#engineer hydrocarbon

[shutteringoil]

The Science Behind  Mix Hydrocarbon Oil: A Comprehensive Guide

In the realm of industrial lubricants and fuels, mix hydrocarbon oil plays a crucial role. Its versatility and effectiveness make it a key player in various applications, from engine lubrication to industrial processes. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the science behind hydrocarbon oils, including their composition, properties, applications and environmental considerations.

What is Mix Hydrocarbon Oil?

Mix hydrocarbon oil is derived from the refining of crude oil, and it consists of a blend of different hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons can be categorized into two main types: aliphatic and aromatic.

Aliphatic hydrocarbons include straight-chain (paraffin) and branched (iso-paraffins) hydrocarbons. They are typically less reactive and have higher stability.

Aromatic hydrocarbons are cyclic compounds that contain one or more benzene rings. They tend to have unique properties, such as higher boiling points and greater stability under heat, making them useful in certain applications.

Composition

The composition of mix hydrocarbon oil can vary significantly based on its intended use and the source of the crude oil. The refining process includes distillation, cracking, and treating to separate and convert various hydrocarbon components into usable products. Additives are often included to enhance performance characteristics, such as:

Detergents: Help keep engines clean by preventing the accumulation of deposits.

Anti-wear agents: minimize friction and wear on metal surfaces.

Viscosity index improvers: Ensure the oil retains its thickness across varying temperatures.

Properties

The performance of mix hydrocarbon oil is largely dictated by their physical and chemical properties, which include:

Viscosity:  A quantification of a fluid's ability to resist movement. The viscosity of oil can change with temperature; thus, oils with a high viscosity index are preferable in applications subject to temperature fluctuations.

Flash Point: The minimum temperature at which the vapors above the oil can catch fire. A higher flash point indicates better safety during handling and use.

Pour Point: The lowest temperature at which the oil will still flow. This is essential for use in low-temperature conditions.

Oxidation Stability: The ability of oil to resist degradation when exposed to oxygen at high temperatures, ensuring longer service life.

Applications

Mix hydrocarbon oilfind applications in a wide variety of industries. Below are several of the typical applications:

 Automotive Industry: In the automotive sector, mix hydrocarbon oil is primarily used as engine oils. They provide lubrication to reduce friction between moving parts, dissipate heat, and keep the engine clean. The formulation of these oils is critical, as they must withstand high temperatures and pressures.

Industrial Machinery: Hydraulic oils, gear oils, and compressor oils are also formulated from hydrocarbon oils. Their ability to reduce wear and tear makes them essential in manufacturing and heavy machinery operations.

Marine Applications: In marine settings, hydrocarbon oils are used in both diesel engines and lubricants for equipment operating under harsh conditions. Their stability and resistance to corrosion are particularly important in this sector.

Aviation: Aviation lubricants often utilize hydrocarbon oils due to their excellent high-temperature performance and stability, which are vital for aircraft engines operating at high altitudes and speeds.

Environmental Considerations

As with any petroleum-derived product, mix hydrocarbon oil come with environmental concerns. The extraction, refining, and use of these oils can lead to pollution and other ecological impacts. Here are some key considerations:

Pollution: Oil spills, whether from tankers or drilling operations, can have devastating effects on marine and terrestrial ecosystems. The use of hydrocarbon oils must be managed to minimize the risk of spills and leaks.

Biodegradability: hydrocarbon oils are generally not biodegradable, leading to concerns about their persistence in the environment. The development of biodegradable alternatives is an ongoing area of research, as industries seek more sustainable options.

Regulations: Governments worldwide are imposing stricter regulations on oil usage, focusing on minimizing environmental impact. This includes regulations on emissions from oil combustion and requirements for spill preparedness and response.

Future Trends

The future of mix hydrocarbon oil will likely be influenced by several factors:

Synthetic Oils: The rise of synthetic oils, which can offer superior performance and reduced environmental impact, may change the landscape of lubricant formulations.

Renewable Sources: The shift toward bio-based oils and renewable resources could offer alternatives to traditional hydrocarbon oils, potentially reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Recycling and Reuse: Advances in recycling technologies may allow for more effective recovery and reuse of oils, minimizing waste and environmental impact.

Conclusion

Mix hydrocarbon oil is indispensable in various sectors due to their unique properties and versatility. Understanding their composition, properties, and applications is vital for anyone working in industries that rely on these oils. As environmental concerns and technological advancements shape the future of lubrication and fuels, ongoing research and innovation will play a crucial role in developing sustainable solutions while meeting the demands of modern industry.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Table 4.4 gives data for a 125 cc high performance motorcycle engine operating in three formats – as a standard production engine; with optimization of the carburettor and output gas scavenging conditions; and, finally, with the addition of a catalyst to the exhaust system.

"Environmental Chemistry: A Global Perspective", 4e - Gary W. VanLoon & Stephen J. Duffy

[tenth-sentence]

Nevertheless, it should be clear that one feature of the design – namely, the simultaneous introduction of fuel and release of exhaust gases – can lead to problems of loss of unburned hydrocarbons.

