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      Sea salt as a potential ocean mirror material

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          Abstract

          The additives used to produce ocean foams also inhibit Ostwald ripening of seasalt producing very fine particle size and a reflectance of 77% so that seasalt can make a contribution to surface albedo.

          Abstract

          One way to increase planetary albedo in order to ameliorate global warming is to use ocean foams. The energy needed to maintain such foams, even if drawn from wave or wind is high and so they must be persistent, ideally surviving up to a month. While studying combinations of surfactants and gelling agents to make long-lived foams in salt water, it was apparent that some foams developed progressively higher reflectance as the upper surface dried. Scanning electron microscopy of the upper surface revealed 0.5 μm, near-monodisperse salt crystals. Thus with a refractive index of ∼1.5, sea salt, being in somewhat prodigious supply, now enters the arena as a potential mirror material. Its reflectance depends on the microstructure, specifically on the inhibition of Ostwald ripening. Studies were therefore carried out to investigate particle size effects in a membrane such as a foamed gel in which seawater dries on the upper surface. It was demonstrated that the organic additives used to create foam persistence also mediated sea salt crystallisation and in this way drastically modified the reflectance of the upper layer. These experiments suggest a new direction of research in planetary surface albedo modification.

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          Most cited references18

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          GEOENGINEERING THECLIMATE: History and Prospect1

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            The composition of Standard Seawater and the definition of the Reference-Composition Salinity Scale

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              Effective reflectance of oceanic whitecaps.

              P. Koepke (1984)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                RSCACL
                RSC Advances
                RSC Adv.
                Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
                2046-2069
                2015
                2015
                : 5
                : 49
                : 38926-38930
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Chemistry
                [2 ]University College London
                [3 ]London
                [4 ]UK
                Article
                10.1039/C5RA03469H
                df458bd3-7cc2-485f-a831-4571178cb208
                © 2015
                History

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