Could liquid oxygen be used to help dissipate hurricanes?

Question

This is just an idea that I had that probably has many scientific flaws in it, but just thought if there were any chemistry majors out there, they could help me to answer this question. Liquid oxygen is extremely cold. I had an idea about using it to cool off large areas of ocean that a hurricane would immediately pass through, and as the oxygen dissipated, it could possibly help somewhat with the depletion of the ozone layer by adding oxygen to the atmosphere. I know this sounds like a simplified idea, and it is. Understand that I am an extreme novice with an idea.

Here are some of my concerns:

Would liquid oxygen dissipate too quickly to cool off large areas of water? Would the churning of the ocean just bring warm waters quickly to the surface and negate the liquid oxygen? How much liquid oxygen would it take? Is it possible to make this much? How could it be delivered to an area in mass quantities?

Just an idea. Wanted to see if this has any merit whatsoever.

Answer 1

I agree with Mr. Jeffy. You have the right idea in cooling down the ocean in a hurricane's path, however there does not exist a practical way to accomplish this. In the first place, the ocean is such a giant heat sink that all the liquid-oxygen-producing-capability in the world could not make it fast enough and in large enough quantities to stop a hurricane. Also, hurricane-trajectory prognostication is not an exact science. If this scheme were possible, chances are you'd chill a particular stretch of ocean only to have the hurricane go thundering past you a few miles away.

Secondly, you cannot just carry liquid oxygen around in a bucket (or large tanker ship) and expect it to sit calmly like a bucket of water. Liquid oxygen must be kept under tremendous pressure to stop it all boiling away. And it is highly flammable and explosive. Not the sort of thing you want to be trundling across the ocean in a caravan of supertankers. IF it were possible to stop a hurricane by cooling the ocean with a liquified gas (and that's a great big giant whopping IF), you'd want to use Nitrogen, which is colder, more plentiful, and a good deal less dangerous.

Thirdly, the problem of ozone depletion is not a general lack of ozone. Ozone is ridiculously easy to make. Thunderstorms make ozone. Your computer makes ozone. The bottled water industry uses machines to generate HUGE quantities of the stuff to disinfect water without adding any chemicals. The problem is that the ozone needs to get up to the stratosphere, higher than any consumer plane can fly. Here at ground level, ozone is just smog, and it deteriorates too fast to make the trip. Furthermore, you can't just rocket a giant ozone balloon into the stratosphere and expect everything to be magically fixed. The ozone layer depends on a delicate balance, and injecting an ozone bolus would be rather like pumping crude oil into your gas tank and expecting your car to extract and run on just the gasoline. The only way to replenish the ozone layer is to let it take care of itself.

Answer 2

You would need amounts that are orders of magnitude greater than we can supply. Plus, as someone pointed out, the net change would be zero since you're just following a closed path. Taking oxygen gas in Los Angeles and liquifying it would require great amount of refrigeration energy. Transportation to New Orleans under high pressures and refrigerated pipes would be dangerous, costly, and inefficient.

Some might say that the idea is good only it's impractical. I say it's not good either because it's highly highly counterproductive. The efficiency of cooling is never ideal and always requires work. You will release more heat into the atmosphere in this manner than any benefits you might obtain. You stop one hurricane but you provide a multitude of thermal energy to the atmosphere that will churn up maybe a hundred hurricanes... The production of liquid oxygen will release carbon dioxide into the air, in that all machinery requires either electricity, gas, oil, or some sort of chemical energy that's grown using fossil fuels. It's transportation will require even more.

Cooling an ocean cannot be contemplated.
Leaving the planet is actually more feasible.

Answer 3

Cooling off the hurricane and the water's which feed it would indeed be a way to stop it, but liquid Oxygen is not a practical idea to do it with.

Trying to cool such a large amount of water is going to take a very considerable amount of liquid Oxygen, a very considerable amount indeed...too much to be practical.

Why use liquid Oxygen anyway? Liquid Nitrogen is much more common and is colder.
Is it because of your idea of helping the ozone layer?
Where do you think the Oxygen or Nitrogen is going to come from originally? Most likely the air. By taking those gasses out of the air, condensing them into a liquid, and then releasing them again there is no net change.
Plus, it is not the supply of Oxygen gas which matters to the Ozone layer since Ozone is actually the O3 molecule which is fomed when high energy rays of the sun cause Oxygen gas (O2) to form O3. A more useful way to help the Ozone layer would be to stop destroying it and let it rebuild itself.


EDIT:
To those who said that liquid Oxygen is flammable, IT IS NOT.
Oxygen is not flammable. Oxygen will not burn, it is merely an oxidizer. Fuels burn in the presence of Oxygen, but Oxygen gas in and of itself is not flammable.
Liquid Oxygen would need to be very cold, yes, stored under pressure more likely than not, but flammable by itself, no.

Answer 4

No merit at all..
The theory about cooling off the hurricane would certainly work
and enough liquid oxygen would certainly do the job however
the impracticality of the excercise approaches 100%...

Answer 5

There have been studies into 'seeding' hurricanes with chemicals to slow them down. I don't think liquid oxygen is a viable source to soak up a hurricane's chemical and potential energy.

Do a google search. I'm sure you can find something.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=gmail&q=seeding%20hurricanes

There I did it for you.

Answer 6

And also liquid oxygen is VERY flammable and even explosive.