Even if the manufacture of the shade balls consumes more water than the balls save doesn't necessarily mean it's a net loss if the balls are manufactured in a location where water is more plentiful. Also, while I don't know how the manufacturing process consumes water it might be that it can use water which isn't fit for drinking or irrigation.
Couple comments: Bromate is formed from bromine and sunlight, not chlorine. One simple way to look at evaporation is that evaporation takes energy and energy added to the water often ends up as evaporation, as long as water temperature is above the dew point.
Ummm well ACKSHEHWULLEEE when irradiated with ultraviolet light in the Hartley band of the UVB spectrum and the reaction thereby catalyzed, free chlorine or ozone IS usually required to oxidize the broMIDE ions in solution to the broMATE ion which is the carcinogenic form.
No, the chlorine comment is correct. What they found in Los Angeles was that natural bromide ions in the water source, combined with chlorine added for disinfection, and sunlight hitting the reservoir, accelerated the formation of bromate ions. It was previously known that adding ozone to the water could have this effect, but it was a new discovery that chlorine could do it as well. This was the main reason for adding the shade balls to that reservoir.
ikr. it's literally a powerpoint presentation but so interesting. i feel like if my teacher told me to watch this i wouldn't like it but when youtube tells me to watch it...
i guess his topics have expanded, he used to only talk about semi conductors and tech and business in this sector. he only had like 50k subs or something i think even an year ago
Biggest takeaway I got from this is that we ideally should be building reservoirs as long deep tubes with as little surface area as possible. Then evaporation becomes minimal while the volume of storage is preserved. Ofc I'm sure there's many reasons why this is impractical.
I think you are missing a few things, like the scale of dams, the water catchment that fills the dams and digging is very, very expensive compared to using an existing geological formation. Also consider that many reservoirs are also used for power generation which requires them to be up high.
For storing the same volume you would have to dig kilometers into the ground. Quite possibly not possible in many of these places avd definitely not cost effective. Even building underground storage tanks for this volume would mean a huge mega project and would involve costs regarding maintaining them long term and short term costs to keeping them safe to drink.
@@sevurueva5138 Not to mention the potential water quality issues coming from having large volumes of stagnant, untreated water effectively underground...
We should think of the shadeball more as a way to export water from a water rich place (location of shadeball manufacture) and import it at a water poor one (california). So in effect, the shadeballs didn't "waste" water, it just meant they imported water from somewhere else to help save water elsewhere.
Californians need to accept that they live in a desert. Let them stop waisting enormous amounts of water just to keep their useless lawns green and then we can talk.
That assumes it was manufactured in a water rich place. Often due to local subsidies, corruption or just mismanagement, these things get built in water stressed areas.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 yes, that's true and it would be an ideal assumption, though, even then the analogy or way of thinking about it still holds - using water from somewhere else to save water *right here*
Preventing evaporation losses is dumb and expensive. WHY do we have agriculture in deserts near 100% reliant on irrigation? Why are we pumping aquifers dry to irrigate agriculture when people live in the area and rely on the same water? This and many other problems are where our water problems really exist. People just don't need very much water when you take agriculture out of the picture. OBVIOUSLY we need agriculture, but it should be done where it rains. To water agriculture with "fossil water" (deep aquifers that can only be recharged on very long time scales) is the absolute height of hubris and stupidity.
When I look at floating shade covers such as the shade balls, I'm worried about microplastics. Especially when exposure to sunlight is one of the main ways that microplastics form.
I think this may be a misinterpretation of "sunlight is one of the main ways that microplastics form". What that statement typically refers to is that if you have small pieces of plastic in the environment, sunlight causes it to degrade over time, and then abrasion and other factors can break it down into smaller pieces, forming microplastics. These balls are much larger so they're not as affected by sunlight since they have less surface area, but it may still be worth looking at how much plastic is lost due to abrasion between the balls, I think that's a legitimate worry.
@@ska042 regardless of size and surface area. high energy particles from the sun are still going to slam into plastic and cause it to degrade over time. doesn't matter how big of a ball of plastic you got. a marble sized ball and a watermelon sized ball are still gonna get hit by sunlight. the amount of atoms doesn't strengthen the bonds between them
@@dr5290 they use black colors because white ones would have to be thicker to keep out as much light from reaching the waters. the most important purpose of them is to shade the water not keep it cool. it's more effective for avoiding evaporation. you can google it or look up Veritasium video on it.
@@Vizibl3 in that sense can't they make balls white on top to reflect lights and the darker side to be on the water side to not have light leak thru??.. i am sure there are ways to make balls float that way.
This may sound weird but we do essentially the same thing here in Switzerland - we cover some glaciers with white tarps in summer to slow down the melting process. They're our reservoirs really so... 😂
Veritasium made a video about the shadeballs a couple of years ago. Including interviews with one of the engineers who designed the shadeball. It was very interesting.
The surface area of (frequently manmade) reservoirs is minimal compared to that of vegetation and natural water. Yes, drier air helps fires, but reservoirs can't mitigate that.
@@westrimexactly. The amounts seem big until you consider the amounts coming from the ocean and how thinly these amounts would end up being spread out in precipitation
tbf, the water is still going to evaporate, just not in the reservoir, it's gonna evaporate in the farms, etc. If it's gonna evaporate anyway, may as well use it
Such a great channel. Lots of different topics. It must take time, like writing a 3000 word essay plus gathering graphics to suit. Thanks. I’m leaving my current job as I’m sick of it. If and when I get another job I’ll try to become a member.
In South Korea, many homes built are required to have cisterns for water management. The gathering of rainwater is an underutilized resource that homeowners and waters management companies can use to increase reservoir capacity.
Meanwhile, in some US states, it's illegal for homeowners to collect rain. They don't own that rain - the state already sold water collection rights to someone else, intercepting the water before it gets to them is like theft.
it's underutilized by design. as stated above, it's illegal to collect rainwater in many places. far be it from me to explain how the state can sell the water rights to your property without compensating you, seems like an "unjust taking".
12:00 The problem with "place in US discovered that planting trees next to a reservoir reduces evaporation" is that, like many things, it is reinventing the wheel. This is common knowledge where I am from. I.E. The sort of thing parents tell their inquisitive children.
You can take that up with the people who don't like or can't comprehend common knowledge. Unless it has a bunch of peer-reviewed research studies then it's irrelevant to them. Must be probably a myth or misinformation. They only deal with science
Always strikes me how much efforts from public services are put to try to fix an effect of a problem created via private gains. And how little is done to actually fix the problem itself.
Long ago I decided channels with more or less a picture slideshow and a voice reading a text was not for me. But dude, you kept my interest till the end. Ticked all the questions I was going to ask here; "But what about...". One by one I was deleting comments half way writing them. Good job man, Good job!
I reckon floating PV panels should be promoted more to help - expenwive but then electricity has become expensive. Added benefit being if used where HEP's produced they more easily plug into the grid.
Puns aside, it's not a dry video at all, as you suggest at the end. In the areas where my knowledge is somewhat greater than others, you make no mistakes. Your research is either very good, or you already know what you are talking about. Most UA-cam channels covering a range of semi-technical topics can usually be relied upon to make at least some glaring mistakes, but I spotted none. Subscribed.
