24 Jun 09 Last weekend I took a whirlwind trip to Chicago. While there I visited the Museum of Science and Industry. Its an amazing place, with full-sized airplanes, a full-sized combine, a full-sized train engine, and an entire German U-boat, the first U-boat ever captured.
But for me, the highlight was taking a tour through a replica of an old coal mine.
After descending "deep into the bowels of the earth," we were given a safety talk. The tour guide pointed to a tiny birdcage which, in one of those old-time mines, would have housed a canary.
As long as the canary continued to sing, the miners knew that carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) levels were safe. Canaries have very small lungs that are more quickly affected by these gases than human lungs.
If the canary stopped singing, the miners knew to skedaddle.
Fast.
Too much CO would poison the miners, too much methane would explode, and too much CO2 would suffocate them.* (Carbon monoxide is far more lethal than CO2.)
The deeper into the ground the miners dug, the more dangerous it became, because these gases which are heavier than air - have a tendency to accumulate at the bottoms of coal mines.
Lest you missed that, let me say it in a different way.
CO2 is heavier than air.
Isnt CO2 supposed to be rising high into the sky and creating the greenhouse effect and therefore causing global warming? Isnt CO2 supposed to be a thin layer of invisible gas lurking somewhere a hundred or so miles up in the sky, reflecting heat back onto our planet?
How in the world can CO2 be rising into the sky and creating the greenhouse effect if its heavier than air? Isnt it more likely to be accumulating down around my feet?
CO2 most certainly does not form some sort of magical layer in the atmosphere that then acts like a greenhouse, says analytical chemist Hans Schreuder. That is pure pseudo-science!
"CO2 is about 1.5 the density of air," agrees Dr. Tim Ball, former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. "One of the great fallacies promoted by [the proponents of the global warming theory] is that CO2 is well and quickly mixed through the atmosphere. It isn't. They also argue that the CO2 is most effective in trapping heat from the Earth (infrared) at the top of the atmosphere. This is why the computer models predicted greatest warming at the top of the atmosphere over the tropics. The problem is the actual measurements show that is not happening."
Do you suppose, just maybe, that were not getting the full story?
Listen to the canary. If the canary is still singing, were okay.
P.S. Id love to hear from some underground miners on this.
British coal mines began phasing out the canary in favor of electronic
detectors in 1986. Miners were said to be saddened by the decision,
because they often whistled to the birds and coaxed them as they
worked, treating them as pets.
* Current levels of CO2 are said to be 385 ppm (parts per million).
Here is what wikipedia says about levels and their effect.
"CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% (10,000 ppm) will
make some people feel drowsy.[2] Concentrations of 7% to
10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction,
and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour.[3]"
Notice this is at levels up to 70,000 and 100,000 ppm.
Love ya much,
Sandy
"For the Lord giveth wisdom; out os his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (Pr. 2:6)
If you take an empty aquarium and divide it into 2 sections with a piece of glass in the middle and then fill one side with pure carbon dioxide, you'll have an aquarium that has straight air on one side and pure carbon dioxide gas on the other side, separated with the divider sheet of glass.
If you then pull the divider out, you might expect the 2 gases to mix together and then separate into layers -much like cream going to the top of milk- with the CO2 going to the bottom of the aquarium and air going to the top.
It doesn't happen that way though; the gases mix together homogeneously and will NOT separate into layers. It's explained by the high rate of atomic velocity inside of gases that make them gases in the first place (and create gas "pressure"). It's kind of like a whole bunch of excited people running around; the heavy guys don't fall to the bottom because everyone is running around too fast. If you put all of these same people into a box so there's no room for any of them to move, (you compress them), and then SHAKE the box real good, the heaviest guys will go to the bottom.
Ok, so .... CO2 released into the atmosphere will mix homogeneously with air ... even though it's heavier than air.
But when you add in the effect of weather -(turbulence, compression etc.)- you DO get a separator effect and as soon as that happens, the heavier gas will precipitate to the bottom -at least temporarily.
A most interesting example of gas separation is realized in -(I can't remember the commercial name for it now)- a vortex cooler.
When air is spun at a high velocity, the HEAVIER air goes to the outside, just like anything will in a centrifuge. Which part of air is heaviest? Cold air! So, by spinning air at a very high velocity, one can actually extract "cold" air from the mass entering and use it for cooling. (Miners sometimes wear suits that are air-conditioned using this method). The hot air separates and goes back out into the atmosphere.
