Repairing the Ozone

[vtohthree]

I have a direct and simple question out of curiosity(and ignorance of the field).

Can the earth's ozone be repaired by simply releasing more O3(subscript 3) into the atmosphere? For example, take the ionic breezer, and let it run out side to produce O3. Or if this was taken to a larger scale, massive ionizers, strategically placed and distributed worldwide while running 24/7, pumping O3.

Of course I would imagine drawbacks, such as a contribution to Oxygen O2 depletion, but the question is, could this repair the ozone?

 

[CycloWizard]

Well, ozone is made all the time. The problem is that it needs to be in the right place (elevation in the atmosphere) in the right concentrations to have the desired effect. Since ozone is heavier than air, it doesn't want to rise to the elevation where it would be beneficial, instead lingering low to the ground. Something like this could probably be accomplished, but I don't believe ozone depletion is a major concern anymore.

 

[the splat in the hat]

Humans may not know enough about our planetary eco system , to be able to predict such things. Its just so complex .

We know how to produce lots of ozone on the other hand.

 

[DrPizza]

At ground level, it's considered pollution/smog.
I don't know what the actual volume of ozone is in the atmosphere, but I'm guessing that it's large enough such that any attempt by humans to intervene would be considered tiny. i.e. don't suggest that we make ice-cubes in our freezers and transport them to the polar ice caps to remediate the melting of the polar ice caps. I'm guessing that's close to the scale we'd be working with.

 

[chcarnage]

With the following assumptions:
- The pressure in the stratosphere is one third of the pressure in the athmosphere
- But the stratosphere has roughly three times the volume of the athmosphere
- Funnels of 10-50 km height are possible and the transportation is no problem
- Once in the stratosphere, the O3 would diffuse in it, but not leave it, nor would it degrade
- There's 30% less O3 in the stratosphere than desired

If we could transform athmospherical O2 to O3, we would need the entire O2 reserves of the athmosphere twice to do the job (and much energy). (3*O2=2*O3; normal air has 21% O2 in it. We would need 0,4 athmospheres of O2 to fix the ozone layer)

Rough numbers and there may be a fault. But as DrPizza said, we just have to wait some decades and not raise our emissions of O3 degraders.

Btw... Your sig is evil, DrPizza. Had to look up the definition of 0! before I got it

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: chcarnage
Btw... Your sig is evil, DrPizza. Had to look up the definition of 0! before I got it

surprisingly, no one has said "no it isn't, it's equal to 1" or "it's less than one"

 

[vtohthree]

Ok, that clears something up. So I suppose its not feasible at a practical level. I was about to say, fly planes up into the stratosphere with Ionizers and oxygen tanks if need be lol, but it was well clarified by chcarnage.

 

[Calin]

What I know about ozone (and it might be wrong)
Total ozone in atmosphere: it would enclose the Earth (at atmospheric pressure) forming a layer several milimeters thick (or thin )
It is produced at high altitudes (I assume due to high energy radiation that crack open the O2 leaving to molecular oxygens. Those two atoms would then form a O3 with a single O2 molecule)
O2 sustain burning. However, O (molecular) and O3 are highly reactive agents (they would attach to other molecules easily, breaking them).
O3 is "toxic" (not per se, but in higher concentrations have very nasty effects if breathed, or subjected to).

About repairing the ozone... you would need to pump alot of ozone even to increase by one milimeter effective that layer of ozone.
Earth surface is 5x10^8 square kilometers, and a milimeter is 10^-6 kilometers. So, you would need to pump 500 cubic kilometers, or some 122 cubic miles of pure ozone (which you can get from some 190 cubic miles of pure oxygen, or (assuming full efficiency) from 950 cubic miles of air.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: chcarnage
With the following assumptions:
- The pressure in the stratosphere is one third of the pressure in the athmosphere
- But the stratosphere has roughly three times the volume of the athmosphere
- Funnels of 10-50 km height are possible and the transportation is no problem
- Once in the stratosphere, the O3 would diffuse in it, but not leave it, nor would it degrade
- There's 30% less O3 in the stratosphere than desired

If we could transform athmospherical O2 to O3, we would need the entire O2 reserves of the athmosphere twice to do the job (and much energy). (3*O2=2*O3; normal air has 21% O2 in it. We would need 0,4 athmospheres of O2 to fix the ozone layer)

Rough numbers and there may be a fault. But as DrPizza said, we just have to wait some decades and not raise our emissions of O3 degraders.

Btw... Your sig is evil, DrPizza. Had to look up the definition of 0! before I got it

Ozone concentration is much less than oxygen concentration - even when a normal "ozone layer" exists

 

[chcarnage]

What an error Ok if I don't change the other assumptions and if we had to increase the ozone concentration by 2 ppm, we would need 3 ppm of athmospherical O2, and this would be no big impact because the concentration here is 210.000 ppm...