The thing is the water doesn't "vanish". Atmospheric vapor is what forms clouds. I'd be wary of how preventing evaporation at scale might impact climate conditions years down the line. Also, reducing area of the water (like with the chemical monolayer or shade balls) does reduce evaporation, but it also reduces oxygen absoprtion into the water, possibly affecting life within the reservoir. That said, this looks like a good solution for the driest, most arid areas, especially during drought seasons.
@@left9096 Yeah, that's true, but some of them have existed for a long time and that impacted the local climate in one direction, whereas this could force it a different one yet. It definitely makes way more sense to use with those rather than natural ones, that's for sure.
70% of the earth is covered in salt water that is constantly evaporating and here you are worried about the evaporation effects of some reservoirs which are practically microscopic by comparison. Wow
@@crazy808ish because never in the history of mankind have we made a change to local conditions that led to unforseen side effects, right? I would consider your argument, but jeez, you could've chosen so many ways to reply and yet you went straight to making fun of me.
Under "Managed Water Recharge" there is a Michigan-based company with an Asian name, Parjana. They install passive vertical pipes going from near-surface down into underground aquifers. With no need for energy to pump water, they help reduce flooding during rain events while recharging the groundwater. Considering many semi-arid places have problems with both flooding & drought, this seems like a great way to reduce flooding & save water for dry months. The US Fed gov & state govs should be looking at this!
I have some concerns about the potential to contaminate the aquafirs as the dirt & rock it flows through on the way down filters it. But its not an idea without promise, maybe it would be better to use a retention tank plus leech field setup to still allow for infiltration without risking bacterial or chemical contamination of the aquafirs.
Let's have a look at all the Fracking Fluid the EPA allowed to be pumped into underground aquifers. You'll be surprised at who was in charge at the time.
I must say I'm not surprised Lake Tahoe evaporates fast. I went up there once and the daytime was blinding bright and open on the mountains I wore sunglasses and ski goggles to manage it.
Shade balls don’t have to be made of polyethylene. This is an area begging for creativity. Removing them, if necessary, is difficult given the large number needed to cover a significant area. Other benefits of shade include reducing plant and Cyanobacteria growth. This is important since some Cyanobacteria produce toxins. There are commercial mixing units, some solar powered, to break stratification and can be more efficient than bubblers. They were developed to address a variety of issues (low redox dissolving metals in sediment, vacuole-bearing Cyanobacteria, etc.). Aquifer injections are not practical everywhere depending on the “hydraulic conductivity” and spatial extent of the aquifer(s). Aquifer injection is also useful when managing reclaimed water as some degree of treatment in situ is possible. Thank you for “covering” this topic!
I always wondered about the use of black balls and black shade structures. I would think this would absorb more heat. Wouldn't white be a better color as it reflects solar energy.
@@Assmagnus You literally cannot see the light that gets radiated. You have to be well over boiling for the absorption in the visible spectrum (where most sunlight is) to be greater than the infrared radiation that would have no effect on the absorption of most sunlight.
@@zecorezecron Sunlight peaks in the visible spectrum, however, only about 43% is in the visible spectrum. The shade balls being black also block more light from reaching the water, and provide increased UV protection of the plastic. And like I said, especially at night help radiate heat. What was your intended point?
@@Assmagnus The best material to radiate infrared, which is the only type that be radiated without artificial heating, has no bearing on what humans visibly see. What you want is a material that absorbs (and therefore emits) primarily in the infrared spectrum while reflecting everything else. Being black in the visible spectrum does nothing, literally nothing, except absorb more heat. it does not emit more, it does not block more, and it does not provide more UV protection. Titanium Dioxide does all that, and it is white. Barium sulfate, the best infrared radiator for earth's atmosphere and temperatures, is white. Using a combination of barrium sulfate and a white pourus plastic, you can make a paint that will keep objects below the ambient temperature outside of direct sunlight (such as at night) AND keep the heat absorption to the absolute minimum during the daylight hours. Black material does literally nothing unless you can see the glow from the heat. That means that you are hotter than the melting point of aluminum. That is how hot you need something to be for a visibly black object to radiate heat more efficiently than any other color humans can perceive. There is a reason that airwells (things that actually radiate enough heat to condense water from the air) are all, to the shock of literally no one who took the 101 course on heat transfer, all white in color. Just look at the radiators on the ISS. They're white. They don't paint the spaceships that color just to look nice. So, my point is that not only are you wrong, you didn't even put in the minimum effort into learning about any part of this topic, so you are also stupid.
@@zecorezecron lol ok broh why are they black? Honestly I think you are pretty stupid too. Engaging in an argument on the internet, writing several paragraphs, yet failing to answer the question in any way.
1) 12:00 4-8% by reducing windspeed _stacks_ with the other measures 2) trees are cheap if you plant pioneer species that'll hit a useful size in 3 years from small nursery stock
Very fluid presentation. It went down like water. When I saw the video thumbnail, I decided to jump right in. But then I almost drowned in knowledge. 2/3 of my body felt represented by this video. The other third didn't find the subject matter solid enough.
Vegetation evaporates water out of the ground, but creates shade and sustains life (when not invasive) and anchors the ground. Water evaporates out of bare mud too. Aquifer injection is already often used to dispose wastewater. Gotta mind the hydrogeologic stratigraphy of drawn and injected groundwater. Groundwater is a mined resource.
Evaporation of salt water, on the other hand, is a good thing, because when it returns to earth it's fresh. So we should be considering doing things like bringing salt water into desert depressions, like the Qatara depression in Egypt. Shallow basins of salt water in a desert will permit more evaporation, loading the air with water that can hopefully come down as rain downwind.
Sounds good but creates quite a number of problems. You'd quite literally be salting the earth. Evaporating salt water leaves salt deposits and the land would no longer be useful. Cost benefit analysis. Pumping large amounts of ocean water inland requires large amounts of energy and infrastructure + maintenance. Something interesting for you to research for reference would be the red sea and mono lake(California, USA)
@@jumpingsloth3963 At Qatara you don't need to pump it inland. You simply need (below-sea-level) tunnels. And it won't leave salt behind, because it will be permanently at sea-level and effectively part of the Mediterranean. And even if it does, the Qatara depression is worthless desert. It would provide additional surface area for evaporation. Some studies believe that it would evaporate so fast that water flowing from the Mediterranean could be run thru turbines to generate several hundred MW of power, but that would be an optional extra.
I think the difficult part is how to measure the fresh water return when it's random and inconsistent world-wide. I wouldn't oppose the idea, but there's costs for that magnitude of a project. Convince us further.
@@jumpingsloth3963 The project, as I understand it, has been justified in the past on the basis of electricity generation based on flow into the depression from the Med. So presumably a lot of water is constantly evaporated.
I was in Saudi Arabia just after Gulf War 1. The streets had no storm water drains. When winter rains came the streets looked like canals in Venice. Thete were a bunch of tabker trucks with suction pumps collecting eater and I was tlld it was to be pumped downhole for water supply.
A nifty way to stop evaporation is floating a layer of oil on top. 2 problems happen however. The oil used can't be toxic but the next problem is hear can't escape and the water can get super warm underneath it. In fact that presents an opportunity where heat can be stored to yield energy or the warm water can be directly used to heat buildings and such.
