Fluid sprinkling – spraying – and diffusing – Processes – Of weather control or modification
Patent
1996-11-08
1998-09-22
Morris, Lesley D.
Fluid sprinkling, spraying, and diffusing
Processes
Of weather control or modification
239 142, F25C 304
Patent
active
058102493
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention generally is concerned with artificial snow making, and the invention more particularly relates to a method and an apparatus for making snow crystals by means of snow making machines more effectively, with a higher capacity and with an improved snow crystal formation than has so far been made.
When making snow by means of snow making machines water is ejected through a large number of fine atomizing nozzles and is carried along by a central flow of air. For making small drops of water freeze strongly into frozen particles, so called "nuclei" are introduced into the flow of water drops, the so called bulk water flow. The making of snow crystals by means of this type of snow making machine therefore mainly follows two successive steps: created in a separate apparatus, called an atomizer; coming from the ordinary water jet nozzles of the snow making machine in a so called "plume" having a turbulent flow of air some distance from the snow making machine.
In all priorly known snow making machines only some of the water drops are being frozen are influenced by the nuclei while the water drops are still suspended in the air, whereas a certain part of the ejected water drops fall to the ground in a non-frozen or only partly frozen condition. When such non-frozen water drops frozen lying on the ground they generally form a undesired layer of ice or an egg shell like layer of ice which, when subjected to a load, crack thereby giving off water.
For obtaining an ideal snow mixture in a snow making machine it would be necessary to provide a nuclei activation of any and all water drops in the system, thereby transforming any liquid to ice crystals while the water drops are still suspended in the air. To this end it is primarily necessary: mixing the nuclei with the water drops in the so called "plume"; drops have been super-cooled.
The creation of nuclei follows certain technical laws: extremely small water drops are formed spontaneously when the absolute humidity is four times higher than the saturation humidity for a given temperature. Such extremely small water drops freeze spontaneously and create small ice-aggregates if the temperature can be reduced to -42.degree. C. or still less temperature. The said small ice-aggregates grow to sufficiently large nuclei by the so called "Bergeron-process", which shortly means that the ice-aggregates will grow at the expense of the water drops if the ice-aggregates co-exist with the water drops in liquid form in a super humidity saturated environment.
In priorly known snow making machines the strongly cooled nuclei used to be injected more of less directly into the flow or air including the water drops, in some cases from inside the curtain of ejected water drops. This has an effect both that the water drops which are located close to the outer periphery of the flow of water drops are being confronted with the relatively warm ambient air, and also that the cooling energy of the nuclei is relatively quickly consumed, whereby a part of said energy gets lost in that the water drops do not get a sufficiently long time to freeze to form ice crystals.
An important feature of the present invention is that the nuclei, which act as catalysts in the freezing process, are created such as to form a shell, or a containment layer, of nuclei surrounding the core of water drops which are conveyed by a flow of air which is first laminary and which, at a distance beyond the water nozzles, is broken up and becomes turbulent. The nuclei are created at a place where the flow of air has the lowest speed thereby forming a containment layer which is moved along without being broken up to any substantial degree and as far as to a place where the air flow changes from laminary to turbulent air flow. The water drops enclosed by the shell of nuclei thereby get a substantially prolonged time for freezing to ice crystals. By forming the snow making machine with a nose cone of a suitable streamline type there is formed a "back zone" or a "static eddy", having practically still standing a
REFERENCES:
patent: 4223836 (1980-09-01), Eager
patent: 4593854 (1986-06-01), Albertsson
patent: 4634050 (1987-01-01), Shippee
patent: 4682729 (1987-07-01), Doman et al.
patent: 5289973 (1994-03-01), French
patent: 5322218 (1994-06-01), Melbourne
Morris Lesley D.
Nilsson Lenko L.
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