Submarine Supertanker Trains for Delivery of Fresh Water Under the Ocean
I first conceived of moving freshwater under the surface of the ocean as a way to deliver vast quantities of water coming off of Greenland in early 2018 I think. At that time I filed a provisional patent application following which I approached the Greenland government but without success. More recently I filed a second patent application, and I actually went and deleted my earlier posts in an attempt to get a patent on something that was no longer patentable because it was revealed publicly on the internet. Although most of the provisional patent I had written had been revealed in articles online, there were a few items that really were patentable; however, I decided to throw this out into the public domain definitively.
People have tried many times to transport fresh water floating on the surface of the ocean. There have been multiple attempts to tow freshwater bags across the ocean in flexible barges. There was also an attempt to tow icebergs all the way to Saudi Arabia. The basic problem with the floating polymeric bag approach is that surface storms tear up the bags. When you are in rough seas and you’re trying to tow a bag which is elastomeric and full of fresh water, the tension on the tow rope keeps fluctuating and will rip the point of attachment. Different problems occur depending on the wavelength and amplitude of the water waves.
Another fact favoring the transportation of fresh water under the surface of the ocean is that submarines have less drag than surface boats. As a result, the energy efficiency of submarines is greater. I realized that because of the buoyancy of fresh water, some form of ballast is needed, or else a heavy hull, which on the return voyage would require variable buoyancy chambers as part of the vessel.
When I first thought of the idea, I considered the possibility of co-shipping gravel or sand along with the fresh water so as to create neutral buoyant structures under the ocean. This fits well for the case of the rivers of Greenland which deliver enormous quantities of good quality sand and gravel to the river mouth. The export of the sand and gravel from Greenland has been explored in the past.
Later I realized that you could also accomplish this using a framework that is quite heavy underwater, and during shipment of the fresh water, buoyancy due to the 3% lower density of fresh water compared to seawater would compensate for the weight of the framework. Then on the return trip, inflatable bags or ballast tanks would be used to return to neutral buoyancy. This is the first time that I’ve described that in any paper or article. It was in my recent patent application which I have decided not to follow up.
It is vitally important to the world to figure out how to move freshwater around economically. Greenland is a special example because all that fresh water that is spilling into the Arctic ocean has the potential to shut down the Gulf Stream. But there are many other reasons for transporting freshwater around the world.
The water that flows out of the Congo River, for example, could help to provide clean water for the entire West coast of Africa. As long as the countries where the water’s flowing from are compensated, it seems fair to me.
When removing freshwater from an ocean system which would otherwise flow into the ocean one must pay attention to the ecology. One of the things I like about taking water from Greenland is that the amount of water flowing off Greenland in the rivers has greatly increased over its historical level, and simply returning the water flow to its historical level would allow extraction of about 100 billion tonnes per year of fresh water.
The water flowing out of the rivers of Greenland is some of the purest water in the world. Without any sterilization at all, it is perfectly drinkable and better quality than practically any other water on Earth.
In the case that the framework of the submarine supertankers is heavy enough to make the large bag of fresh water neutral buoyant, one can have buoyancy compensation devices of several types. One option is to have metal tanks which are filled with compressed air in order to increase buoyancy. This is the way that submarines normally operate.
Some of the optimum materials to use in this sort of device would be water-resistant elastomers with fibers embedded that have good adhesion. Actually the technology used for tires would probably be okay. There might be a reason to put on a special outer elastomer layer designed to minimize adhesion of barnacles. I do know that tires in the ocean often are encrusted by barnacles and avoiding incrustation would be an important aspect of the submarine supertanker. I think using inflatable bags for the freshwater will make it more possible to avoid fouling with barnacles. It’s a little bit like the inflatable wing de-icers that were used by the US Air Force in World War II. Those inflatable wing de-icers are still used on some planes.
In conclusion, I am handing this off to the internet in hopes that someone else can take it forward. There’s lots of money to be made for Denmark and Greenland and it would greatly reduce energy consumption for de-salinization plants.