Also a great way to reduce evaporation is having a deeper body of water. While the lakes were dry in California they should have deepened them which also would increase capacity but make for steep banks.
Isn't that if the evaporation happened, the vapor carry heat energy up. It absorbed the sensible heat of ground transform it into latent heat, means that the soil surface is cooled by this event meaning the cooling process of earth. Where does the latent heat energy go? The water vapor goes up, then at the high of cloud it release heat to surrounding air and transform water vapor into liquid or condensation. If it volume is big enough the liquid falls to the ground as rain or snow depend on how high the surrounding temperature was. Then the releasing heat will rise the surrounding air temperature cause the air to go up because of the air density becoming lower than the surrounding air densoty. Then, it heates the upper surrounding air. The natural convection occured, level by level until the heat reaches outer space. That is how the heat energy of the earth flows to outer space. The matters which are primarily water, ground gases and dust go back down to the ground during the heat energy left for outer space. As we know, most of energy that comes to the earth is from solar radiation. The different of accumulati9n amount of enegy hit the ground cause the winter, summer, fall and spriig to happened. The solar radiation energy is much bigger than man made energy plus heat energy from volcano. Therefore if the ground energy (coming from solar, man made and geothermal) get higher, the more dense and often the rain will be. Flood is the result. The atmospher temperatur is only a little bit changes.
2:45 Cold air does not have the ability to carry very much water away. Warm, 25°C (77°F), air at 80% humidity can carry away about the same amount of additional water as cold, 0°C (32°F), air at 0% humidity. Either can carry an additional 5 grams of water per cubic meter. The temperature is actually the more important factor rather than initial relative humidity. 30°C (86°F) air can carry six times as much water vapor mass as 0°C (32°F) air, so 50% relative humidity air at the warmer temperature will evaporate three times as much water as 0% RH at the cooler one.
Make a big container out of copper, with the bottom painted so that the surface looks to be the same colour as the rest of the reservoir, put the container into the reservoir with the wall above the surface, and fill it to the same level. Now measure the liquid loss inside the container to find the per surface area evaporation rate of the reservoir? Just a random idea, seems like it should give fairly good results?
"Studies have shown that throwing shade can be very effective." As a recent patreon subscriber (this was out on patreon before I supported it), this quote alone makes it worth a year. This feeling of pride for something you've supported, I wonder if this is akin to the feeling you have if your child graduates magna cum laude? This is such consistently good content.
That joke was like dust in my mouth Seriously, windbreaks are reliant upon slowing the wind speed down at ground level. A singular row of impermeable trees can result in both turbulence from the wind that goes over the top, as well as a localised increase in wind speed at ground level. A line of medium sized trees, and supplementary rows of diffuse shrubs can counter this. However, this has downsides, not limited to the extra cost of installation, and the loss of what would have otherwise would have been just pasture.
Haha, lake wohlford is literally 20 minutes from my house. We catch the big cats by the bubble maker, bait fish love it! Plus, during the winter, the lake has an awesome waterfall that you can see going up the Grade. Cool stuff, didn't know something so close to me was of importance.
Unless I missed something in the video, why did California remove the shadeballs and replace them with covers and the such? I understand that the drought ended but surely they could have just left them there longer since they're supposed to last like 10 years?
@@benjaminfranklin329 More likely that a crony had a new solution to be sold. Never underestimate the amount of corruption. It is not a "doesn't happen here" thing...
The bigger question is: Why are the balls black? Would not a black ball absorb the rays of the sun and then heat up the area around itself causing more evaporation? If it was white it would reflect much of the heat back in to space.
For everyone saying what about the evaporation falling as precipitation, you are failing to understand how the weather patterns in that region function as well as failing to take into account the primary sources of the water flowing into the reservoirs. The largest supplier of water in southern California is the Colorado River. The majority of the water in the Colorado River comes from snow melt runoff in the Rocky Mountains. That snow falls during the fall to early spring. The greatest amount of the precipitation in California occurs in the hot summer months. Water that evaporates in California in the summer does not return to southern California in any form.
I'm not convinced "shade balls" actually work... I can see the other floating things working as they don't create thinning water areas to be heated up... not to mention the shade balls are black and black absorbs heat. But also micro plastics and chemicals are a growing concern.
If you collected the evaporation very,very high above the lake's/ reservoirs,you could drop it all back down through stacks upon stacks of turbines.or drop large container's of liquidised moisture from cranes holding the cover up from very high above,,,and dropping the weight of the water as a "gravity battery"design
One of the best shades would b to build a roof of Solar Panels it would provide the shade , the panels will b more efficient since its being naturally cooled , there is no land cost involved or environment issues , the investment would pay off in a decade or so , this is being effectively carried out in India , California is planning the same on its canals .
If the balls were manufactured in an area with plentiful water and then shipped to California, then there is no net loss of water. However, I doubt the economics of shipping cargo can be justified when the containers are filled with 99% air. Maybe the dense HDPE pellets can be manufactured overseas and shipped to drought-striken regions, where local factories that don't require water simply mold and inflate the balls close to the intended reservoir.
pumping it onto aquifers sounds like the best idea, but do you even have to pump it in? those are places where the ground is porous enough for a large enough depth before solid bedrock to hold large amounts of water arent they? so you should just be able to pump it to those locations, out into a large field and just let it sink. If i am not mistaken.
We in Los Angeles depend upon our underground reservoirs/aquifers. There is almost no evaporation and much more room for storage. There are permeable basin that we fill up to recharge the underground basins.
@@cdrone4066 The city has five years of above ground storage. We were not as badly effected as other parts of the state. But this is a very dry place. Not every city in California has the same water resources.
You could cover it with the new float on the surface water purifying sponges just invented ,that could surve two purposes,with the added benefit of doing some of the work the chemical treatment stages use in terms of energy and time sitting,and this cost.if it's possible to catch evaporation it might as well skip the treatment stage again,but water absorbing gel's /floating sponges it's totally hypothetical
Underground water storage in California makes the most sense. This place gets massive rains every 10 to 20 years that equal the amount of water or more in the in-between years. There is no possible way to store this water above ground, lack of places and of course evaporation. The interesting thing in California, because of its geology, there are massive aquifers underground where this water couldvbe stored. Because of a recent 20 year drought and this years massive rains Californians have woken up to the idea of underground water storage.
The issue with the balls taking water to make only matters if they are being made where water is scarce. Otherwise, it's effectively transporting water even if they cost more to make than is being saved. At that point, the comparison is if manufacture and implementation cost more than just shipping the water itself. Considering how heavy water is, and that those balls are hollow, it's unlikely shipping water would be cheaper.
first of all its to prevent bromate forming. second of all, water is not the issue, its where the water is at. you can produce the balls in a place where water is abundant, transport the balls to california, then save water there. probably a lot more efficient than transporting 1.1 billion tons of water from god knows how far away.
I guess SchadeBalls will become very popular. And water infiltration is already done in the Ried area nearby the Rhine River when it has sufficient water.
