Electrostatic Precipitation of Water Vapor from Clouds

Rainwater harvesting is carried out at high altitudes in the Himalayas, among other places, using a fine mesh made of resilient materials. Water droplets from cloud and mist collect onto the mesh and they drop under the influence of gravity into simple containers for onward use; <...Electrostatic...> action is unnecessary.

I am aware of this,but I am talking about a large geographical area,where rain is needed.The Himalayan method is good for local uses,but is reliant on certain conditions of temperature and humidity.

There are rivers of water in the atmosphere that are invisible because they are a gas,not a vapor.A vapor is invisible,like the gap in the steam from a tea kettle,or high pressure steam.A cloud in an amalgam of condensed water vapor and air.Perhaps the addition of an electrostatic charge would encourage condensation of the invisible form of water.

There is more water in the atmosphere in the form of vapor than all the rivers of the world combined.

Cosmic rays ionize clouds and can cause a vapor to condense,so I conclude that ionization from any other source should do like wise.*

*https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/cosmic-rays-clouds

Reducing insolation, by introducing large-scale sun-shade (in orbit?) to reduce temperatures, would be another interesting possibility; the ability of air to hold water vapour reduces with lowering temperature.

Introducing sulphur/sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere would increase the reflectivity of the atmosphere and lower surface temperatures, though the spin-off would be the turning of blue sky into white.

I suspect large geographical area will be a problem.

Assuming a plane could tow the apparatus, it would produce water in strips. I have no idea how much room is needed to turn around to do an adjacent strip,

Any idea how much water is produced? They measure rainfall in acre-feet, which is a bunch of gallons. Guessing, even .1 acre-foot would be thousands of gallons.

How much electrical current would this take? "Electrostatic" gives a false impression that you just charge it up. However, the condensed vapor will drain off the charge, producing a current flow.

Large is a relative term,but I mentioned it in reference to the grid collection system in the mountains previously mentioned.

The ionization will require power as the charge is dissipated,but the effect will far exceed the actual static field,like smoke,it will spread as the charge creates larger droplets that can merge and become drops large enough to fall,a domino effect,so to speak.

The amount of power required will depend on the grid area being towed and the amount of available water vapor.A controller can easily be made to accomplish this.

In an area suffering from a drought,I think the cost could easily be justified.

The Colorado river no longer reaches the ocean,and vegetation close the the river is being removed to prevent it from using water from the river. This is an act of desperation,I think.

I remember seeing,many years ago, in a textile operation which an an entire 4 acre room where the static charge of the air was controlled by positive and negative grids inserted into the duct work.

I was not allowed to inspect the system closely,but in passing I noticed what I am pretty sure was a flyback transformer from a TV as a voltage source.

The appropriate voltage was controlled by a very simple controller in the office and the sensors were from a ion smoke detector.The cotton was in a fragile state at this stage of production, with very little twist applied, almost looking like fog, and static discharges could cause the fibers to separate,affecting production.

They discovered the ideal charge rate was slightly negative,and maintained it with this system.The side effect was an accumulation of dust on the walls.Employees were no longer getting shocked when touching metal carts with rubber wheels.

All in all, a very cheap and simple method,using off the shelf components.

Of course there are always the unintended consequences of messing with mother nature when you make it rain artificially,but we will never know till we try.I hope someone with the capital can explore the possibilities of the method.

Farmers could of course,be charged for the rain produced,making the process very profitable. Sort of scary when I think about it with the unbridled greed of big business.

I almost hate I mentioned it now.

A first step to human-controlled weather?

It might work, but you have to figure the cost of capturing a gallon of water. Is it economically feasible, compared with, say, cloud seeding?

I had read 20-30 years ago where the the next world war will not be fought for land, or oil but for potable water.

One thing is, in the arrid areas where water is needed, one needs the clouds to seed.

I think the next war will be via software.

And as far as WW4? Albert E. said he did not know when, but it would be fought with sticks and stones after WW3.

That war is on now,… I’m getting a lot of scam calls from the that my Credit Cards has been compromised from security breaches from banking organizations such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase to name a few the lists are long…

and Al’s correct… just look at the Middle East from a month ago…what an abortion it may settle down now with leadership being put into place… or not. Stopping an abortion is tough.

The article you read makes no sense. Feed water never gets to or enters the stack. Electrostatics are used to remove particulate matter.