Calin seems to be right with his calculations, too... Apart from "O" being atomar rather than molecular (/nitpick)

Sigs are just to distinguish the users (at least in forums with no custom avatars) but since you can't display pictures you get little attention no matter what you write in it, DrPizza.

 

[ahurtt]

You can make Ozone by running electrical current through water can you not? Isn't ozone released when lightning strikes a body of water? Why would we need to rely solely on atmospheric O2 to produce ozone? There is an awful lot of O in the worlds oceans. Of course there is still the problem of how to get it way up there where it is not considered as ground level smog.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: chcarnage
What an error Ok if I don't change the other assumptions and if we had to increase the ozone concentration by 2 ppm, we would need 3 ppm of athmospherical O2, and this would be no big impact because the concentration here is 210.000 ppm...

Calin seems to be right with his calculations, too... Apart from "O" being atomar rather than molecular (/nitpick)

Sigs are just to distinguish the users (at least in forums with no custom avatars) but since you can't display pictures you get little attention no matter what you write in it, DrPizza.

I'm guilty

 

[Minotar]

Originally posted by: vtohthree
I have a direct and simple question out of curiosity(and ignorance of the field).

Can the earth's ozone be repaired by simply releasing more O3(subscript 3) into the atmosphere? For example, take the ionic breezer, and let it run out side to produce O3. Or if this was taken to a larger scale, massive ionizers, strategically placed and distributed worldwide while running 24/7, pumping O3.

Of course I would imagine drawbacks, such as a contribution to Oxygen O2 depletion, but the question is, could this repair the ozone?

The short answer is "No". Now to address the points you bring up in your question. First, Ozone (O3) is actually extremely toxic and fatal to human life. So, if it were released in the atmosphere, it would be considered extremely bad! Second, Once released into the atmosphere, ozone breaks down extremely quickly. It is extremely reactive and will either decompose back to O2 or react with other compounds present in our atmosphere. This happens rapidly, so the ozone would never make it to the elevation needed for it to be helpful, even if it could rise up to that elevation. In our atmosphere, ozone is created by the action of ultraviolet light on O2 in a multi-step reaction mechanism, thus absorbing UV in the process. I can give you the full reaction mechanism if you really want to see it This is a constant equlibrium. So, again, the answer to your question is "no".

 

[vtohthree]

Well thanks for the input, I should have modified my question, I already knew that O3 is rather harmful for humans to to inhale. In fact consumer reports magazine has highly discouraged the purchasing of sharper image's ionic breeze due to its high ozone emissions as a by product. Now, to modify the subject slightly, since O3 will not magically float and bond with the ozone layer, what if we had aircrafts fly through or around the ozone layer that could emit O3? I assume it has been answered already as being not feasible, and I don't know how high up the ozone layer is relative to say... a passenger jet making it's daily route, but would that help?

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: Minotar

Originally posted by: vtohthree
I have a direct and simple question out of curiosity(and ignorance of the field).

Can the earth's ozone be repaired by simply releasing more O3(subscript 3) into the atmosphere? For example, take the ionic breezer, and let it run out side to produce O3. Or if this was taken to a larger scale, massive ionizers, strategically placed and distributed worldwide while running 24/7, pumping O3.

Of course I would imagine drawbacks, such as a contribution to Oxygen O2 depletion, but the question is, could this repair the ozone?

The short answer is "No". Now to address the points you bring up in your question. First, Ozone (O3) is actually extremely toxic and fatal to human life. So, if it were released in the atmosphere, it would be considered extremely bad! Second, Once released into the atmosphere, ozone breaks down extremely quickly. It is extremely reactive and will either decompose back to O2 or react with other compounds present in our atmosphere. This happens rapidly, so the ozone would never make it to the elevation needed for it to be helpful, even if it could rise up to that elevation. In our atmosphere, ozone is created by the action of ultraviolet light on O2 in a multi-step reaction mechanism, thus absorbing UV in the process. I can give you the full reaction mechanism if you really want to see it This is a constant equlibrium. So, again, the answer to your question is "no".