So, how does reducing the surface tension of the water reduce the evaporation? (I hope I heard that right, in the first section, about chemical layers). IMO, reduced surface tension should make ripples and waves bigger. OK, so I found "The calming effect of oil on water", a nice paper in the American Journal of Physics from 2007. From the abstract: "We conclude that the calming effect of oil on surface waves is principally due to the dissipation of wave energy caused by the Gibbs surface elasticity of the monolayer, with only a secondary contribution from the reduction in surface tension." So, it looks like I was wrong... but without seeing the whole article, I don't have their complete explanation.
It seems Australia knows a whole lot more about water conservation & management than any other country in the world.. Then again, we need to know that so our taps don't run dry in this increasingly warming climate 🇦🇺
Evaporation increases humidity in the air and lowers the dew point, increasing the chance for rain. This process happens on land also, grasses catch rain or dew and increase the chance of rain, Cattle destroy the grass retarding the chance for rain, this is happening all over the world. Pick an arid place on google earth and zoom in on a road with a fence on both sides, there is a noticeable difference of vegetation from inside the fenced area to outside, Migrating herds used to eat the grasses then moved on and the grasses recovered, cattle and fences stopped that.
I don’t have time to watch all of this right now, but these balls were in an article around 2012 I believe, maybe even earlier. If I recall, the balls worked, but resulted in some sort of unexpected contaminant, and they had to implement a second system to prevent it, but I think it accomplished the end goal of keeping the water from evaporating, and keeping it clean.
Yup, I was going to make a witty comment, but the hot dry wind evaporated it from my mind. ;*[} Yeah, here in northern California we've thought about those solutions for evaporation, but they all would cut back on the summer skinnydip too much...cheers.
I understand the desire to keep the water...to have a predictable source of water for consumption and farming...but preventing large bodies of water from performing its natural processes and giving us Rain. "Oh no, its not raining as much and taking longer." Maybe I am wrong, I am no geologist or weather dude thingy hehe, but seems like we are hurting our water cycle while doing all this.
I'm happy I watched enough of this video to get to the solar panels part. Bonus: the water cools the solar panels making them more efficient. I saw a few years back that India had built shades above their canals and put solar panels on them to get power and lower evaporation.
What about using bamboo sticks? Don't they float for a long time? The floating PV option is very attractive of course, but my question with that floating PV is whether not even more value (with small extra expense) can be extracted from such a project by enabling some sort of aquaculture practice using that floating structure. Many of these surface waters are nutrient deserts and the floating structure could provide a basis to change that.
Another note regarding solar energy harvesting on bodies of water: the practical and theoretical efficiency records for solar energy harvesting are achieved using concentrator methods and more specifically 2-axis tracking parabolic dish type concentrator methods. Currently these methods are not popular because too tedious, but I hope they could one day make a come-back as part of a more "frugal" society. On a lake or another body of water, one of the two tracking axes can be dealt with easily/cheaply by hooking together your giant array of concentrators and rotating them like a boat so as to track the sun.
Has anybody modeled the possible down-cycle impacts of less atmospheric moisture if evaporation is controlled on a large scale? An alternative way of looking at this is how much do local weather patterns depend on the bodies of water in a region?
There‘s an Engineering video of the few dams that do this. However, water can be stored in more than just conventional dams, such as water tables, though they have drawbacks as well.
Theoretically if the reservoir is used to water nearby agriculture then the water not evaporated from the reservoir should be made up for by the transpiration from the crops. Otherwise yes, large bodies of water definitely affect local climate. The best known instance is the Great Lakes and their associated lake effect snow, although no human made reservoir is nearly as large as any of the great lakes.
In Thailand we're leaning towards the floaty solar panels as there is only summer season here so the panels operates at full capacity all years round. 😅
I'm like 95% sure that the balls never would have worked to begin with and would have only increased the evaporation in most situations, while only reducing it in a few select optimal scenarios. The balls only work by catching/blocking the sun and then having the wind available to cool the balls off and carrying the heat away. But when there's no wind then suddenly the black balls are concentrating all the heat in the top layer of the water, while normally a lot of the sun would go into the water and more gradually warm the water. Add sporadic wind, so the balls are bobbing a little, and making themselves wet every now and then and you effectively made an evaporation system where you're using the water instead of the wind to cool the balls.
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Why are those shade balls colored black? If you're trying to prevent the water from heating and evaporating, isn't that the worst possible color you could possibly use?
Has the effect of prevented evaporation leading to reduced rainfall been measured? For inland reservoires I'd kinda expect there to be no net public benefit to preventing evaporation?
Even if the manufacture of the shade balls consumes more water than the balls save doesn't necessarily mean it's a net loss if the balls are manufactured in a location where water is more plentiful. Also, while I don't know how the manufacturing process consumes water it might be that it can use water which isn't fit for drinking or irrigation.
Manufacturing needs more pure water as the water isn't being used for cooling.
Couple comments:
Bromate is formed from bromine and sunlight, not chlorine.
One simple way to look at evaporation is that evaporation takes energy and energy added to the water often ends up as evaporation, as long as water temperature is above the dew point.
A well put "But, actually"
points to erik.
Ummm well ACKSHEHWULLEEE when irradiated with ultraviolet light in the Hartley band of the UVB spectrum and the reaction thereby catalyzed, free chlorine or ozone IS usually required to oxidize the broMIDE ions in solution to the broMATE ion which is the carcinogenic form.
Ah, I was a bit perplexed what chlorine had to do with the formation of a bromine compound. Thanks!
No, the chlorine comment is correct. What they found in Los Angeles was that natural bromide ions in the water source, combined with chlorine added for disinfection, and sunlight hitting the reservoir, accelerated the formation of bromate ions. It was previously known that adding ozone to the water could have this effect, but it was a new discovery that chlorine could do it as well. This was the main reason for adding the shade balls to that reservoir.
@@Rubicola174congrats. You win an internet
I was thinking “Wow so much of the research Is Australian” then I realised that it was obvious why.
Israel would also have a lot of research in this area perhaps?
I can't think of any reasons why we care so much about water... Seems such a waste 😉
me when my reservoir evaporates 😡
You mean dumb as that ball?
😡
me when my reservoir invaporates 😊
Me when my reservoir evaporates ⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫
Me 🥵🥵🥵
Dude, this channel grows on me more and more every episode. Really like your topic choices! Becoming an instant watch pretty quickly with me. Thanks!
ikr. it's literally a powerpoint presentation but so interesting. i feel like if my teacher told me to watch this i wouldn't like it but when youtube tells me to watch it...
i guess his topics have expanded, he used to only talk about semi conductors and tech and business in this sector.
he only had like 50k subs or something i think even an year ago
"studies show throwing shade can be very effective". I loved that!
Biggest takeaway I got from this is that we ideally should be building reservoirs as long deep tubes with as little surface area as possible. Then evaporation becomes minimal while the volume of storage is preserved. Ofc I'm sure there's many reasons why this is impractical.
It also strikes me that that is kinda what a well is lol. 😅 Edit: I mean in terms of shape, not function.
@@ArawnOfAnnwna well isn't a storage solution, rather a long "straw" to access water already there
I think you are missing a few things, like the scale of dams, the water catchment that fills the dams and digging is very, very expensive compared to using an existing geological formation. Also consider that many reservoirs are also used for power generation which requires them to be up high.
For storing the same volume you would have to dig kilometers into the ground. Quite possibly not possible in many of these places avd definitely not cost effective.
