Finally a good idea for the disposal of Brisbane Tyres!
When you’re driving around I bet you don’t generally realise the impact that your tyres could have on the environment and people you’ve never even met. For once car tyres can be seen in a whole new light; as a positive impact on the environment and other people.
One man; Stephen Salter has developed an idea that could stop the formation of Cyclones in tropical climates. He’s had some massive support too; Microsoft founder and known philanthropist Bill Gates has openly come out to back what could possibly be one of the biggest and under appreciated ideas of our time. I’ll explain how this works in a second but first just think about that idea; your used car tyres could be the difference between millions of dollars of damage, the loss of precious property and (worst of all) loved ones.
What Is It & How Does It Work?
To explain that we have to have a quick look at how a Cyclone forms;<./p>
A cyclone only forms when the ocean temperature reaches above 27 degrees Celsius. The warm water heats the air around it and as we all know; warm air rises. As it does this it carries up moisture into the atmosphere and releases that moisture to form clouds then it cools and falls again. This process is how a cyclone, hurricane or typhoon is formed.
Ok now we have that out of the way let’s get back to the Professor Salter and his cyclone stopper. The system designed by Salter has been around for some time now yet things have been strangely quiet concerning it. Designed in 2012 the system has been dubbed by many as the ‘Salter Sink’.
The Salter Sink
In a nutshell the concept of the Salter Sink is one of heat sinking. Which is just a fancy way of saying it is a device that does not use engines or machinery but passively dissipates heat from one area into its surrounding medium (such as air or water).
In this case, the heat sink would be out floating in the ocean where it would cool the temperature of the oceans’ surface through the use of long plastic tubes plunging right down into the coldest parts of the ocean. These plastic tubes would be kept afloat by your used tyres all lashed together.
As waves crash and rock these tyres water will spill into them into the tubes. As wave after wave crashes over the tyres and into the centre of the tube that warm water would work its way down the tubes to the bottom of the ocean forcing cooler water towards the surface and thus cooling the ocean enough to hinder the production of hurricanes.
As you can see the picture isn’t the best but explains the process simply. The warmer water from near the surface would make its way down to the bottom of the ocean to the cooler blue region and thus cool the surface temperature of the ocean.
All this with plastic tubes and your recycled car tyres. Pretty amazing how simple uses for what most consider to be unusable junk can affect so many in such a profound way. We certainly look forward to seeing one of these go into action and hope you do too.
Cheers,
Kevin Wood