https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2509.07985
PDF https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2509.07985 104 pages, 55 figures
A Planetary Cooling Hose
Roderick A. Hyde
Geoengineering may offer a way to pause global warming, providing the
time for more permanent solutions to become effective. Erection of a
high-altitude hose offers an affordable and near-term approach to deliver
sulfur-bearing fluids to the stratosphere in order to perform
geoengineering via solar radiation management. We discuss the design of a
hose extending to an altitude of 20 km and sized to deliver 100 ktons of
sulfur per year. The sulfur, in the form of H2S, is pushed up the hose by a
pump on the ground and then sprayed out at the top, forming H2SO4 aerosols
which scatter enough sunlight to perform geoengineering. Because the hose
operates continuously, it only has to deliver about 50 gallons/minute
(little more than a garden hose). The flux from a single hose is not
sufficient to stop global warming by itself, but is enough to test the
effect of the aerosols, and, once replicated to about 20 sites across the
planet, can offset all the warming caused by atmospheric CO2 .
Two varieties of hose are presented here, one delivering H2S as a
liquid and the other as a gas. Pumping liquid H2S through a narrow 20 km
hose requires high pressure, which can be handled by strong and lightweight
hose walls or by placing intermediate pumps along the hose. The hose is
held up by a suite of balloons, either all at its top, or with some placed
along its length as well. The greatest challenge in suspending such a hose
is wind, which if not dealt with properly (by streamlining both the
balloons and the hose) will collapse the hose. The wide hoses needed to
deliver gaseous H2S are particularly susceptible to wind, so must be
enclosed within lightweight aero-shrouds to reduce wind forces.
After treating the design of these two hoses, we lay out the steps
needed to develop and fabricate them, and conclude with some thoughts on
how the hoses might be fielded.
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