The same thing is true for free CO2 in the atmosphere. When it becomes subjected to turbulence and compression, the heavier CO2 will separate and migrate to the bottom. If this didn't happen, our atmosphere would be extremely loaded with CO2. What "scientists" would have us believe is that CO2 collects in the atmosphere and stays there for years and years. In FACT the CO2 in the atmosphere is continuously being renewed from burning sources so that the overall level stays approximately the same at 350 - 380 parts per million.
Titanium be funny poop...when fly cutting .100 thou deep with the right speed and feed and the spindle all the way up you can cut four inches wide and eight inches long for four passes without sharpening the cemented carbide tool.
Air blows the chip off the end of the tool and therefore the chip is gone before the tool cuts again...Titanium loads up quickly without coolant and coolant works not well on manual machines
I cannot recommend purchase of the commercial product because OSHA regulates both input and output...get the specs and build your own me says...after years of use a gunk builds up inside and you will need to be able to disassemble and clean.
Yes (for Dave) there are many other uses and some are efficient enough if you build your own stuff...but then again, swamp coolers are efficient and so is the:
...don't see them around much any more
If you just want ideas so you can do your own stuff...I highly recommend a free issue of:
work great where it's dry. Since Dave was talking about DE-humidifying, I suspect he lives in a climate that's hot and clammy (high humidity). If so, swamp coolers don't work worth a darn because they rely on evaporation of water to absorb heat from the air.
Vince, I got interested in that vortex heater/cooler thingee you linked to and read up on it. It sounded so good and cheap that I began wondering why EVERYBODY isn't using it. 170 degree air out one end and -30 degree air out the other... that's a phenominal 200 degree difference!! Run it one way, it's a wonderful heater; turn it around and it's better than any freezer out there, and is a great air conditioner too. And it looks like it could extract large quantities of water from even very very dry air... like deserts?
They say the thing uses no electricity, but it uses compressed air which must be compressed somehow. I finally found a price list which, if I understood it, promises one of these gadgets for anywhere from $1687.20 to $2752.80. Heat pumps and exchangers topped out at $5791.20.
OK, so why ISN'T everyone using them? Why aren't they being sold out of every hardware store in the country for people's homes? The closest I could find using google were these vests which are selling online for $300-700. I didn't find anything "house-sized". If they are really that good, looks like they would spread quickly!!!
As far as CO2 being heavier than air, I would expect any turbulance to MIX the CO2 with the rest of the air, and for only very still air (like that down in mines) to become stratified so that the CO2 goes to the bottom, no?
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
dave@christos.cjb.net, dpeirce@christian.net
This morning I read my own obituary in the paper. Wow! I called a friend and asked her if she had seen it; she had, and her first question was, "Where are you calling from?"
I reckon they're not wide-spread because they're probably not very efficient for larger applications. (Probably quite noisy too?)
I suspect they need too much energy consumed to produce a reasonable return on coolth gained.~
CO2 collects down in mine shafts from weight? I really don't know, to be honest. I don't think it's so much a case of CO2 getting into mines from the top as it is from it coming in from the deep. There's a lot of CO2 in the bowels of the earth.
The interesting thing is that if you put a CO2 generator into an aquarium half -which is just simply sticking a dish of baking soda in the bottom and adding vinegar, the CO2 gas coming off it ....... WILL displace all of the air in the compartment! So, like, it DOESN'T shoot up and out while the air stays inside; it spreads out laterally and rests on the bottom and rises upward, pushing lighter air out of the top ... until the volume is as much as the tank holding it. (You can check to find out if the compartment is filled right to the top with CO2 by lowering a lit match into the tank. Once it goes out as soon as it's below the edge of the aquarium walls, you know the tank has no more air inside of that compartment.)
To me, this is rather puzzling because on one hand, CO2 and air mix homogeneously if the divider wall is taken out between 2 halves of the aquarium, when one half contains air and the other half contains pure CO2 gas. They will NEVER separate into layers after mixing together, if left alone. Yet, on the OTHER hand, if you "pour" CO2 gas into the tank containing air, the CO2 WILL push all of the air out of the tank upwards because it's heavier than air and it won't "evaporate" from the tank compartment either ... because it's HEAVIER than air! I'm not really sure why there's that difference.
As per using straight air for air conditioning; yes, it's possible to do that all right but it's not very practical. As you've probably noticed, if you release air from a compressor tank through a nozzle (as in a shop, blowing dust off of stuff), the air coming out is very cold. That's because it's decompressing. On the other hand, a compressor working to fill the tank ... gets really hot.
So, if you were to use a very large compressor and run the air straight from the compressor through a radiator core outside of your house (to cool it back to ambient or outside air temperature before it goes into the tank), and compress the air in the tank to about 150 ppsi (making 10 atmospheres) .... and then let the air from the tank gradually escape into your house ... the air coming out of the tank would COOL DOWN from expanding and provide you with air conditioning! However, you would need a very BIG compressor and the air escaping would be very annoyingly loud with its hiss.
