Preliminary results for salt aerosol production intended for marine cloud brightening, using effervescent spray atomization

Abstract

The large-scale production of vast numbers of suitable salt nuclei and their upward launch is one of the main technological barriers to the experimental testing of marine cloud brightening (MCB). Very promising, though not definitive, results have been obtained using an adapted version of effervescent spray atomization. The process is simple, robust and inexpensive. This form of effervescent spraying uses only pressurized water and air sprayed from small nozzles to obtain very fine distributions. While it is far from optimized, and may not be the best method if full deployment is ever desired, we believe that even in its present form the process would lend itself well to preliminary field test investigations of MCB. Measurements obtained using standard aerosol instrumentation show approximately lognormal distributions of salt nuclei with median diameters of approximately 65 nm and geometric standard deviations slightly less than 2. However, these measurements are not in agreement with those based on scanning electron microscopy imaging of collected particles, an observation that has not yet been explained. Assuming the above distribution, 1015 particles per second could be made with 21kW of spray power, using approximately 200 nozzles. It is envisioned that existing snow making equipment can be adapted to launch the nuclei 60-100m into the air, requiring approximately 20kW of additional power.