Can ice structures solve a Himalayan water crisis? | Hacker News Reader

Can ice structures solve a Himalayan water crisis?

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98 pointsyumraj24 comments

The Minnesota versions of those are the places they dump snow cleared from roads. Some of them last into July. Somebody should tell these guys to add a nice insulating layer of dirt.

https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2017/06/despite-heat-snow-...

Its how the local hospital here is cooled during the summer. Large pile of snow which is covered in wood chips. Apparently it generated 1345,3 MWh cooling energy in 2002..

http://www.snowpower.se/sundsvalls-kylanlaggning_en.asp

Picture: http://miljonytta.se/byggnader/lagrad-sno-ger-fjarrkyla/

(Site's down for me)

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Cornell does something similar, using Cayuga Lake as a heat sink for their campus cooling:

https://medium.com/cornell-university/lake-source-cooling-d3...

As does the city of Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_water_source_cooling

I heard that they actually changed the temperature of the lake that way.

It's something they could store underground to help refrigeration in summer for e.g. public buildings. Actually that (= storing ice in winter in a basement) is how refrigeration was often done before the invention of the refrigerator / freezer.

This is actually still done in many large cities with time-of-day electricity prices. The cooling is done using typical cooling equipment, but instead of directly cooling the air in the building during the day, ice is built up thoughout the night when electricity is cheap and the outdoor air is cool. During the day, the air in the building is cooled with melting ice and the normal refrigeration equipment is used as a daytime backup only.

Snow cleared from road is exceptionally dirty. It has sand, salt, any other chemicals used for snowmelt, and then engine oil.

Why don't you mail the guy? or message him on facebook.

Seems like this would have occured to them already, over the hundreds of hours of time invested.

Anyway, it seems to me that dirt would absorb more heat than ice, resulting in faster melting.

This seems similar to something they do in India but just with water. They trap the water in the rainy seasons in ways that let it seep into the ground. The tech just involves piles of mud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johad

A nice example how some clever engineering which doesn't require many resources can improve the living conditions a lot. After all, human civilization really took off with early irrigation technologies. Climate change already today means, that the living conditions all through the world are changing. While fighting climate change itself should be the global top priority, projects like this are so important to deal with the already existing consequences - and give hope that with more work like this we can at least compensate for some of the changes.

For those who have watched the Bollywood movie “3 idiots”, the role of Dr Phunsuk Wangdu was/is inspired by Sonam Wangchuk.

Ice stupas are quite a sight if you happen to visit Leh Ladakh area in India

Reminds me of the Yakhchāl I've visited in Yazd, Iran. They used to sell ice from those in the summer to traders travelling the Silk Road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l

How many of these things would be needed? It seems a great idea if you can harvest the melt water directly, but the idea is to let it seep into the streams and rivers. This thing looks big, but compared to the volume of water carried by even a tiny stream it is nothing. Water for drinking is measured in liters. Water for agriculture is measured in terms of acre-feet (just over 1x10^6 liters). I'm thinking perhaps a million such structures would be needed to make any real difference to agriculture below a particular watershed. If they all need underground pipes then this would become a huge project, akin to more traditional approaches such as dams.

I don't think this is meant for commercial agriculture. It's for small communities that grow their own food.

A nice thing about this is that you can deploy them incrementally. A large dam is more of an all-or-nothing proposition.

On a river system a system of dams can be incremental. Giant dams are all about creating water pressure for power generation. If you are interested in mitigating water flow over the course of a year within a watershed then a series of much smaller structures can be built incrementally.

There is a very western parallel to this issue. Most ski resorts are suffering from reduced snow and earlier springs. To feed their snow-making equipment they need water, preferably water that doesn't need to be pumped up a mountain or harvested from a protected river. Look around and you'll see alpine dams being build and expanded at large resorts. These aren't holding back streams, they are using terrain to store water/snow/ice in one season for use in an another, exactly the same problem.

Oh, true about water retention vs power generation.

Watched Dune the other day. Seems very reminiscent of moisture traps. A simple idea that enables long term storage of moisture for when it is most needed.

Could the melting water be used to drive a generator, that cools the ice?

Just remember that it will never be “free” energy, there will at least be thermodynamic losses in principle, and that will be greatly amplified in reality.

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