
Can jet engines clean up Delhi's air? - scdoshi
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38285567
======
throwanem
Doesn't this just make the smog somebody else's problem? Unless I'm missing
something - which is quite possible - it appears to be perhaps the purest
expression yet of the "not in _my_ backyard" concept.

~~~
Retric
Smog is made of up several things, but some of it is only stable over
relatively short time frames. Move that to the upper atmosphere and it does
not nessisarily end up in anyone's back yard.

EX: Ozone is not heathy, but it's useful in the upper atmosphere. It's formed
in part from Nox compounds, but they both end up as N2 and O2 the two main
components of the atmosphere.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide)

PS: This seems unlikely to work well. However, one option to break up the heat
inversion might be to change surface coloration over a relatively large area
to create large updrafts / downdrafts.

~~~
astrodust
The jet engine idea is absurd. Why not build a taller stack that pokes through
the inversion layer? Non-trivial to engineer, but guaranteed to work if
constructed.

In the end using coal is probably a super bad idea. Hopefully other methods
come online soon.

~~~
sathackr
My guess is the inversion layer is thicker than a taller smokestack could be
practically constructed.

Yes, we can build buildings almost 1km high, but that's not practical for
every smoke stack in the city.

A jet engine is a much cheaper and quicker to deploy option, assuming it
actually works.

~~~
gurneyHaleck
Last time I checked, a jet engine doesn't quite blow smoke entirely across a
tarmac.

Maybe hot air just rises anyway. Maybe kinetic influence matters less than
boosting the thermal energy?

But inversion layers change with the weather, so even if this works once, it
may not work every time. And a band-aid that fixes this now, may only
encourage more runaway growth covered up by more band-aids.

Wouldn't want to actually change technologies though. Just blunder along and
cobble together dust busters and blow torches and continue with business as
usual.

I suppose I'd only expect roughly the same from my own town supervisor...

~~~
sathackr
I have my doubts as well as to its effectiveness, and of course, it's just a
band-aid, but if the band-aid stops the pain long enough to fix the underlying
issue, then go for it.

Unfortunately, like many tech band-aids, once the pain goes away the problem
is ignored until it flares up again.

------
ascotan
So according to google a 747 can through 36,000 gallons of fuel in a 10 hour
trip. Being conservative and you only need half as much for 2 engines at full
throttle, that means that you would need ~40K gallons of fuel a day?

Google tells me that jet fuel ranges from $4-$8 a gallon, therefore the
operating costs for a single truck is around a quarter million dollars a day
($250,000)? Even if the operating cost is only 1/5 of this ($50,000 a day),
that's 20 million dollars a year in fuel costs.

If India has 20 million a year to spend on fuel for this contraption, why
wouldn't they just spend that money to clean up the power plants instead?

My guess is that the operating costs of this terrible idea are so large, they
would hardly ever turn it on. I agree that this seems like a PR stunt rather
than a real idea.

~~~
rz2k
Believe it or not, retrofitting a single large coal-fired power plant can cost
more than a billion dollars.

~~~
abakker
Does that mean retrofitting is more expensive than just building a net new
solar plant of the same capacity?

~~~
rz2k
I'm not in the power industry, but you can read more about the economics of
retrofits here[1], and technologies here[2]. I'd imagine the cost of
retrofitting depends on how much pollution needs to be mitigated to make the
(pollution*dollars)/power figure acceptable.

This industry source[3] seems to have about as many stories about stations
being decommissioned as it does about large retrofit projects, which says that
in the US the cost assigned to the pollution often is more expensive than
moving to another source.

Like a lot of environmental issues, I think concerns about emissions tend to
be treated as though they are decadent compared to immediate economic impact,
until a crisis is underway. That is, people notice their power bill, brownouts
or their factory shutting down from a shortage of electricity, but they may
not directly attribute their children's asthma or getting cancer a decade
later to the power plant. Furthermore people can bemoan the waste of
shuttering a functional power plant if the harm the decommissioning averted is
not tangible to them. Crisis-level smog days can help justify policies that
take action, as well as create an appreciation for the importance of air
quality in general.

