA, 2005, Aug 9, 102(32)  11148-11150

4.     Harding, "Hurricanes", Business Week, Oct 24, 2005 p64ff

5.     "Could Humans Tackle Hurricanes?", New Scientist.com News Service, 14 September 2005, Justin Mullins

6.     "Hurricanes Start With Tiny Droplets, Study Says", Brian Hardwick, National Geographic News, July 17, 2005

7.     R Hoffman, "Controlling Hurricanes", Sci. Amer. October 2004, p68.75

8.     K. Emanuel, Personal Communication, Nov. 2, 2004

9.     M. Alamaro, http://alamaro.home.comcast.net/Evaproationretardatoion.htm

10.  M. Alamaro, MS Thesis, MIT 2001, "Wind Wave Tank for Experimental investigation of Momentum and Enthalpy Transfer From the Ocean Surface at High Wind Speeds"

11. "Retardation  of Evaporation by Monolayers: Transport Processes",Edited by V. La Mer, Academic Press, NY, 1962

12.  "Marine Surface Films: Chemical Characteristics, Influence on Air-Sea Interactions and Remote Sensing". Editors: M. Gade, H Hünerfuss and G. Korenowski, Springer, Berlin, 2006 p 3-12

13.  "The Houour of Dutch Seamen: Ben Franklin's Theory of oil-on-troubled-waters and its Epistemological Aftermath"  http://www.benfranklin300.com/_etc_pdf/Dutch_Joost_Mertens.pdf   you must have Adobe reader 7 to download

14.  Gucker and Seifert, "Physical Chemistry" W Norton, NY, 1966, p65

 

 

APPENDIX

 

Suppose 10 gallons per minute of canola oil is spread over a hundred foot path by a submarine moving at 30 mph.  How many molecular layers would result?

 

CANOLA OIL

 

Assume the formula is (C16H33)3C2H4O3.  The molecular weight would be 755.  Vegetable oil weighs about 8 pounds per gallon, or 3632 grams per gallon.  There would be about 2.89 x 1024 molecules per gallon, each of which occupies 2.1 x 10-15cm2 [14]. One gallon of oil would cover 6.5 x 106 ft2 in a single molecular layer.

 

If 10 gallons per minute is dumped at 30 mph, in each minute 10 gallons is dumped over a half mile.  If the oil spreads into a 100 foot layer, a total of 264,000 ft2 area would be covered.  From above, there would be a total of 6.5 x 107 ft2 of oil, so there would be 247.9 molecular layers.

 

NOTE:  I hereby request critical comment on this paper.  The weakening of hurricanes and typhoons is too important not to  attack them in any possible manner.  I will report any comments on my website, and revise this paper if necessary.  Let's kill hurricanes in 2007.  Ben Franklin would be proud of us.

Clarence L. Dulaney

February 22, 2007