"Environmental Chemistry: A Global Perspective", 4e - Gary W. VanLoon & Stephen J. Duffy

[usafphantom2]

‘Flying at over Mach 3 is a thermal problem. Everything is too hot, including any air you slow down to interact with the vehicle. You are trying to make the vehicle (and the pilots inside) survive for hours in a pizza oven, while they are getting cozy with two 500 million BTU/hour flamethrowers,’ Iain McClatchie, an aviation and turbine engine expert

Quora.

‘When you look at a graph like this, your first impression might be that the vehicle is this glowing hot thing slicing through the icy -52 C air at 80,000 feet. So naturally, you think of the air as cooling the airplane down.

NO…Not so much. The air has to change to the vehicle’s speed to touch the vehicle, and that requires work. That work heats the air. At Mach 3.2, the stagnation temperature of the air is 740 F, which is hotter than every (labelled) point on the above graph! (The nacelles around the engine afterburners, unlabelled, are in fact hotter than the air around them

Basically, the shocks from the airplane heat the air around it, but the vehicle itself cools the air in contact with it down. Once the airplane passes by, all that disturbed air tumbles to a stop, leaving a path of hot air through the upper atmosphere.

‘So back to life in the pizza oven. The basic solution is (a) leave most of the airframe hot and make it out of stuff like titanium and stainless steel that are strong when hot, and (b) start with a large amount of cold fuel, and then dump heat from critical areas into the fuel before burning it. When decoupling from an aerial tanker, half the SR-71’s weight was fuel.

‘A special type of kerosene fuel, JP-7, was developed for the SR-71 to be good as a heat sink. It boils away at 285 C at 1 atmosphere pressure, which is the upper end of the kerosene range. When the plane tanked up at 30,000 feet, the kerosene might start below 0 C. At speed, it would be used to cool the avionics and cockpit, and by the time it arrived at the engine it would get up to 177 C. It was then used as hydraulic fluid for the various engine actuators, primarily the variable geometry nozzle. By the time it got to the fuel injectors it had gotten up to 316 C (but wasn’t boiling because it was at several atmospheres of pressure). At cruise the burner cans were at 330 kPa (about 3.3x the pressure at sea level), so the fuel still didn’t boil as it left the nozzles but the droplets would have evaporated very quickly.’

McClatchie continues;

‘JP-7 is mostly a mix of hydrocarbons centered around C12H26 (dodecane). The graph above shows the vapor pressure of dodecane as a function of reciprocal absolute temperature. That makes it a bit hard to read. 0.0024, for instance, is 417 Kelvin which is 143 Celsius. Liquids start to boil when their vapor pressure is greater than the ambient pressure. I’ve labelled the boiling point of dodecane at 2900 Pa, which is the absolute pressure at 80,000 feet, and 13000 Pa, which is the minimum absolute pressure in the SR-71 fuel tanks. Note that the dodecane component of JP-7 starts to boil at 162 C at sea level… quite a bit less than the advertised 285 C which is actually when the stuff boils away completely.

‘The flash point of JP-7 is 60 C. The fuel was held in tanks whose walls were formed of the skin of the vehicle. Since fuel vapor against the top skin of the vehicle would be well over 60 C during cruise, if air was allowed in any ignition source in the tank would cause a deflagration and destruction of the vehicle. Instead, nitrogen gas from a 260-liter liquid nitrogen dewar was used to pressurize the tanks. This would have mostly been an issue during descent, when the ambient pressure rose and extra gas was needed to fill the tank ullage space. Click on the full article to read more.

Written by Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[garbage-empress]

I feel really sorry for whales on account of the whole "driving them to near extinction" thing but in retrospect it's extremely funny to me that we figured out "create an entire industry out of extremely dangerous hunting of a limited number of giant sea mammals" before mastering the whole "hydrocarbons that shoot right out of the fucking ground in unimaginable quantities" thing. There were entire factories of steam engines running machines powered by coal mined from the ground but they were lubricated entirely with foul smelling cetacean juice instead of like, fossil fuel oil that literally shoots out of the ground.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Electrons, not molecules

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

When hydrocarbon barons do their damndest to torch the Earth with fossil fuels, they call us dreamers. They insist that there's a hard-nosed reality – humanity needs energy – and they're the ones who live in it, while we live in the fairy land where the world can run on sunshine and virtuous thoughts. Without them making the tough decisions, we'd all be starving in the frigid dark.

Here's the thing: they're full of shit.

Mostly.

Humanity does need energy if we're going to avoid starving in the frigid dark, but that energy doesn't have to come from fossil fuels. Indeed, in the long-term, it can't. Even if you're a rootin' tootin, coal-rollin' climate denier, there's a hard-nosed reality you can't deny: if we keep using fossil fuels, they will someday run out. Remember "peak oil" panic? Fossil fuels are finite, and the future of the human race needn't be. We need more.

Thankfully, we have it. Despite what you may have heard, renewables are more than up to the task. Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how much renewable energy is available to us, here at the bottom of our gravity well. I failed to properly appreciate it until I read Deb Chachra's brilliant 2023 book, How Infrastructure Works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Chachra, an engineering prof and materials scientist, offers a mind-altering reframing of the question of energy: we have a material problem, not an energy problem. If we could capture a mere 0.4% of the sun's rays that strike the Earth, we could give every person on the planet the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, only colder).