That's how a refrigeration or air conditioning unit works though, except that a gas is compressed to a certain point and then it "folds" itself (or converts) into a liquid. Since liquid is so EXTREMELY reduced in size from its gas counterpart, such a liquid will hold an enormous amount of heat and save a lot of energy you would otherwise have to expend on reducing the volume of a straight gas by compressing the heck out of it.
There's a really interesting way of using water for air conditioning too. Water, as you know, won't boil unless it's around 200 degrees F. But that's at sea level with 14.7 ppsi. (equating to 0 inches of mercury). If you put water into a closed loop and then suck out all the air so that the pressure is reduced, you can make the water boil at a very low temperature.
Looking at the chart above, you can see that if you reduce the pressure to 29.74 inches of mercury, vacuum, water WILL boil at 32 degrees F! That's right around the freezing mark! (Ever hear of "freeze drying"?)
Well, you don't want to go quite that low in temp or you'll have icing problems but ...... you CAN run at around 40 degrees or so at about 29.7 hg vacuum.
Ok, so what you would do then, is have a "compressor" in this closed loop which would create vacuum on one side and "pressure" on the other side. The pressure side would simply bring it up to 0 in. of mercury (or 14.7 ppsi) .... same as the outside air. This side would turn water vapor into water ....... making it very hot by reduction of volume. This hot water would be passed through a radiator OUTside of the house to cool it down to ambient outside air temperature and then fall into a holding tank out there.
You have a small valve and a capillary tube from this holding tank which squirts this same water into ANOTHER radiator INSIDE of your house and rapidly evaporates it into water vapor inside of the core of this inside-house radiator (because it's under high vacuum, being on the suction side of the compressor). In doing so, the volume of the water expands dramatically inside of the "evaporator" chamber (the inside radiator) and ................. DROPS TEMPERATURE instantly to about 40 degrees as it "boils" from liquid into "steam" (water vapor). You extract the "coolth" from the radiator with the aid of a fan. Once the evaporated water has passed through the inside-house radiator, the compressor turns it back into water (which is really hot) and the hot water goes back through the outside radiator and cools down ........ and repeats the loop.
This is exactly what is done in a regular refrigeration unit. The coolant is simply a liquid/gas that changes state somewhere around the freezing point. Freon was super for that but freon has been outlawed.
I'm not sure why water fridges aren't used much. Maybe it's a problem of keeping everything sealed under very high vacuum or maybe it's icing problems or rust. I do know that they are sometimes used in boiler systems ...... with the boiler turned off for the summer (of course). That way the system works double duty: heat in winter/cooling in summer.
Me, I think it would have to MIX - so there would have to be some kind of air movement. If there's a breeze blowing over that acquarium, the CO2 probably won't displace the air, no? It would mix and enter the general atmosphere. And, yes, it's my understanding that the CO2 in mines comes mostly from inside the mine rather than outside. That's one of the reasons the companies are so careful with ventilation.
It has to be that these systems, and the water system you described, aren't used because they aren't economic. For example, bio-ethonol could easily be used in place of gasoline/diesel except petroleum is still cheaper. Those oil shales up there in your neighborhood could produce PRODIGIOUS amounts of petroleum but it's still too costly to use the amount of heat and power necessary to separate out the oil.
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
dave@christos.cjb.net, dpeirce@christian.net
"God is dead, and we killed him": Nietzsche; "Hmmnnn....": God.
The vortex unit uses compressed air from a shop compressor, which blows through a specially designed tube, making the air spin around inside at high speed. The heavier (colder) air molecules go to the outside of the tube and the light (hot) air molecules go into the center of the stream ..... exiting from the tube at the opposite end of the cold air molecules. So you get hot air coming out of one end of the tube and cold air coming out of the other end. The cold air can then be sent into a working man's specially-designed suit (like a space suit).
If you ever worked with a cream separator, you'll probably understand the principle. Heavier milk flies to the outside of the centrifuge and the lighter cream moves to the inside. The two go through their own channels of holes in the disks and come out at 2 different places.
Nope. many of my relatives were farmers, but my parents were not. My Dad was in the newspaper business, and my mother had been a beautician before marrying Dad, but then became a housewife until she passed on, even though she kept her license all those years just in case of ever being in a position where she had to go back to work. I was born and raised in Iowa too, as was my parents too, and their parents as well, but never did any work on the farm, even though my great grandparents along with many others did own farms back in those days. And I do mean back in those days at this point in my life. As I am now 71, both of my parents having passed away many years ago. And now have very few relatives that I know about living in Iowa anymore, let alone still farming. So nope, honestly never ran anything that had to do with farming at all. Just visited often years ago is all.