It's a dynamic equilibrium (ozone appear and disappear constantly, but the total proportion stays somewhat constant)

 

[Calin]

About planes flying in the "ozone" layer... As good as I remember, planes fly somewhat near the "ozone layer". As I said before, the "ozone layer" is just an volume around the Earth, several kilometers deep, where the total O3 would add up to a several inches pure ozone layer at atmospheric pressure.
One could fly planes thru the ozone layer and "inhale" oxygen and exhale ozone, but it would also inhale oxygen and exhale CO2 instead. So, it would simply eat some of the oxygen that naturally converts to ozone.
With no pollutants at that altitude, you could think of the process as a continuus two-way transformation that has as a result an dynamic equilibrium of 1000:1 oxygen and ozone. Just like normal water has a product of concentrations of H+ and OH- of 10^-14. This is constant, and in normal water you have 10^-7 of each. Add lots of HCl and the H+ concentration goes up to 10^-1 (or 10%) - and as a result the OH- concentration goes down to 10^-13 in order to keep the product at 10^-14
The logarithm of the concentration is known as the "acidity" or pH of the water. So, water having pH between 1 and 6 is acid (H+ concentrations of 10^-1 and 10^-6), 7 is normal, and 8 to 13 is caustic (more OH-)

 

[MobiusPizza]

Ozone is VERY harmful at ground level. It is a health risk so you don't want them to be here
Car exhaust contains minute amount of ozone

Also Ozone is naturally produced and the rate of production and rate of decomposition is in equiliribium, until man made chemical tip the balance.
The best way to do is let nature repair itself and we be considerate and not to pump harmful chemical in.

 

[Calin]

The most harmful pollutant to the ozone layer (or the most known one) was the CFC used in refrigeration systems. This is why at that moment you see on new refrigerators (and many older ones), No CFC, Ozone Friendly and things like that.
The CFCs were able to "attract" the O3 mollecules and then break them down and emit the O2 molecules back (all without effect to the CFC). They were simply destroyers of ozone mollecules (transforming them back into oxygen), and their "life" was much greater than others pollutants (some of them "ate" a mollecule of Ozone and were irreversibly modified).
CFCs were catalysts in the "reverse" way.

 

[sao123]

Sorry to say, but
The ozone layer is located at an altitude of 12- 15 miles in the stratosphere (which itself is 7-18 miles altitude.)
an aircraft flying at say 40000 ft, would barely be breaching the tropopause into the lower stratosphere, but nowhere near the ozone layer which would need a minimum altitude of 65000 ft, at which i dont think the air is dense enough to support an aircraft.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: sao123
Sorry to say, but
The ozone layer is located at an altitude of 12- 15 miles in the stratosphere (which itself is 7-18 miles altitude.)
an aircraft flying at say 40000 ft, would barely be breaching the tropopause into the lower stratosphere, but nowhere near the ozone layer which would need a minimum altitude of 65000 ft, at which i dont think the air is dense enough to support an aircraft.

The altitude record for a solar powered aircraft is at close to 100,000 feets. Jet powered aircrafts are able to fly even higher

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: sao123
Sorry to say, but
The ozone layer is located at an altitude of 12- 15 miles in the stratosphere (which itself is 7-18 miles altitude.)
an aircraft flying at say 40000 ft, would barely be breaching the tropopause into the lower stratosphere, but nowhere near the ozone layer which would need a minimum altitude of 65000 ft, at which i dont think the air is dense enough to support an aircraft.

The altitude record for a solar powered aircraft is at close to 100,000 feets. Some aircrafts are able to fly even higher

 

[sao123]

the highest altitude manned flight on an air breathing engine is still the SR71 @ 85,069 feet.

The solar powered pathfinder-plus flight made 80, 285 feet on solar power propeller but this plae is not big enough for people.
The helios, another unmanned nasa solar powered flight mechanism set a new record at 96,863 feet.

The X15 made a manned flight of 354,200 feet using a rocket powered engine.

However, none of these would fit the profile for an ozone repairing aircraft, and neither does your standard 747 jumbo.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: sao123
Sorry to say, but
The ozone layer is located at an altitude of 12- 15 miles in the stratosphere (which itself is 7-18 miles altitude.)
an aircraft flying at say 40000 ft, would barely be breaching the tropopause into the lower stratosphere, but nowhere near the ozone layer which would need a minimum altitude of 65000 ft, at which i dont think the air is dense enough to support an aircraft.

The altitude record for a solar powered aircraft is at close to 100,000 feets. Some aircrafts are able to fly even higher

lol...why did you quote yourself?

 

[ChiPCGuy]

Originally posted by: Calin

Originally posted by: sao123
Sorry to say, but
The ozone layer is located at an altitude of 12- 15 miles in the stratosphere (which itself is 7-18 miles altitude.)
an aircraft flying at say 40000 ft, would barely be breaching the tropopause into the lower stratosphere, but nowhere near the ozone layer which would need a minimum altitude of 65000 ft, at which i dont think the air is dense enough to support an aircraft.

The altitude record for a solar powered aircraft is at close to 100,000 feets. Jet powered aircrafts are able to fly even higher

The SR-71, when it was in service, regularly flew at 90,000ft, and at MACH 3.4+

Step father is ex-SR pilot.

 

[imported_Tick]

I say fleets of hot-hydrogen solar powered balloons, containing giant ozone plants.