INNOVATION

Rainmaking machine
A British engineer invents a machine to make it rain in London
The British engineer and professor at the University of Edinburgh, Stephen Salter, famous in the UK for his achievements in the seventies in the tidal field of technology, believes that his new invention: the "rain machine", a sprinkler giant sea water turns into steam, facilitate natural evaporation and the consequent formation of rain, as published by the British magazine "New Scientist".
The machine adapts the design of an existing wind turbine, the Darrieus, like a food grinder three feet in height and two propellers that rotate about a vertical axis.
These propellers would collect seawater and the throw, spray, ten meters above sea level.


According to Salter, this would facilitate the process of natural evaporation because water vapor spray break the resistance of a layer of moist air and static that usually forms over the sea.


Each turbine would be able to spray half a cubic meter of water per second. And Salter has estimated that hundreds of turbines spread over the hot areas of the planet could "make" rain needed to prevent drought.
"One hundred turbines in operation for a hundred years, said the inventor, would be sufficient to theoretically reverse the impact on sea levels will have the greenhouse effect the planet."


While Salter is very optimistic about his new invention, meteorologists are not sure of the effectiveness of this machine.


The weather experts doubt that water vapor can be mixed with air in the upper layers of the atmosphere to form clouds and are difficult to predict where rain will fall.


A meteorologist at the University of Leeds, Ian Brooks, and appreciated the invention: "It's an engineering solution that gives a weather problem. I would never have occurred to an expert in atmospheric phenomena. "