• Question: Is there any way that acid rain can be utilized rather than trying to stop it from occurring in the first place?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Thats a really good question Muizzasif2000!

      There are uses for acid rain – the acid in rain is ‘sulphuric acid’….sulphuric acid is produced and used to make hundreeds of compounds which are used in almost every industry including fertalisers. This means in theory yes we could use it, however there are 2 main problems:

      1) the acid in rain is very dilute so we’d have to remove most of the water to make it more concentrated

      2) we cant control where the rain falls

      These make it difficult to come up with a solution for use, and with the problems it causes making things rust tends to suggest that preventing it occuring is the better solution.

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hey!

      It would be great if we could but the main problem with acid rain (and just rain in general) is that we cannot control where it falls. It also tends to fall over a very large area. You would have to build a very big funnel to capture enough rain to turn into something useful!

      Even if you can capture the rain, we will never be able to capture all of it. This means it will still continue to harm plants, fish and even corrode buildings! The best thing to do is really is to stop factories pumping lots of chemicals into the atmosphere to begin with.

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