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Rebreathing Our Earth – Superpower Earth Challenge

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Monday, October 4, 2021

Rebreathing Our Earth

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Team Members

1) Sarah Ibrahim Habib

2) Tasneem Mohamed Shabaan

3) Gehad Ahmed Ramadan

4) Ahmed Mohamed Hassan

5) Hamed Tarek Hamed Eldeeb

6) Ahmed Mohamed Elgohary

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Problem Identification

  • Earth's ability to recover

There are enormous powers of recovery the earth uses to heal itself from traumatic damages, one of these abilities is climate system.

  • Climate system cycle

To understand the way the climate system works in recovering our earth we should know the climate system cycle:

  1. When The energy from the sun reaches the atmosphere some is absorbed and some is reflected (mainly by clouds) ,and most of the remaining energy heats the earth’s surface.

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  • Then The earth’s surface losses its heat again through rising air currents, radiation and evaporation of water.

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  • Some of the heat passes straight through the atmosphere leaving the earth back to the space but some is absorbed by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane and ozone which. Keep the heat for a bit longer time before in the end all the heat escapes to space and the increase in these gases is the reason for the global warming.
  • Generally there is more heat near the equator than there is at the poles and to balance this inequality the climate system moves the heat from the equator to the poles through the atmosphere and the oceans and in the tropics thunder clouds develop forcing warm air to rise and then drift to the poles at high levels.
  • Cooler flows in the opposite direction at the earth’s surface, setting up cells, similar cells are developed as you move towards the poles. At the boundaries between the cells, air either rising from the earth’s surface or falling down towards, so when the air is rising you will get high pressure, often with rain or snow, and when it's coming down you will get low pressure with fine weather.

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Suggested Solutions

Blue Energy

  • Salinity gradient power (or blue energy) is a renewable energy source refers to the production of electricity by mixing of two solutions with different salt concentrations (e.i mixing river water with a low electrolyte concentration and seawater with a high electrolyte concentration),
  • It aims to reduce emissions of Co2 and greenhouse gases and It’s a source of carbon neutral, but until now several systems for retrieving energy from salinity gradients have been proposed, two of which seem to be in the most advanced stage: 

1. Pressure-retarded osmosis utilizes a water-permeable membrane to separate water streams of different salinities. The flow of water through the membrane from the less saline to the more saline stream pressurizes the latter and its volumetric flow increases. The stream is then directed to a turbine that generates electricity.

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2. Reverse electrodialysis utilizes anion- and cation-exchange membranes to separate water streams of different salinity. Owing to the potential difference, salt ions are transported through a series of membranes toward electrodes. Electron transfer from the anode to the cathode occurs through an external circuit and this electrical flow is exploited.

 

  • The amount of electricity that can be produced from a river flowing into the sea depends on a number of factors, including river and sea salinity and temperature, river water quantity and quality, river to sea water volume ratios, sea salt composition, salinity gradient steepness, infrastructure and local energy demand, and environmental impacts.

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  • In case salinity plants would be operating at full capacity, electricity production from salinity-gradients could amount to 8617 TWh/year. This is equivalent to 55% of the global electricity demand (15,746 TWh/year). Replacing coal-fired power plants with salinity power plants would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 8 Gt CO2-eq/year

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Superhero Design

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Resources

Thank you