Even building underground storage tanks for this volume would mean a huge mega project and would involve costs regarding maintaining them long term and short term costs to keeping them safe to drink.
@@sevurueva5138 Not to mention the potential water quality issues coming from having large volumes of stagnant, untreated water effectively underground...
Wetlands are also a way to store water and a big bonus is the high biodiversity that this sort of habitat brings.
We should think of the shadeball more as a way to export water from a water rich place (location of shadeball manufacture) and import it at a water poor one (california). So in effect, the shadeballs didn't "waste" water, it just meant they imported water from somewhere else to help save water elsewhere.
Californians need to accept that they live in a desert. Let them stop waisting enormous amounts of water just to keep their useless lawns green and then we can talk.
That assumes it was manufactured in a water rich place. Often due to local subsidies, corruption or just mismanagement, these things get built in water stressed areas.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 yes, that's true and it would be an ideal assumption, though, even then the analogy or way of thinking about it still holds - using water from somewhere else to save water *right here*
Preventing evaporation losses is dumb and expensive. WHY do we have agriculture in deserts near 100% reliant on irrigation? Why are we pumping aquifers dry to irrigate agriculture when people live in the area and rely on the same water?
This and many other problems are where our water problems really exist. People just don't need very much water when you take agriculture out of the picture. OBVIOUSLY we need agriculture, but it should be done where it rains. To water agriculture with "fossil water" (deep aquifers that can only be recharged on very long time scales) is the absolute height of hubris and stupidity.
@@tarstarkuszblow up desert cities then
When I look at floating shade covers such as the shade balls, I'm worried about microplastics. Especially when exposure to sunlight is one of the main ways that microplastics form.
You could just die from dehydration I suppose. No microplastics then.
I think this may be a misinterpretation of "sunlight is one of the main ways that microplastics form". What that statement typically refers to is that if you have small pieces of plastic in the environment, sunlight causes it to degrade over time, and then abrasion and other factors can break it down into smaller pieces, forming microplastics. These balls are much larger so they're not as affected by sunlight since they have less surface area, but it may still be worth looking at how much plastic is lost due to abrasion between the balls, I think that's a legitimate worry.
@@ska042 regardless of size and surface area. high energy particles from the sun are still going to slam into plastic and cause it to degrade over time. doesn't matter how big of a ball of plastic you got. a marble sized ball and a watermelon sized ball are still gonna get hit by sunlight. the amount of atoms doesn't strengthen the bonds between them
@@dr5290 they use black colors because white ones would have to be thicker to keep out as much light from reaching the waters. the most important purpose of them is to shade the water not keep it cool. it's more effective for avoiding evaporation. you can google it or look up Veritasium video on it.
@@Vizibl3 in that sense can't they make balls white on top to reflect lights and the darker side to be on the water side to not have light leak thru??.. i am sure there are ways to make balls float that way.
Love the video, had to research the CA shade ball controversy during one of my uni projects, glad to see it being mentioned!
This may sound weird but we do essentially the same thing here in Switzerland - we cover some glaciers with white tarps in summer to slow down the melting process. They're our reservoirs really so... 😂
Veritasium made a video about the shadeballs a couple of years ago. Including interviews with one of the engineers who designed the shadeball. It was very interesting.
I was going to make the same comment.
Why do you think he made this video?
its on the thumbnail veritasiums video
@@motionsick asia is water stressed, it needs a cheap solution
Veritasium tells tall tales ???
Are there negative consequences of not letting the water evaporate? Can dryer airs cause greater heatwaves and forest fire potential?
Or lower rainfall in other areas? Can you maximize water evaporation along the coasts to create more rain?
The surface area of (frequently manmade) reservoirs is minimal compared to that of vegetation and natural water. Yes, drier air helps fires, but reservoirs can't mitigate that.
@@westrimexactly. The amounts seem big until you consider the amounts coming from the ocean and how thinly these amounts would end up being spread out in precipitation
Water allows air to hold more heat
tbf, the water is still going to evaporate, just not in the reservoir, it's gonna evaporate in the farms, etc. If it's gonna evaporate anyway, may as well use it
Such a great channel. Lots of different topics. It must take time, like writing a 3000 word essay plus gathering graphics to suit. Thanks. I’m leaving my current job as I’m sick of it. If and when I get another job I’ll try to become a member.
In South Korea, many homes built are required to have cisterns for water management. The gathering of rainwater is an underutilized resource that homeowners and waters management companies can use to increase reservoir capacity.
Meanwhile, in some US states, it's illegal for homeowners to collect rain. They don't own that rain - the state already sold water collection rights to someone else, intercepting the water before it gets to them is like theft.
@@vylbird8014 guess that depends on the state, i know in desert like areas like Arizona people can collect and store all the rain they receive
Same in Poland
it's underutilized by design. as stated above, it's illegal to collect rainwater in many places. far be it from me to explain how the state can sell the water rights to your property without compensating you, seems like an "unjust taking".
@@vylbird8014 Maybe they were inspired by Israel who implemented such measures at least a decade earlier.
Floating Solar 🌐🙌
12:00 The problem with "place in US discovered that planting trees next to a reservoir reduces evaporation" is that, like many things, it is reinventing the wheel.
This is common knowledge where I am from. I.E. The sort of thing parents tell their inquisitive children.
You can take that up with the people who don't like or can't comprehend common knowledge. Unless it has a bunch of peer-reviewed research studies then it's irrelevant to them. Must be probably a myth or misinformation. They only deal with science
Always strikes me how much efforts from public services are put to try to fix an effect of a problem created via private gains. And how little is done to actually fix the problem itself.
Because those private rents are used to bribe politicians.
It's amazing how much detailed knowledge goes into these videos. How can a single person master this much information in one video let alone hundreds?
Long ago I decided channels with more or less a picture slideshow and a voice reading a text was not for me. But dude, you kept my interest till the end. Ticked all the questions I was going to ask here; "But what about...". One by one I was deleting comments half way writing them. Good job man, Good job!
Yum yum, love tons of micro-plastics abrading into my drinking water whenever the wind blows.
This " loosing water to evaporation" is what fuels rains.If you stop evaporation - you stop rains making droughts worse.
9:10 Woe, micro plastics upon ye
I reckon floating PV panels should be promoted more to help - expenwive but then electricity has become expensive. Added benefit being if used where HEP's produced they more easily plug into the grid.
Puns aside, it's not a dry video at all, as you suggest at the end.
In the areas where my knowledge is somewhat greater than others, you make no mistakes. Your research is either very good, or you already know what you are talking about. Most UA-cam channels covering a range of semi-technical topics can usually be relied upon to make at least some glaring mistakes, but I spotted none.
Subscribed.
The thing is the water doesn't "vanish". Atmospheric vapor is what forms clouds. I'd be wary of how preventing evaporation at scale might impact climate conditions years down the line. Also, reducing area of the water (like with the chemical monolayer or shade balls) does reduce evaporation, but it also reduces oxygen absoprtion into the water, possibly affecting life within the reservoir. That said, this looks like a good solution for the driest, most arid areas, especially during drought seasons.
dont worry those reservoirs are man-made your not taking anything away from nature...
Well those resevoirs are mostly man-made anyway. I don't think preventing evaporation will have a drastic effect on the local climate.