And there are much more PASSIVE ways to condense atmospheric water.

And a passive way to construct a cold sink. No energy required.

It has been discovered that quartz glass can absorb heat and re-emit it at the 10 um slot. This heat is rejected and never returns to earth. The cold temp of space is the sink.

The Sahara is 97% quartz sand. Grinding the sand down to 1 um, and making a paint or a film, can lower the surface temp of a plate of steel, by about 20- 30 degrees F. And supposedly at high noon. A passive cold sink.

In many areas this drop is sufficient to the dew point. And air water will condense on that plate.

Imagine an area in the Sahara with that drop.

This info is about 5 years old. Search for 10 um slot passive cooling for new findings. I have not check since then.

This is not about the exhaust stack,this is recovering water from the cooling towers.This water can be used to replenish the cooling tower reservoir.

Here is a link to the article:

https://news.mit.edu/2021/infinite-cooling-nuclear-0803

No mention of boiler feed water or stack exhaust.

Having worked on electrostatic precipitators in power plants they are a high maintenance item with often broken wires.

I wonder how they plan to make access easy to the grids or will it be like all engineered systems, never plan for maintenance.

It would be interesting to know the resistivity of water vapour at the exit temperature of a cooling tower.

I know how electrostatic precipitators in power plants can be high maintenance, due to carbon accumulation and corrosive gasses, but I don't think the cloud precipitation would have the same problems because you are dealing with basically pure water vapor. If service is needed it could be done on the ground, simplifying maintenance when needed.

The electrical resistivity will vary in accordance to the relative humidity, which will also vary with temperature, so it is a very dynamic value. In electrostatic precipitation I do not think it will make much difference, it will simply emit more or less ions accordingly.

A large slow solar photovoltaic driven drone with batteries might work for this, towing an opposite polarity kite behind above or below. Lots of needle points can create charged particles that could promote the formation of larger raindrops. Could be steered to where it would be most effective, most likely to create a chain reaction, rain dropping out and reducing the average weight of the air mass so that it may rise around the falling raindrops? The batteries could allow this to work at night when condensation is also more likely. PS No need for a power station below. The Sun is a nuclear fusion plant already.

I suspect that you'll also need the correct atmospheric conditions in terms of temperature, humidity, dew point, etc. The cooling tower has a guaranteed high humidity and, compared to the atmosphere higher up, a relatively narrow range of temperature and wind draughts/vertical speed. You may end up generating some drops a few thousand feet up - whether that will reach the ground in sufficient quantities is another matter. Cloud seeding requires suitable conditions, so this method will probably as well. To put it in perspective, to get a mere 10mm of rain on 1 hectare requires 100 000 litres (100m³), or ~900 million droplets of size 3mm. You're going to need one big electrostatic net!

The purpose of the original post was to recycle the already treated pure water back into the system saving makeup water, which has to be treated. This prevents concentration of acids, etc. in the makeup water, reducing maintenance and operation costs.

The cloud seeding off-shoot from this was my speculation that it might also work as a cloud seeder by generating opposite charges on water vapor causing them to cling together and eventually condense.

If a contrail forms behind a jet, there is moisture in the air. It is too high to fall as rain but it may get part of the way down to a lower level where conventional aircraft might be able to ionize it into bigger drops.

Better is a little bit of something than a whole lot of nothing.

Even a single candle is better than total darkness.

Who knows where a simple idea may lead.

The Wright brothers could not imagine jets, and look at what happened since a little over 100 years ago.

If I had a means to test it, I would.

I am merely suggesting that the principle be tested and further developed.

If it is profitable, it will be exploited and improved rapidly.

When talking about large geographical areas, I don't see how this could ever be feasible.

1" of rain over a state the size of California works out to about 2.8 trillion gallons.

For it to rain, you need feedstock such as dust for Nucleation to begin.

the space station did an experiment with salt, where attraction happened due to static electricity. From the OP. Even though it demonstrates planet building..l

Ion generators generate static electricity that can attract droplets to each other without a particle to build on.

Perhaps they could be used to dissipate fog in critical areas. Even the cheap for home usage ion generators can produce millions of ions per second. A Very small output, not suitable for such purposes.

A more powerful one can be built. If the ions are alternating in polarity at even 60 Hz that is a lot of ions and could attract a lot of water vapor molecules together. Adjust frequency according to velocity of the air flow around it.