Love ya much,
Sandy
"For the Lord giveth wisdom; out os his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (Pr. 2:6)
You missed a lot of "object lessons" that only farm kids get to understand!~
Well anyway, one of my jobs was to wash the cream separator every day. So I got to know that centrifuge intimately. It really was a marvelous little contraption. You let fresh cow's milk run into the top of the machine ....... it ran down into the center of this WHIZZING centrifuge (running at maybe half the speed of a router) but which the operator was making to spin by turning a crank ........... and in a couple of moments the centrifuge was full of milk and spewing out cream from the top outlet hole and skimmed milk from the lower, larger hole.
Here's one pictured (much like ours in the top photo, with a crank on the right side of it. The lower picture shows the machine more completely -on the left side of the drawing- but we didn't have any steam engine hooked up to ours!~ )
Did you make your own butter too? Some of our relatives did. But never did that either. My Dad was in the 2nd WW until I was about 9. Since he ws injured, he then went to school, then went to work in newspapers from then on. During those years we lived with my grandparents in a little town called in central Iowa, not to far from Des Moines, who were not farmers. Many of my dad relatives were, but ot my mothers. They lived around the Winterset area, which is the area the movie Bridges of Madison County was filmed. Which of course, brought back many memories for me. Watched that movie several times because of that. Most of my closer relatives no longer live there, many of them no longer alive now. Those were the good old days for me now. Which I know everybody says. Remember my parents saying the same thing. I think you and I are pretty close to the same age. Not sure how old you are exactly. But guessing, would say your in your 60's somewhere at least.
Vince, you remember Beloved that used to post on Marges forum I am sure. Do you know what ever happened to him? I lost his address in a computer crash, and of course, mine changing over time too, never heard from him again after that. Just thought I would ask.
All of this interesting info. That is what I can understand anyway.
Love ya much,
Sandy
"For the Lord giveth wisdom; out os his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (Pr. 2:6)
We DID make our own butter, yes. My dad was particularly picky and didn't like the commercial butter so we always made our own.
Interesting thing about making butter is that the cream needs to age for about a day. Fresh cream just won't turn into butter. HOWEVER, the cream doesn't need to be sour either, in order to make butter out of it; just give it about a day in a cool environment. (This always ticks me off about bought buttermilk: they always sour it. Fresh sweet buttermilk is absolutely delightful but the bought buttermilk is awful).
So, the way WE made butter was to put it into a gallon container, (a Rogers Golden Syrup can, which was pretty much the same as a gallon of paint can today), put the lid on it nice and tight and then shake it. We only filled the can to about 3/4 full so that it could be shaken well.
The cream quite quickly turns into thick whipping cream inside and doesn't want to shake anymore. At this point we would knock it back and forth from one knee to the other and after maybe 10 minutes, it would start to make a swishy sound inside. We kept doing it until the container sounded as though it was full of milk (which it was: full of butter milk).
Then we opened the can and poured the contents through a strainer so that it caught all the lumps and lumplets. We pressed the lumps together and squished them good to get all the remaining buttermilk out of them and then put it all into cold water and continued to squish to "rinse" all the buttermilk out of the butter. Then we salted it, kneeded it and then formed it into blocks of butter. If I remember correctly, 3/4 gallons of cream produced about 1.5 lb of butter.
In later years we used a MixMaster instead of the shake method. It sure was a lot easier. If only we'd been able to get ahold of a paint shaker ... that would have been the absolutely best system!!
As for Beloved's email address ........ I don't think I have it anymore. Marge might still have it. We sort of had a falling out and I found it kind of pointless continuing email with him because he seemed intent on doing little but telling me how foolish I was. I just got tired of it.
Well, as I recall he really was pretty upset at what was happening to you Vince. In fact, we all were, for that matter. Because, believe it or not, we do care. And I know Beloved did. I really learned a great deal from him. He had a way of handling the scriptures that made you search for yourself. Well it did me anyway. Because that is what I do. Still do today. It was his influence on studying about knowledge, understanding and wisdom that brought me to realize how important all three was to a believer. I kept in contact with him for some time after he left those forums, until losing his address.
thanks for the tip about asking Marge. Will ask her about it tomorrow. Getting really late here, and morning comes early tomorrow for me.
Love ya much,
Sandy
"For the Lord giveth wisdom; out os his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." (Pr. 2:6)
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