@@left9096 Yeah, that's true, but some of them have existed for a long time and that impacted the local climate in one direction, whereas this could force it a different one yet. It definitely makes way more sense to use with those rather than natural ones, that's for sure.
70% of the earth is covered in salt water that is constantly evaporating and here you are worried about the evaporation effects of some reservoirs which are practically microscopic by comparison. Wow
@@crazy808ish because never in the history of mankind have we made a change to local conditions that led to unforseen side effects, right?
I would consider your argument, but jeez, you could've chosen so many ways to reply and yet you went straight to making fun of me.
Under "Managed Water Recharge" there is a Michigan-based company with an Asian name, Parjana. They install passive vertical pipes going from near-surface down into underground aquifers. With no need for energy to pump water, they help reduce flooding during rain events while recharging the groundwater. Considering many semi-arid places have problems with both flooding & drought, this seems like a great way to reduce flooding & save water for dry months. The US Fed gov & state govs should be looking at this!
you already know what they rather spend money on... not the state but for virtue signaling and terrible project management
what's the specific department that deals with stuff like this called?
I have some concerns about the potential to contaminate the aquafirs as the dirt & rock it flows through on the way down filters it.
But its not an idea without promise, maybe it would be better to use a retention tank plus leech field setup to still allow for infiltration without risking bacterial or chemical contamination of the aquafirs.
This is the first video of yours I've ever seen, and the line "doing plastic ball things" got you another subscriber. x3
We got a super el nino this year and my reservoir lake filled by like 10% in a week when only a few years ago we thought we might loose it
Let's have a look at all the Fracking Fluid the EPA allowed to be pumped into underground aquifers. You'll be surprised at who was in charge at the time.
I must say I'm not surprised Lake Tahoe evaporates fast. I went up there once and the daytime was blinding bright and open on the mountains I wore sunglasses and ski goggles to manage it.
All reservoirs should install solar panels
Exactly!
Shade balls don’t have to be made of polyethylene. This is an area begging for creativity. Removing them, if necessary, is difficult given the large number needed to cover a significant area.
Other benefits of shade include reducing plant and Cyanobacteria growth. This is important since some Cyanobacteria produce toxins.
There are commercial mixing units, some solar powered, to break stratification and can be more efficient than bubblers. They were developed to address a variety of issues (low redox dissolving metals in sediment, vacuole-bearing Cyanobacteria, etc.).
Aquifer injections are not practical everywhere depending on the “hydraulic conductivity” and spatial extent of the aquifer(s). Aquifer injection is also useful when managing reclaimed water as some degree of treatment in situ is possible.
Thank you for “covering” this topic!
Cranberry growers have been moving small round objects out of the water efficiency for many years. You just need floating booms and a conveyor belt.
I always wondered about the use of black balls and black shade structures. I would think this would absorb more heat. Wouldn't white be a better color as it reflects solar energy.
Black absorbs more visible light, but radiates away infrared better.
@@Assmagnus You literally cannot see the light that gets radiated. You have to be well over boiling for the absorption in the visible spectrum (where most sunlight is) to be greater than the infrared radiation that would have no effect on the absorption of most sunlight.
@@zecorezecron Sunlight peaks in the visible spectrum, however, only about 43% is in the visible spectrum. The shade balls being black also block more light from reaching the water, and provide increased UV protection of the plastic. And like I said, especially at night help radiate heat. What was your intended point?
@@Assmagnus The best material to radiate infrared, which is the only type that be radiated without artificial heating, has no bearing on what humans visibly see. What you want is a material that absorbs (and therefore emits) primarily in the infrared spectrum while reflecting everything else. Being black in the visible spectrum does nothing, literally nothing, except absorb more heat. it does not emit more, it does not block more, and it does not provide more UV protection. Titanium Dioxide does all that, and it is white. Barium sulfate, the best infrared radiator for earth's atmosphere and temperatures, is white. Using a combination of barrium sulfate and a white pourus plastic, you can make a paint that will keep objects below the ambient temperature outside of direct sunlight (such as at night) AND keep the heat absorption to the absolute minimum during the daylight hours.
Black material does literally nothing unless you can see the glow from the heat. That means that you are hotter than the melting point of aluminum. That is how hot you need something to be for a visibly black object to radiate heat more efficiently than any other color humans can perceive. There is a reason that airwells (things that actually radiate enough heat to condense water from the air) are all, to the shock of literally no one who took the 101 course on heat transfer, all white in color.
Just look at the radiators on the ISS. They're white. They don't paint the spaceships that color just to look nice.
So, my point is that not only are you wrong, you didn't even put in the minimum effort into learning about any part of this topic, so you are also stupid.
@@zecorezecron lol ok broh why are they black? Honestly I think you are pretty stupid too. Engaging in an argument on the internet, writing several paragraphs, yet failing to answer the question in any way.
Cover them in floating solar panels.
Power protecting water? Yes please.
Bonus points if you use 2 reservoirs for pumped storage.
1) 12:00 4-8% by reducing windspeed _stacks_ with the other measures
2) trees are cheap if you plant pioneer species that'll hit a useful size in 3 years from small nursery stock
Very fluid presentation. It went down like water.
When I saw the video thumbnail, I decided to jump right in. But then I almost drowned in knowledge.
2/3 of my body felt represented by this video. The other third didn't find the subject matter solid enough.
Clever 😄
@@user-yd8wp8rz2b At first I didn't find the right words. But then they just flowed out of me.
Vegetation evaporates water out of the ground, but creates shade and sustains life (when not invasive) and anchors the ground. Water evaporates out of bare mud too. Aquifer injection is already often used to dispose wastewater. Gotta mind the hydrogeologic stratigraphy of drawn and injected groundwater. Groundwater is a mined resource.
Evaporation of salt water, on the other hand, is a good thing, because when it returns to earth it's fresh.
So we should be considering doing things like bringing salt water into desert depressions, like the Qatara depression in Egypt. Shallow basins of salt water in a desert will permit more evaporation, loading the air with water that can hopefully come down as rain downwind.
Sounds good but creates quite a number of problems. You'd quite literally be salting the earth. Evaporating salt water leaves salt deposits and the land would no longer be useful. Cost benefit analysis. Pumping large amounts of ocean water inland requires large amounts of energy and infrastructure + maintenance. Something interesting for you to research for reference would be the red sea and mono lake(California, USA)
@@jumpingsloth3963 At Qatara you don't need to pump it inland. You simply need (below-sea-level) tunnels. And it won't leave salt behind, because it will be permanently at sea-level and effectively part of the Mediterranean. And even if it does, the Qatara depression is worthless desert.
It would provide additional surface area for evaporation. Some studies believe that it would evaporate so fast that water flowing from the Mediterranean could be run thru turbines to generate several hundred MW of power, but that would be an optional extra.
I think the difficult part is how to measure the fresh water return when it's random and inconsistent world-wide. I wouldn't oppose the idea, but there's costs for that magnitude of a project. Convince us further.
@@jumpingsloth3963 The project, as I understand it, has been justified in the past on the basis of electricity generation based on flow into the depression from the Med. So presumably a lot of water is constantly evaporated.
@@ucomaco Not an engineer. The project has been costed on the basis of electrical generation based on flow from the Mediterranean into the depression.
