Production of Sulfates Onboard an Aircraft: Implications for the Cost and Feasibility of Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering
Open accessAbstract
Injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, a form of solar geoengineering, has been proposed as a means to reduce some climatic changes by decreasing net anthropogenic radiative forcing. The cost and technical feasibility of forming aerosols with the appropriate size distribution are uncertain. We examine the possibility of producing the relevant sulfur species, SO 2 or SO 3, by in situ conversion from elemental sulfur onboard an aircraft. We provide a first‐order engineering analysis of an open cycle chemical plant for in situ sulfur to sulfate conversion using a Brayton cycle combustor and a catalytic converter. We find that such a plant could have sufficiently low mass that the overall requirement for mass transport to the lower stratosphere may be reduced by roughly a factor of 2. All else equal, this suggests that—for a given radiative forcing—the cost of delivering sulfate aerosols may be nearly halved. Beyond reducing cost, the use of elemental sulfur reduces operational health and safety risks and should therefore reduce environmental side effects associated with delivery. Reduction in cost is not necessarily beneficial as it reduces practical barriers to deployment, increasing the urgency of questions concerning the efficacy, risks, and governance of solar geoengineering.
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Injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere is considered a leading candidate for solar geoengineering because of its economic and technological feasibility and because we have data.
“Injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere is considered a leading candidate for solar geoengineering both because of its economic and technological feasibility [527,743] and because of a reason that should resonate with the ML community: we have data.”
From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [743]
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“The even greater ‘three-for-one’ cost benefit assumed in Smith and Wagner to derive from the on-board combustion process sourced from Smith et al (2018)3 was not found to be practicable on the SAIL-1 design due to increased hardware weights and cruise time requirements and is not assumed herein.”
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- Authors
- Smith, J. P., Dykema, J. A., & Keith, D. W.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Keith, David W.
- Venue
- Earth and Space Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-04
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 150-162
- ISSN
- 2333-5084 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2796452566
- Cited by
- 37
- References
- 63
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Earth and Space Science (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Harvard University
- Pratt and Whitney Canada
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Advanced Aircraft Design and Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
- Keywords
- solar geoengineering, stratospheric sulfate aerosols, catalytic converters, cost analysis, feasibility, radiative forcing, health and safety risks, geoengineering governance
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