Welsh business could help fight in battle to save polar ice caps
AWELSH company has invented an ice-making machine, powered by renewable energy, to replenish melting polar ice caps.
The prototype developed by Real Ice is being sent out to be tested in the icy wastes of northern Canada.
The project has caught the attention of the United Nations Development Programme, and Real Ice and Hollywood superstar Jessica Alba are among those filmed for a video sponsored by car-making giant Hyundai as part of the For Tomorrow initiative.
It is being broadcast across major social media platforms to a worldwide audience this month.
The Real Ice Re-Icing Machine, as the team of graduates and current students at Bangor University have called the device, pumps water up from under the ice cap to the surface, where temperatures as low as -50°C quickly freeze it, creating new layers of the sea ice which the wildlife and people of the region need to survive.
The plan is for the indigenous Inuit people to own the machines, maintaining them and moving them to new areas regularly while earning carbon credits that can be sold to offset their fossil fuel use.
Real Ice’s managing director, Dubliner Cian Sherwin, heads a team including graduates and students from the USA, France and Finland.
Mr Sherwin is a graduate in zoology with a special interest in snakes, which have fascinated him since he was a boy but which are noticeably absent from the North Pole.
He said: “I was passionate about snakes and have kept reptiles since I was a child, which was why I came to Bangor six years ago because it was one of the only universities in Europe to do a zoology course with herpetology – the study of reptiles and amphibians.
“But since graduating I’ve become increasingly interested in this project to restore the sea ice, which is melting so quickly that it threatens to cause us all serious problems in future.
“We have developed an ice-making machine powered by the wind which is easy to move and the plan would be for local Inuit people to be employed in this project.
“The foundations of their communities are literally melting away as the loss of their way of life is causing social problems including loss of culture and livelihood and the migration of the young to find work.
“One of the main contributors in the rise in sea temperature causing the polar ice to melt is that thinner ice leads to more of the sun’s heat being
absorbed, rather than reflected back out, which speeds up thawing.
“Reflectivity of the ice is known as the Albedo effect, and by increasing this reflectivity we can reduce the amount of heat absorbed by the sea and melting ice.
“Sea with ice and snow covering it will reflect 90% of the solar rays from the sun with only 6% being reflected with no snow or ice cover. If we can thicken the ice then that heat will again be reflected out and help prevent the loss of the polar sea ice.”
The ice-making machine is mainly the work of Nick Penny, a Bangor engineering graduate, who has carried out much of his research at the university’s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, in collaboration with engineering students undertaking their team projects.
The latest prototype is a small-scale model of a machine designed to be 5m tall powered by a 10m-diameter wind turbine and fitted with a central drill to bore through the ice to reach the sea water below.
Its relatively small size and low weight means it can easily be transported to new sites by local people with their motor-powered skidoos.
It is to be trialled at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station at Cambridge Bay from November until March next year, during a winter
when temperatures, currently at -25°C, can plunge below -50°C and where wind chill can make it seem more like -70°C.
Mr Sherwin and the core team of seven have been developing the project with the help of an advisory team including experts from the North Wales Business Academy and they’re banking their time on the project in the hope it will pay dividends in the future.
They also hope it will pay dividends for the Inuit.
Mr Sherwin said: “We want to collaborate with the Inuit up there because we need to understand what they want from this and what they don’t want.
“They’re losing their livelihoods and their culture and traditional way of life – their houses are literally falling down so there’s a lot at stake for them.
“They are experiencing social problems including young people moving out to find work, so if we can provide a job and additional income that’s a positive, and at the same time animals like polar bears are losing their habitat and that’s having an impact on their distribution and population.”
The film featuring Real Ice’s project is on the YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter sites for the Hyundai Motor Company, For Tomorrow and UNDP this month.