The Utqiaġvik site launches four weather balloons a day, two for the National Weather Service and two for ARM. The original automated balloon launcher was replaced last August with a newer model. local time, said Helsel, with nearly 5,000 launches since then with only minimal issues. The first official hydrogen balloon was launched from Utqiaġvik on December 16, 2019, at 2:01 p.m. And the launch tube has fans that ensure hydrogen cannot build up inside it, even if a balloon leaks or bursts during the inflation process. The balloon is filled with gas inside a launch tube that keeps the hydrogen outside of the launch building, Helsel said. Safety is also inherent within the automated balloon launcher. The facility does not have safety approvals in place to manually fill and launch a balloon with hydrogen, Helsel added. When this happens, Utqiaġvik-based observers fill the ARM weather balloons with a backup supply of helium and launch them by hand. Sandia has been using an automated balloon launcher for more than a decade, but it occasionally has technical issues. Some of the National Weather Service sites that had already switched to hydrogen stored the tanks separately from the generator, but Sandia's safety analysis did encourage the service to tweak their design for subsequent site upgrades, he added. This has reduced the amount of flammable gas available inside the building to meet national safety codes and Sandia's requirements, Helsel said. One of the safety measures the team put in place includes ensuring that the hydrogen storage tank is outside the building where the electrolysis equipment operates. It is in the interest of the nation and the world for us to reduce our dependence on a fossil fuel byproduct, helium, and reduce our carbon footprint by not transporting helium cylinders to the site."
"This project uses hydrogen in a different manner, utilizing its lighter-than-air properties to launch balloons. "Hydrogen is gaining traction as a green energy resource and is a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels for transportation," said Andrew Glen, manager of Sandia's atmospheric sciences research group.
This switch from helium to hydrogen is not without safety concerns-hydrogen is famously flammable, and helium is not-but Helsel worked with the National Weather Service, his division's environment, safety and health coordinator, Sandia fire protection and pressure safety, the ARM user facility and the automated balloon launcher manufacturer to reduce the risks. "The National Weather Service has been great to work with." "Between Utqiaġvik and Oliktok Point, a long-term ARM mobile deployment that ended operations in 2021, we were the largest users of helium in the state of Alaska," said Fred Helsel, the systems engineer who led the effort to ensure the switch was safe and smooth. In exchange, the ARM facility operated by Sandia launches two weather balloons a day for the weather service. The National Weather Service provided the electrolysis equipment, which uses electricity to turn water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, and provided regular maintenance of the equipment. The switch from non-renewable helium to hydrogen was made possible by a partnership between the National Weather Service and the DOE. ARM's data are freely available to researchers at universities and national laboratories, and are vital for refining climate models, especially those of the rapidly warming Arctic. The observatory, operated by Sandia for the Department of Energy Office of Science's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility, has collected weather and climate data, including specialized data on Arctic clouds, for more than 25 years. and site of the North Slope of Alaska atmospheric measurement facility. This switch greatly reduces the transportation cost and emissions of shipping helium to Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, the northernmost city in the U.S. Since then, they have launched nearly 5,000 hydrogen balloons with minimal issues. More than three years ago, the Sandia-operated atmospheric measurement facility in Alaska switched from launching helium-filled weather balloons to launching weather balloons filled with hydrogen produced on-site.
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