Atmospheric filtration

[Savros 0]

Personal log – Lieutenant Junior Grade Savros

The last week has seen a series of crises emerge concerning the Klingon Empire. With the destruction of the moon of Praxis a little over a year ago, the Klingons appear to be in disarray. A significant amount of the population of Quo'NoS has left. In at least one case, a rebel group has formed that appears to favor war with the Federation. This rebel group attacked the Federation relief fleet and within the past 48 hours attacked the USS Columbia commanded by Captain Saylek.

 

My department head, Lieutenant Poldara, has beamed to the surface to survey the damage less than 24 hours ago. Her teams reported finding wide spread evidence of radiation damage to plants. At the same time, Dr. Gidgiddoni reported finding evidence of particulate matter in the respiratory system of Klingons.

 

I have been working with engineering to determine the cause of the deteriorating ozone and to recommend solutions. Based on sampling the atmosphere with a number of probes and by communicating with several experts in the field of atmospheric science, I have concluded that there is an inversion layer located below the ozone layer that is trapping particulate matter in the upper atmosphere. The majority of the problem has been isolated to an approximate 1 meter layer of atmosphere approximately 20 kilometers from the surface. This layer within the ozone layer appears to be composed of a significant level of radioactive particulate matter which is ionizing and heating the surrounding air. As it does this, the particles are interacting with oxygen gas and ozone to form oxide compounds like Sulfur Dioxide, Arsenic Trioxide, Iron Oxide, etc. The presence of these oxides is interfering with the natural balance of oxygen gas to ozone within the ozone layer.It is not known how this 1 meter layer of dense particulate matter formed. Generally, an inversion layer is closer to the ground, perhaps 3 Km from the surface. It forms when industrial and other particulate pollution sources combine with water vapor and other compounds. These interactions occur at various points within a large area such as a 1 Km. The natural way of eliminating such pollution is by precipitation. An inversion layer at 20 Km from the surface exceeds the height where clouds might form (up to about 16 Km). This phenomenon is thought to be the unique to Quo' NoS and the condition of having a moon orbiting said planet explode, releasing billions of tons of matter in all directions. Some a small portion of particles became trapped in the upper atmosphere and conglomerated there.

 

I have had several discussions with Lt (J.G.) Kas on how to resolve this problem. He believes he can modify the transporters to beam the particulate matter into a storage area. He intends to use shuttles strategically positions with transporter enhancers to increase transporter efficiency. He does not know how much volume he should attempt to beam at a time and expects to determine this experimentally. If possible, he will attempt to beam as much as 100 cubic kilometers of air at a time. If successful, he might be able to filter the entire atmosphere in approximately 500 million transporter beams. The inversion layer could be filtered in 5200 transporter beams.

 

I am skeptical that the transporters can be configured to filter such an enormous area and will present one of my own solutions. Using modified 20th century filtration technology, it may be possible to filter the air at 1 cubic Km per minute. Using 1000 atmospheric probes filtering at this rate, the inversion layer can be filtered in approximately 1 year. Depending on how successful Lt Kas is in his tests, we may wish to use a combination of filtration probes and transporter technology.