"Studies have shown that throwing shade can be extremely effective" - Oustanding, 10/10 no notes.
I was in Saudi Arabia just after Gulf War 1. The streets had no storm water drains. When winter rains came the streets looked like canals in Venice. Thete were a bunch of tabker trucks with suction pumps collecting eater and I was tlld it was to be pumped downhole for water supply.
Still better than when your evaporator reservoirs.
True Bro, I hate when that happens and no-one makes videos about it.
A nifty way to stop evaporation is floating a layer of oil on top. 2 problems happen however. The oil used can't be toxic but the next problem is hear can't escape and the water can get super warm underneath it. In fact that presents an opportunity where heat can be stored to yield energy or the warm water can be directly used to heat buildings and such.
Also a great way to reduce evaporation is having a deeper body of water. While the lakes were dry in California they should have deepened them which also would increase capacity but make for steep banks.
Isn't that if the evaporation happened, the vapor carry heat energy up. It absorbed the sensible heat of ground transform it into latent heat, means that the soil surface is cooled by this event meaning the cooling process of earth. Where does the latent heat energy go? The water vapor goes up, then at the high of cloud it release heat to surrounding air and transform water vapor into liquid or condensation. If it volume is big enough the liquid falls to the ground as rain or snow depend on how high the surrounding temperature was. Then the releasing heat will rise the surrounding air temperature cause the air to go up because of the air density becoming lower than the surrounding air densoty. Then, it heates the upper surrounding air. The natural convection occured, level by level until the heat reaches outer space. That is how the heat energy of the earth flows to outer space. The matters which are primarily water, ground gases and dust go back down to the ground during the heat energy left for outer space. As we know, most of energy that comes to the earth is from solar radiation. The different of accumulati9n amount of enegy hit the ground cause the winter, summer, fall and spriig to happened. The solar radiation energy is much bigger than man made energy plus heat energy from volcano. Therefore if the ground energy (coming from solar, man made and geothermal) get higher, the more dense and often the rain will be. Flood is the result. The atmospher temperatur is only a little bit changes.
2:45 Cold air does not have the ability to carry very much water away. Warm, 25°C (77°F), air at 80% humidity can carry away about the same amount of additional water as cold, 0°C (32°F), air at 0% humidity. Either can carry an additional 5 grams of water per cubic meter. The temperature is actually the more important factor rather than initial relative humidity. 30°C (86°F) air can carry six times as much water vapor mass as 0°C (32°F) air, so 50% relative humidity air at the warmer temperature will evaporate three times as much water as 0% RH at the cooler one.
Make a big container out of copper, with the bottom painted so that the surface looks to be the same colour as the rest of the reservoir, put the container into the reservoir with the wall above the surface, and fill it to the same level. Now measure the liquid loss inside the container to find the per surface area evaporation rate of the reservoir?
Just a random idea, seems like it should give fairly good results?
"Studies have shown that throwing shade can be very effective." As a recent patreon subscriber (this was out on patreon before I supported it), this quote alone makes it worth a year. This feeling of pride for something you've supported, I wonder if this is akin to the feeling you have if your child graduates magna cum laude? This is such consistently good content.
That joke was like dust in my mouth
Seriously, windbreaks are reliant upon slowing the wind speed down at ground level. A singular row of impermeable trees can result in both turbulence from the wind that goes over the top, as well as a localised increase in wind speed at ground level. A line of medium sized trees, and supplementary rows of diffuse shrubs can counter this. However, this has downsides, not limited to the extra cost of installation, and the loss of what would have otherwise would have been just pasture.
Haha, lake wohlford is literally 20 minutes from my house. We catch the big cats by the bubble maker, bait fish love it! Plus, during the winter, the lake has an awesome waterfall that you can see going up the Grade. Cool stuff, didn't know something so close to me was of importance.
this channel is shifting from its essence
Lake Tahoe is interesting. I would have thought reservoirs in cool locations like the high Sierras would have low evaporation.
Unless I missed something in the video, why did California remove the shadeballs and replace them with covers and the such? I understand that the drought ended but surely they could have just left them there longer since they're supposed to last like 10 years?
Trying to find logic in California is a fool's errand
Possibly because they'd be a problem if the reservoir overflowed.
@@benjaminfranklin329 More likely that a crony had a new solution to be sold. Never underestimate the amount of corruption. It is not a "doesn't happen here" thing...
The bigger question is: Why are the balls black? Would not a black ball absorb the rays of the sun and then heat up the area around itself causing more evaporation? If it was white it would reflect much of the heat back in to space.
"Throwing shade can be very effective" :)
For everyone saying what about the evaporation falling as precipitation, you are failing to understand how the weather patterns in that region function as well as failing to take into account the primary sources of the water flowing into the reservoirs. The largest supplier of water in southern California is the Colorado River. The majority of the water in the Colorado River comes from snow melt runoff in the Rocky Mountains. That snow falls during the fall to early spring. The greatest amount of the precipitation in California occurs in the hot summer months. Water that evaporates in California in the summer does not return to southern California in any form.
I'm not convinced "shade balls" actually work... I can see the other floating things working as they don't create thinning water areas to be heated up... not to mention the shade balls are black and black absorbs heat.
But also micro plastics and chemicals are a growing concern.
"Californias need every drop of water they can get for their big lawns of theirs" the shade 🤣
More about the massive amount of agriculture.
the lack of it
Lol, for a lot of the high income places it's true
Civilization would collapse if we had less almonds.
If you collected the evaporation very,very high above the lake's/ reservoirs,you could drop it all back down through stacks upon stacks of turbines.or drop large container's of liquidised moisture from cranes holding the cover up from very high above,,,and dropping the weight of the water as a "gravity battery"design
love the swipe at lawns. they're an unsustainable obsession
This started out dry and ended even drier.
One of the best shades would b to build a roof of Solar Panels it would provide the shade , the panels will b more efficient since its being naturally cooled , there is no land cost involved or environment issues , the investment would pay off in a decade or so , this is being effectively carried out in India , California is planning the same on its canals .
The water joke at the end is worth the entire video watch .
You assume they threw away the shade balls after short term use at one location.
This was as interesting as it was unexpected (and welcome)... great vid.
If the balls were manufactured in an area with plentiful water and then shipped to California, then there is no net loss of water. However, I doubt the economics of shipping cargo can be justified when the containers are filled with 99% air. Maybe the dense HDPE pellets can be manufactured overseas and shipped to drought-striken regions, where local factories that don't require water simply mold and inflate the balls close to the intended reservoir.
The balls are about 2/3rds water.
00:04 with an area exceeding 100 square meters???!!!??? surely a unit error has occurred
pumping it onto aquifers sounds like the best idea, but do you even have to pump it in? those are places where the ground is porous enough for a large enough depth before solid bedrock to hold large amounts of water arent they? so you should just be able to pump it to those locations, out into a large field and just let it sink. If i am not mistaken.
when I hear shade , the first thing that I think of floating solar panel.
Floating solar arrays are being tested in europe. In California they are using solar shades over high volume water canals.
Good thinkin!
We in Los Angeles depend upon our underground reservoirs/aquifers. There is almost no evaporation and much more room for storage. There are permeable basin that we fill up to recharge the underground basins.
So what are there always droughts in CA.
