Patent Application
20160362860
I have been scuba diving for over 30 years. I have worked in underwater construction, mainly in Puerto Rico. After the Tsunami that killed the 250,000 people in the area of India, the news media kept repeating the same lines to explain the event. A Tsunami is a solid wall of water, day in and day out. One day while heading to the ocean surface, I heard that line again while watching my bubbles head up before me. I asked myself, what if the ocean was no longer solid? This is how I came to create Poseidon's Curtain. An underwater air curtain that turns everything above it into gas. I worked on this for years and realized it had more than one application. Up until now, people have tried to make air curtains by using compressed air, and all were pushing water to try to get the affect that they wanted. I know, I tried it myself. There are 3 main components to Poseidon's Curtain, the air battery, the air distribution tubes and the air dispersal heads. Each one of these are protected from flooding the other via, one way valves. The air dispersal heads release air via pressure relief valves and individual one way valves. The air batteries are fed from the surface, either on land or from barges. The system is a sealed system, this means it is always energized and can protect whole coastlines. The systems are varied for filling the air batteries, they can be anything from a high volume centrifuge fan, the bypass of the 747 engine or other engines, or a storage tank such as for large natural gas storage. The latter refers to compressed air. At this time the industry uses mostly compressed air, so they can push water out of the lines.
This is used for sound reduction in undersea hammer construction, such as pile driving. My curtain in general is 10 ft. wide, but with other redundant systems could be as much as 100 feet wide. What this means is it can cancel out large waves. As a diver I have been in 6, 10 and 15 foot seas. On the surface it is doom and gloom, but once you drop below the waves, it is calm. The waves ride on this calm water; the whole ocean is not moving. Poseidon's curtain is anchored to the ocean floor, so the air curtain moves from the floor to the surface. There are 2 parts to a wave, a positive and a negative. The positive is the wave on the surface and the negative is a wave most people don't know exists. The negative wave runs on the ocean floor. Therefore, this curtain cancels out both the positive and negative waves in the ocean. What this means is if you have a 6-foot wave, with a 10-foot-wide base, it dies, there is nothing underneath it to support it. It is as if the wave rolled off of a table. The curtain has other properties as well, as the bubbles rush to the surface, it creates a current pushing everything away from it. Remember that no two objects can occupy the same space at once. As the bubbles hit the surface, it pushes debris and oil away from it. Underwater, it creates a barrier that pest like jelly fish at nuclear power plants and sharks at beaches as well as many microbes will be slowed if not stopped like red tide. Sediments are also collected, like sands that can be reclaimed for reuse at beaches. Having a 10-foot-wide corridor will also stop greater subsea noise like underwater construction or detonations. By changing the size of the hole size in the dispersal heads and anchoring the system in the area of 100 ft. of water, we can change the ocean temperatures. The heads can create 14 to 18 inch bubbles, then act as a plate that gets bigger as it goes to the surface carrying the cold water from below. The constant slow movement of these bubbles to the surface, then cool the surface. As high tide comes in, it will bring the cold water to bath the coral closer to shore, thus stopping coral bleaching. Since the system is a sealed system, it can be energized when you need it as it always is charged with air. This means an installed system is used only when there is a storm or oil spill. Also there are areas that have seasonal needs like fending off jellyfish, sea lice or sharks from an area. And finally changing ocean temps to protect coral. Monthly inspection is needed to make sure the heads are clean and this means inspection crews need to energize the system at least once a month. Even with a copper ablative paint on the heads in the ocean barnacles will eventually plug holes. This is the beauty of the 10 foot sections. The sections of heads can be changed in minutes. The system can be staggered as to let marine life or boats to pass around it.
Poseidons Curtain can be powered by any means of high output air systems. The system can be powered up by anything from a high output centrifuge fan to a 747 engine, depending on what your needs are or trying to accomplish. If one is looking at re-oxygenating a dead zone in a lake or ocean, the volume is not as high as repelling an oil spill and yet not as much as one will need to cancel out the waves of a hurricane or possibly a Tsunami. The most important factor is that the unit is sealed. This is accomplished by using a series of pressure relief valves and one way valves to the three parts of the system, being the air battery, the air distribution tubes and air dispersal heads.
Poseidon's curtain is an underwater air curtain. The curtain is either anchored to the ocean floor or the system can be weighted down at deeper depths being tethered to barges above. The air curtains bubbles are so dense that oil spills cannot pass over or through it. Anchored to the ocean floor it creates a turbulence that pushes oil away as well as silt and small marine life, such as jelly fish. An ocean wave is a solid wall of water. Poseidon's curtain creates so many bubbles that the ocean no longer solid. In short there is more gas that water and the oceans waves are no longer solid and are canceled out.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62230806 | Jun 2015 | US |
