SYDNEY, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) — Australian researchers have unlocked new insights to create tiny seawater droplets to form mist plumes that reflect sunlight to protect coral reefs.
Modelling in high resolution revealed how a high-pressure spray system splits sun-reflecting seawater droplets, which offers new insights to optimize seawater fogging technology to shield coral from bleaching, according to a statement released Wednesday by Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
“Our findings provide a deeper understanding of how these fine droplets form, move, and change in size after being sprayed,” said the study’s first author, QUT researcher Saima Bukhat Khan.
The QUT team, working with Australia’s Southern Cross University’s National Marine Science Center, focused on “secondary droplet break up,” a process in which already formed droplets continue to fragment into smaller ones.
This new finding could enhance the high-pressure spray systems used by the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP)’s Cooling and Shading team to generate a dense seawater mist that shields high-priority reefs during sweltering calm weather with the greatest coral bleaching risk, Khan said.
The research combined wind tunnel experiments with computer modelling to analyze how filtered seawater droplets behave when sprayed through specialized “impaction-pin” nozzles, she said.
These experiments and simulations enabled precise modelling of droplet sizes and spray patterns, guiding improved nozzle and spraying system designs for environmental applications, she added.
The findings, published in the Journal of Aerosol Science, could also benefit agriculture, medicine and industrial settings, the researchers said.
The research was part of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, funded by a partnership between the Australian government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. ■