@@cdrone4066 The city has five years of above ground storage. We were not as badly effected as other parts of the state. But this is a very dry place. Not every city in California has the same water resources.
Where are you recording these videos? In a cathedral? The echo isn't bad but I am surprised how pronounced it is.
You could cover it with the new float on the surface water purifying sponges just invented ,that could surve two purposes,with the added benefit of doing some of the work the chemical treatment stages use in terms of energy and time sitting,and this cost.if it's possible to catch evaporation it might as well skip the treatment stage again,but water absorbing gel's /floating sponges it's totally hypothetical
Solar Freakin' .... Reservoirs!
Underground water storage in California makes the most sense. This place gets massive rains every 10 to 20 years that equal the amount of water or more in the in-between years. There is no possible way to store this water above ground, lack of places and of course evaporation. The interesting thing in California, because of its geology, there are massive aquifers underground where this water couldvbe stored. Because of a recent 20 year drought and this years massive rains Californians have woken up to the idea of underground water storage.
The issue with the balls taking water to make only matters if they are being made where water is scarce. Otherwise, it's effectively transporting water even if they cost more to make than is being saved. At that point, the comparison is if manufacture and implementation cost more than just shipping the water itself. Considering how heavy water is, and that those balls are hollow, it's unlikely shipping water would be cheaper.
first of all its to prevent bromate forming. second of all, water is not the issue, its where the water is at. you can produce the balls in a place where water is abundant, transport the balls to california, then save water there. probably a lot more efficient than transporting 1.1 billion tons of water from god knows how far away.
I guess SchadeBalls will become very popular.
And water infiltration is already done in the Ried area nearby the Rhine River when it has sufficient water.
So, how does reducing the surface tension of the water reduce the evaporation? (I hope I heard that right, in the first section, about chemical layers).
IMO, reduced surface tension should make ripples and waves bigger.
OK, so I found "The calming effect of oil on water", a nice paper in the American Journal of Physics from 2007. From the abstract: "We conclude that the calming effect of oil on surface waves is principally due to the dissipation of wave energy caused by the Gibbs surface elasticity of the monolayer, with only a secondary contribution from the reduction in surface tension."
So, it looks like I was wrong... but without seeing the whole article, I don't have their complete explanation.
I was just wondering about this exact topic. Incredible
It seems Australia knows a whole lot more about water conservation & management than any other country in the world.. Then again, we need to know that so our taps don't run dry in this increasingly warming climate 🇦🇺
Evaporation increases humidity in the air and lowers the dew point, increasing the chance for rain. This process happens on land also, grasses catch rain or dew and increase the chance of rain, Cattle destroy the grass retarding the chance for rain, this is happening all over the world. Pick an arid place on google earth and zoom in on a road with a fence on both sides, there is a noticeable difference of vegetation from inside the fenced area to outside, Migrating herds used to eat the grasses then moved on and the grasses recovered, cattle and fences stopped that.
I don’t have time to watch all of this right now, but these balls were in an article around 2012 I believe, maybe even earlier. If I recall, the balls worked, but resulted in some sort of unexpected contaminant, and they had to implement a second system to prevent it, but I think it accomplished the end goal of keeping the water from evaporating, and keeping it clean.
Yup, I was going to make a witty comment, but the hot dry wind evaporated it from my mind. ;*[}
Yeah, here in northern California we've thought about those solutions for evaporation, but they all would cut back on the summer skinnydip too much...cheers.
Floating solar panel is best way to go. Generate green energy and save water.
In Auckland the reservoirs around the city in the hills are in forest reserves, so they are already surrounded by trees.
Making the shade balls black was an absurd oversight... they must heat up like ovens
I understand the desire to keep the water...to have a predictable source of water for consumption and farming...but preventing large bodies of water from performing its natural processes and giving us Rain. "Oh no, its not raining as much and taking longer." Maybe I am wrong, I am no geologist or weather dude thingy hehe, but seems like we are hurting our water cycle while doing all this.
I'm happy I watched enough of this video to get to the solar panels part. Bonus: the water cools the solar panels making them more efficient. I saw a few years back that India had built shades above their canals and put solar panels on them to get power and lower evaporation.
But if the goal is to keep heat out of the reservoir, then using it to cool solar panels defeats that purpose.
What about using bamboo sticks? Don't they float for a long time? The floating PV option is very attractive of course, but my question with that floating PV is whether not even more value (with small extra expense) can be extracted from such a project by enabling some sort of aquaculture practice using that floating structure. Many of these surface waters are nutrient deserts and the floating structure could provide a basis to change that.
Another note regarding solar energy harvesting on bodies of water: the practical and theoretical efficiency records for solar energy harvesting are achieved using concentrator methods and more specifically 2-axis tracking parabolic dish type concentrator methods. Currently these methods are not popular because too tedious, but I hope they could one day make a come-back as part of a more "frugal" society. On a lake or another body of water, one of the two tracking axes can be dealt with easily/cheaply by hooking together your giant array of concentrators and rotating them like a boat so as to track the sun.
Has anybody modeled the possible down-cycle impacts of less atmospheric moisture if evaporation is controlled on a large scale? An alternative way of looking at this is how much do local weather patterns depend on the bodies of water in a region?
There‘s an Engineering video of the few dams that do this. However, water can be stored in more than just conventional dams, such as water tables, though they have drawbacks as well.
Theoretically if the reservoir is used to water nearby agriculture then the water not evaporated from the reservoir should be made up for by the transpiration from the crops.
Otherwise yes, large bodies of water definitely affect local climate. The best known instance is the Great Lakes and their associated lake effect snow, although no human made reservoir is nearly as large as any of the great lakes.
In Thailand we're leaning towards the floaty solar panels as there is only summer season here so the panels operates at full capacity all years round. 😅
Thanks for the smile at the end
I'm like 95% sure that the balls never would have worked to begin with and would have only increased the evaporation in most situations, while only reducing it in a few select optimal scenarios.
The balls only work by catching/blocking the sun and then having the wind available to cool the balls off and carrying the heat away. But when there's no wind then suddenly the black balls are concentrating all the heat in the top layer of the water, while normally a lot of the sun would go into the water and more gradually warm the water. Add sporadic wind, so the balls are bobbing a little, and making themselves wet every now and then and you effectively made an evaporation system where you're using the water instead of the wind to cool the balls.
Would be first, but then there's another comment from 2 months ago rofl
Lol pretty amusing
Means the video was published unlisted back then...Patreon bonus probably (or just feedback from friends).
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Only rich californians can afford to have a nice lawn. Honestly, lawns are a huge ecological issue everywhere, not just california.
yeah its pretty dumb to be wasting valuable resources for "looks" humans need to wake up.
Why are those shade balls colored black? If you're trying to prevent the water from heating and evaporating, isn't that the worst possible color you could possibly use?
imagine engineering these, when you could just float solar panels on the reservoir.
A markdown user spotted! That ## in the subtitles gave it away
6:27 "Studies have shown that throwing shade can be very effective" source, yo' moma
Has the effect of prevented evaporation leading to reduced rainfall been measured? For inland reservoires I'd kinda expect there to be no net public benefit to preventing evaporation?
In before reservoir covers cause the surrounding area to become more arid due to lack of water in the air.