These jet engines sound like the equivalent of building a taller smokestack.
They're probably a cheap way to lessen some of the health effects during a
smog crisis, but not any sort of long term solution.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-
pow...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-coal-fired-power-plants-
update-close/)

[2] [http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-
Clean-C...](http://nma.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Fact-Sheet-Clean-Coal-
Technology.pdf)

[3] [http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-
upgrades.html](http://www.power-eng.com/coal/coal-retrofits-upgrades.html)

------
reacharavindh
I'm Indian. I'' concerned about the air quality for my fellow citizens in
Delhi, but an idea like this should never be allowed without proper scientific
research of impact. What if blasting pollution to the upper atmosphere causes
an even bigger problem? India being a developing economy wouldn't have the
money to fix that as well :-( and the coal plants would continue to run up Jet
engines until it becomes another crisis because it makes business sense for
them.

I can't see this idea ending well. Because a thorough scientific evaluation of
impact isnt going to be cheap.. India might as well make deals for Nuclear
plants for that money, or keep extending the already good use of solar and
wind power setups.

------
blondie9x
Make Delhi air tolerable but make climate change on Earth worse. This masks
the bigger problem, fossil fuels and the changes they cause to the entire
planet. Pushing smog from one place to another sounds like a terrible red
herring.

~~~
tn13
Climate change is not a priority for India where people are already dying of
polluted air. It is pointless to think about "clean air for future
generations" when the current generation itself is dying at rapid rate.

As an Indian I will leave that problem for Californians and New Yorkers.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well, OR you could try to fix both problems. You can blow the pollution
somewhere else OR couldn't you instead clean up the sources of pollution?
India doesn't even have to develop many of the solutions, scrubbers for coal
plants, catalytic converters, 4 stroke engines, and a plethora of other
technologies have already been developed and refined.

~~~
tn13
Again, gross ignorance about India and its people. This is probably modern day
version of imperialist "Indians are ignorant heathens we need to show them the
light".

Indians actually don't care about climate change and global warming and will
not care for a long time to come. This is an exclusively first world problem.

~~~
jogjayr
> Indians actually don't care about climate change and global warming and will
> not care for a long time to come.

Granted I only visit India about once a year but that was not the impression I
got at all. Climate change is discussed in the media (English and non-
English). India is already suffering from many of the effects; heat waves,
drought and water shortages and much of the general public and leadership
seemingly agree on the cause. I was actually pleasantly surprised how
seriously it's taken there compared to the US.

~~~
tn13
Climate change is not a political issue in India. American government and
organizations are pumping a lot of money into India over climate related
issues. Clearly as a result of that you will see ivory tower intellectuals
writing in op-eds.

Indian public policy however does not see climate change as an issue unless it
is about stopping some project for political or financial gains.

------
mitchtbaum
Jet engines seem like they have good potential if applied effectively. They
could use the engines as an intake into a maze of water walls[0]. They could
also use them near passive air cleaners during slow winds[1]. What else?

0: [http://www.kineticfountains.com/blog/do-water-fountains-
clea...](http://www.kineticfountains.com/blog/do-water-fountains-clean-indoor-
air/)

1: [http://gizmodo.com/5992764/this-giant-mesh-wall-acts-like-
an...](http://gizmodo.com/5992764/this-giant-mesh-wall-acts-like-an-air-
filter-for-mexico-city)

------
akerro
It's not really cleaning, it's more like wiping under a blanket.

~~~
mirekrusin
Exactly, cleaning spilled coffee on the table by smashing it with palm of your
hand - table looks cleaner, room - not so much.

------
ipreferhumans
When you ignore problems until they reach a crisis level, all solutions are
short-term.

This is just another symptom of our global situation that's similarly being
collectively ignored.

But hey, mars!

~~~
ohitsdom
Earth saving technology is developed and pioneered in space exploration so...
yeah, Mars.

~~~
Jemmeh
I think maybe they are referring to the fact that some people think we can
just trash this planet because hey, there's another one.

------
audunw
I'm conflicted: On one hand this sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. Why
would you try to make coal less smoggy, rather than focusing 100% on replacing
the plant? On the other hand, if it works, it will probably improve the health
of a lot of people living in the city.

Is it ethical to make people suffer, if it's for the sake of giving the people
and the government more motivation to phase out coal power plants?

