Orbital Pollution Control

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to enhance the well known heat island effect over large cities. This effect causes warm air to circulate as a closed system, under a low inversion layer, over a city, thereby causing the pollutants to remain essentially entrapped, with a constantly increasing concentration. It is therefore suggested that, as a temporary measure (for the next 10–15 years) the application of additional heat content to a small portion of the interior of such a circulating regime might cause a chimney effect, with a resultant breakthrough in the inversion layer: followed either by a complete breakdown of this layer and the subsequent alleviation of heavy concentration doses by natural mixing; or by a ventilating of the city’s airshed through the artificial “chimney”. It is further proposed that the additional heat necessary to generate this corrective measure should come from a source, the operation of which a.) does not cause additional pollution and b.) can easily be utilized over continental expanses. Specifically, the end results of simplified calculations are presented which show that this problem may have a feasible solution by using a very large dirigible mirror, in stationary orbit. This mirror, since it is dirigible, could be directed at various cities during different hours of the day, and thus might represent an economically attractive proposition, for the attainment of this alleviative treatment.