- Title: USA: Florida company invents product which may be able to weaken hurricanes
- Date: 16th June 2003
- Summary: (L!1) PINAR DEL RIO, CUBA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TREES AND STRUCTURES SHAKING DUE TO FORCE OF HURRICANE LILI
- Embargoed: 1st July 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: JUPITER, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES/PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO/PINAR DEL RIO, CUBA
- Country: USA
- Topics: Weather,Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVA7YR9DU2GBF5ISJCT8M7PUFDST
- Story Text: A Florida company has invented a product which may be able to weaken hurricanes.
Dyn-O-Mat, a Florida-based environmental products company, says it has successfully tested a polymer substance capable of removing storm clouds from the sky.
Dyn-O-gel works by absorbing water from the storm and turning it into a gel-like substance that drops to the ocean.
On July 2001 Dyn-O-Mat CEO Peter Cordani commissioned a B-57 Canberra airplane to fly out of an airport in Palm Beach, Fl. and dump more than 9,000 pounds of the Dyn-o-gel product into a storm cloud mass about 40 miles off shore.
During that days test, team members removed a building thunderstorm completely from the atmosphere, a first-ever feat documented by Doppler radar, according to JD Dutton, President of Dyn-o-mat.
According to Cordani, the magic ingredient in the powder is an absorbent polymer similar to another substance Dyn-o-mat puts into mats that soak up oil spills under your car. He claims the substance can absorb about 2,500 times its own weight.
Cordani said he came up with the idea or Dyn-o-gel from watching television.
"I originally came up with the idea for Dyn-o-gel when I was watching the news one day, when Florida was threatened by a storm. I saw a government did a project called "Project Storm Fury", and then they were showing other ideas where people were thinking about dumping porcelain cement powder into storms to absorb the moisture, and Dyn-o-mat is an absorption based company and we have all different types of absorptions, and I knew of a polymer that we had that would do the same thing but not harm our environment."
After the July 2001 test, Cordani said he has been flooded by calls and e-mails from governments and the private sector alike. He has received calls from as far away as China and Japan.
Although by most accounts, the test was successful, meteorologist are sceptical about Dyn-o-gel. "I believe that Dyn-o-mat needs to explain what the stuff does in a cloud.
How does it change the size and distribution of rain drops, how does it change the way heat flows from the water vapour into the air? They need to do that and then they need to take their physical hypotheses represented in a computer model of a hurricane, that takes equations that describe a hurricane and show that it would have an effect on the storm," said Hugh Willoughby, a Senior Scientist at the Florida International University Hurricane Research Center.
Willoughby was also sceptical about how much of the Dyn-o-gel product would be needed to slow down a massive storm system such as hurricane. He estimated it may costs in the upwards of billions of dollars.
Despite the scepticism, Dyn-o-mat believes their product will slow a storm down. Peter Cordani say's it's just a matter of knowing how much, where and when.
Although Cordani came up with the idea for Dyn-o-gel, he is not a scientist. However, he has several on staff. According to JD Dutton, the President of Dyn-o-mat, the company is working closely with their staff as well as meteorologists to continue to test and improve their product.
Time will tell if they have the power to limit the millions of dollars worth of damages caused by hurricanes every year. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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