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Bizarre Maritime Technology – The Anti-Hurricane Technology Wheel

John Konrad
Total Views: 118
September 15, 2008

Anti-Hurricane Wheel designed to reduce the strength of hurricanes at sea

From the Anti-Hurricane Technology Fund in Slovakia comes this invention for mitigating the effects of cyclone damage. The invention is called “The Anti-Hurricane Technology Wheel” and (if they find funding to build it) would be towed out to sea to be left in the path of an approaching storm. Here are the details from the patent filing:

Said task is dealt with according to the present invention, the principle of which is to reduce the ascendant speed of a tropical cyclone by the sea water pumped on site from under the sea surface above the sea surface and dispersed in the wind at the bottom of such tropical cyclone in/near its eyewall and then drifted to the heights by the kinetic energy of this strong wind.

The weight of several hundred thousand or even million tons of sea water (depending on the number and output power of the facilities) acts continuously against the ascending air flows in/near the eyewall , thus reducing the speed of these flows which results in slowing down the tropical cyclone ‘ s development , the reduction of its maximum category, possibly even its attenuation to a tropical storm. What is happening there is a process of dispersed water droplet aggregation counteracting the above process , but at the same time due to very high speeds of turbulent flow there is also a process of larger drops breaking to smaller droplets , i . e . depending on the wind speed drops maintain a specific maximum size that still allowing them to be born by the usual ascending speed of a cyclone .

The tendency of the centrifugal force to “throw the drops away” eliminates the overall convergent air flow in this location.

What is not described is how the wheel itself would remain intact during the storm or where they are going to find mariners foolish brave enough to sail towards a storm with “The Wheel” in tow.

You can read more about this technology on their homepage LINK.

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