~~~
merpnderp
I think the logic likely goes like this. Coal power is cheap and cheap power
allows industry to grow faster. Faster economic growth means faster growth of
the people out of poverty. And since poverty kills through lack of education,
nutritious food, good jobs and safe infrastructure, bad coal is still better
than no energy, or energy so expensive it slows growth.

------
bryan11
By sending all those soot particles high into the atmosphere, will they create
an effect similar to that of a volcano where the soot reflects sunlight?

------
chha
Wouldn't replacing the power plants be cheaper (and better) in the run rather
than running jet engines to get rid of the pollution? Why isn't that an option
in this case?

~~~
camtarn
Indeed... the idea of burning more fossil fuels to blow away the emissions
from burning dirty fossil fuels seems pretty crazy, but I guess that's the
nature of short-term solutions. I assume that the cost of building new power
plants and buying enormous quantities of more expensive fuel for them probably
vastly outweighs the cost of getting a few retired jet engines and tankers
full of jet fuel.

~~~
jessriedel
This has nothing to do with carbon and global warming. It has to do with smog,
which kills millions of people through respiratory problems and decreases
quality of life. The additional carbon emitted from running the jet engine is
negligible compared to the carbon emitted by the plant.

~~~
camtarn
Fair enough.

------
ad_a
This is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever read.

~~~
cpncrunch
It sounds kind of plausible until you spend a few minutes thinking it through.

------
manishsharan
Power plants are not the only source of pollution in Delhi or India.They burn
garbage as well as manure for fuel. And the land-fill also caught fire. On my
last visit, I saw this up close: [http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/delhi-
pollution-panel-sends-n...](http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/delhi-pollution-
panel-sends-notice-to-civic-body-over-fire-at-garbage-dumping-ground-1397971)

My dad and I have allergic asthma and this just makes it worse for us.

------
Derbasti
I wonder how they plan to keep the engines maintained. Jet engines aren't
exactly cheap, and maintenance, spare parts, and fuel aren't free, either.

~~~
pp19dd
Indeed. Though I don't think they intend to maintain them. The article cites
donated 'retired' engines.

So this is an experiment, or a P.R. stunt. But if they'd take this seriously,
it'd be so weird to estimate the maintenance costs. $5 mil per engine, 3-4
months uptime, 2 months downtime for rebuild so you'd need multiple engines,
constant sandblasting by particles sucked in the turbines.

~~~
notahacker
In theory there's no shortage of engines available for scrap value because
they're obsolete and/or their expensive moving parts have reached their life
limit for airworthy aircraft, and most of them will keep running for a while
yet. The fuel bill is a bigger deal than the supply of old engines

I still agree with the people here that think this is a colossally stupid
idea.

------
kbart
Why not mount engines on the top of chimney itself? It looks more logical and
effective than trailer on a ground. Though, I'm still skeptical as this is not
a solution to a problem, but more a cover up of it. Coal in XXI century is not
an acceptable power source.

~~~
stuckagain
Why not just design the chimney properly in the first place? Chimneys are
supposed to have enough updraft to do this by themselves.

~~~
Johnny555
To do what? Blast emissions at 900mph through a temperature inversion?

The world's highest chimney is just over 400m, I don't know if that's high
enough to get above the inversion layer.

In any case, the pollution is not just coming from power plants and other
industrial uses with chimneys:

 _The widespread use of festival fireworks, the burning of rubbish by the city
's poor, plus farm waste from around the city, vehicular emissions and
construction dust, all contribute to the city's thick "pea-soup" fogs._

------
photonwins
There is no silver bullet, govt is probably trying a multi thronged approach
to address the problem. A Solar power plant is being built in Rajastan,
Western India[0], one more in neighbouring Gujarat [1] & one more just got
completed in South India [2], and there are nuclear power plants being built
or in the initial design phase. These things take time, but there needs to be
some interim solutions as well. Don't you think?

