ElectroStatic, NanoCone, Ion Gun, Vortex Separated, Ideal Drop Size, Saltwater Cloud-Cannons

Aaron Franklin

By Aaron Franklin

The apparatus consists of a vertical cylindrical wind-rotor, the interior of which is used as an ideal drop size cloud making machine.

• The inside surface of the cylindrical wind rotor has metal coated polyester film laminated to it with the metal coated surface facing inwards.
• The Metal coated Polyester film has been coated with a light sensitive emulsion, photo-exposed in a lattice of dots, and etched to produce an array of nano-cones on the surface of the metal, surounded by a hexagonal lattice of valleys.
• Spaced by insulators, a few millimeters from the nano-cone surface, is a concentric cylinder of metal mesh. This will probably be silver wire mesh of around 1mm grid spacing and 0.1mm wire gauge.
• At the centre of the cylinder is a non-rotating, star buttressed spar.
• The star buttressed spar has microbubble aerated water plumbed through it, to a regularly spaced grid of de-Lavel nozzles, of around 1mm diameter, aiming tangentially at the inside of the rotor, from the outer tips of the star buttress.
• The water supply aeration is around 50%, with the bubble size controlled to around 0.1mm. This should produce an atomised spray of water droplets around 0.1mm diameter, from the de-Lavel nozzles.
• The 0.1mm water droplets transfer their energy to rotor rotation, and air vortex motion, in the cylinder of air close to the inner surface of the rotor cylinder.
• The 0.1mm water droplets pass through the metal mesh, and land on the nanocone surface, producing a thin film of water.
• A high frequency, high voltage, alternating electric potential is supplied between the nano-cone metal film, and the metal mesh.
• When the voltage peaks the electric field will cause each Nano-cone to jet a charged micro-droplet of water. The apparatus will be tuned so that these droplets will be around half the ideal size for our perfect clouds.
• The opposite charge on the metal mesh, will accelerate each charged droplet. The Voltage frequency will be such that the droplet reaches the mesh at the time that the polarity has fully reversed. This will ensure that the droplet passes through the mesh, and is carried by its momentum to the non-rotating airmass at the centre of the rotor.
• As droplets of alternating polarity are being fired into the rotor-core, each droplet will quickly be attracted to an oppositely charged droplet, combining to form a neutral droplet of the Ideal Size.
• At the bottom of the rotor cylinder the de Lavels are pointed a little upward to induce a helical input of air-large droplet mixture, entraining and sucking in air from the open bottom of the rotor.
• The axiswise upward angling of the lower de Lavels reduces the further up the rotor you go, reaching pure tangential before the top. This will create an inwards airflow towards the rotor axis.

At droplet sizes of 8.e-12 litres, 20m rotor 2m diameter = 120sqm of nanocones, nanocone grid spacing 0.2 mm =25 /sqmm= 25 000 000 /sqm = 3 billion, and 5khz electric field....120 litres per second of ideal droplets could be released by this system.

At an average velocity from nanocone to grid of each droplet of 30m/s = 30 000 mm per second... the droplet will travel 3mm in 1/10000 of a second- the time taken for the 5khz field to reverse polarity.  So with these numbers, 3mm gap between the Nanocone surface and the metal mesh seems appropriate.

Tuning will have to allow for evaporative losses from the droplets, however as all the droplets will have the same size and velocity, this should be an easy task.

It may not be necessary at all to use electrostatics. Larger helical angled de Lavels at the bottom of the rotor creating a vortex seperation system where too large droplets impact the inner surface of the rotor, and small enough ones exit at the top may work adequately. A fatter at the bottom, tapered rotor would work well in this case, as it would help expel out the bottom, the waste flow from the too large droplets centrifically.

Star buttresses may not be neccesary on the central spar, particularly with the non-electric version.

Filtering requirements are low, particles smaller than 0.1mm should cause no problems for the electro version, smaller than 1mm no probs at all for the pure vortex model.