[0] -
[http://www.rrecl.com/PDF/Solar%20Park%20Bhadla%20Presentatio...](http://www.rrecl.com/PDF/Solar%20Park%20Bhadla%20Presentation%203.pdf)

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat_Solar_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat_Solar_Park)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuthi_Solar_Power_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuthi_Solar_Power_Project)

------
hashnsalt
So I see that alternative energy sources are talked about a lot when
discussing climate change. Why isn't there just as much R&D and discussion
going on about the other half of the equation - reversing climate change or
reducing the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere or making megacities
smog-free?

~~~
philipkglass
We already know a lot about making megacities smog-free. That's why London and
Los Angeles had absolutely dreadful air in the mid-20th century but it's much
better now. As for why Delhi hasn't followed the example of richer cities in
cleaning up the air, I'd say it is mostly due to lack of funds for
infrastructure and enforcement.

There is also research about reducing the amount of CO2 already in the
atmosphere. Here's one of my recent favorite papers:
[http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/cont...](http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-
block/UsefulDownloads_Download/2639B3403ED947729B86FA1B2275AFD9/article%20Taylor%20et%20al%20\(2015\).pdf)

The reason that emissions-free energy sources get discussed more than carbon
dioxide reduction from the atmosphere is that reducing emissions appears to be
significantly less expensive and more scaleable for dealing with the bulk of
the problem. Once you bolt on the extras necessary to make coal plants low-
CO2, the electricity costs more than if you'd just eliminated coal altogether,
so there's no point to it. For an example, see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project)

------
hyperpape
I don't know if this is a good idea (really, I know very little about this,
save having read about the concept a long time ago), but everyone jumping to
the conclusion that this must be a bad idea should look up thermal inversions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_\(meteorology\)).
As I understand them, they prevent the dispersion of smog, and create much
denser pockets of pollution than would exist in a city that didn't have a
thermal inversion.

So it seems like one reading of the situation is that most cities "make the
pollution someone else's problem" in the sense that their pollutants disperse
in a way that pollutants from cities like Delhi don't.

------
ebbv
I learned as a kid that moving the mess into the closet doesn't count as
cleaning.

------
CodeSheikh
Why not just ban the usage of fireworks for various festivities such as Diwali
or enforce stricter vehicle inspection code during annual registration? I am
sure there will be "some" folks jumping through/going-around the enforced laws
but it can make a significant difference when a good majority starts following
them and such following gradually increases every year. In this way more and
more cities start implementing similar routines.

Sometimes we get so much caught up in "cool" or "fun" projects that it becomes
easy to ignore simple yet basic implementations that lies in front of our eyes
all-along :)

------
arkj
The author has a strange notion of cleaning up.

------
module0000
We're going to reduce fossil fuel waste by...burning more fossil fuels(jet
engines don't run on water)?

I hope this works, but within my small knowledge sphere, don't think that it
will. Please prove me wrong India :)

------
jpollock
I was expecting a story about changing a coal fired plant for a gas turbine
plant to reduce CO2 and particulate emissions. I was not expecting using old
jet engines to blow away the coal exhaust!

Guess this is a opex vs capex thing?

------
stillworks
Will it not simply create a blue colored hole in the sky for the duration the
jet engine is turning and then when the engine is turned off the hole will
soon turn grey again ?

Assuming they fire the engine during daytime. I hope they do it in the day
time as that will be simply awesome and better due to the possibility of sonic
boom (from the gaseous fluid in the jet exhaust going near supersonic) or the
noise otherwise will prevent people from sleeping within a couple mile radius.

------
mirekrusin
Stupid question - could jet engines be used by rich middle-east states as
floating platforms on the sea/s to create clouds/rain on dry/desert?

------
ricardobeat
Why not point it the other way around into a filter instead of just moving the
smog further into the atmosphere?

------
preek
I might be missing something, but this sounds like an idea taken from the
movie Idiocracy.

------
analognoise
At least they're trying something badass. This seems one step above "We're
going to have Todd do a gnarly Tornado kick at the smog."

------
disposablezero
Jet engine silver bullet rather than holistic, comprehensive smog abatement.
Yeah, right.

------
alimbada
So what happens when it rains?

------
Havoc
Burning more fuel...brilliant plan.

------
YoDawg
Betteridge's Law.

------
Neliquat
In short, no.

How is this being upvoted?

~~~
fuzzy2
Because people feel like this is worth thinking (read: getting worked up)
about.

I think so, too, because I cannot image how this is a good idea. Blowing
pollutants into the upper(-ish) atmosphere, what could possibly go wrong?