Energy isn't just wildly abundant, though: it's also continuously replenished. For most of human history, we've treated energy as scarce, eking out marginal gains in energy efficiency – even as we treated materials as disposable, using them once and consigning them to a midden or a landfill. That's completely backwards. We get a fresh shipment of energy every time the sun (or the moon) comes up over the horizon. By contrast, new consignments of material are almost unheard of – the few odd ounces of meteoric ore that survive entry through Earth's atmosphere.

A soi-dissant adult concerned with the very serious business of ensuring our species isn't doomed to the freezing, starving darkness of an energy-deprived future would think about nothing save for this fact and its implications. They'd be trying to figure out how to humanely and responsibly gather the materials needed for the harvest, storage and distribution of this nearly limitless and absolutely free energy.

In other words, that Very Serious, Hard-Nosed Grown-Up should be concerned with using as few molecules as possible to harvest as many electrons as possible. They'd be working on things like turning disused coal-mines into giant gravity batteries:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Not figuring out how to dig or flush more long-dead corpses out of the Earth's mantle to feed them into a furnace. That is a profoundly unserious response to the human need for energy. It's caveman shit: "Ugh, me burn black sticky gunk, make cave warm, cough cough cough."

Enter Exxon CEO Darren Woods, whose interview with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and editor Alan Murray contains this telling quote: "we basically focus our technology on transforming molecules and they happen to be hydrogen and carbon molecules":

https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/leadership-next-exxonmobil-ceo-darren-woods/

As Bill McKibben writes, this is a tell. A company that's in the molecule business is not in the electron business. For all that Woods postures about being a clear-eyed realist beating back the fantasies of solarpunk-addled greenies, Woods does not want a future where we have all our energy needs met:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-most-epic-and-literal-gaslighting

That's because the only way to get that future is to shift from molecules – whose supply can be owned and therefore sold by Exxon – to electrons, which that commie bastard sun just hands out for free to every person on our planet's surface, despite the obvious moral hazard of all those free lunches. As Woods told Fortune, when it comes to renewables, "we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders."

Woods dresses this up in high-minded seriousness kabuki, saying that Exxon is continuing to invest in burning rotting corpses because our feckless species "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society." In other words, it's just too late for solar. Keep shoveling those corpses into the furnace, they're all that stands between you and the freezing, starving dark.

Now, this is self-serving nonsense. The problem of renewables isn't that it's too late – it's that they don't "generate above-average returns for our shareholders" (that part, however, is gospel truth).

But let's stipulate that Woods sincerely believes that it is too late. It's pretty goddamned rich of this genocidal, eminently guillotineable monster to just drop that in the conversation without mentioning the role his company played in getting us to this juncture. After all, #ExxonKnew. 40 years ago, Exxon's internal research predicted climate change, connected climate change to its own profits, and predicted how bad it would be today.

Those predictions were spookily accurate and the company took them to heart, leaping into action. For 40 years, the company has been building its offshore drilling platforms higher and higher in anticipation of rising seas and superstorms – and over that same period, Exxon has spent millions lobbying and sowing disinformation to make sure that the rest of us don't take the emergency as seriously as they are, lest we switch from molecules to electrons.

Exxon knew, and Exxon lied. McKibben quotes Woods' predecessor Lee Raymond, speaking in the runup to the Kyoto Treaty negotiations: "It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."

When Woods says we need to keep shoveling corpses into the furnace because we "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society," he means that his company lied to us in order to convince us to wait too long.

When Woods – and his fellow enemies of humanity in the C-suites of Chevron and other corpse-torching giants – was sending the arson billions to his shareholders, he held back a healthy share to fund this deceit. He colluded with the likes of Joe Manchin ("[D-POLLUTION]" -McKibben) to fill the Inflation Reduction Act with gifts for molecules. The point of fantasies like "direct air carbon-capture" is to extend the economic life of molecule businesses, by tricking us into thinking that we can keep sending billions to Exxon without suffocating in its waste-product.

These lies aren't up for debate. Back in 2021, Greenpeace tricked Exxon's top DC lobbyist Keith McCoy into thinking that he was on a Zoom call with a corporate recruiter and asked him about his work for Exxon, and McCoy spilled the beans:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/01/basilisk-tamers/#exxonknew

He confessed to everything: funding fake grassroots groups and falsifying the science – he even names the senators who took his bribes. McCoy singled out Manchin for special praise, calling him "a kingmaker" and boasting about the "standing weekly calls" Exxon had with Manchin's office.

Exxon's response to this nine-minute confession was to insist that their most senior American lobbyist "wasn't involved at all in forming policy positions."

McKibben points to the forthcoming book The Price Is Wrong, by Brett Christophers, which explains how the neoclassical economics establishment's beloved "price signals" will continue to lead us into the furnace:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

The crux of that book is:

We cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing.

Nearly 100 years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Today, we can say that it's impossible to get an oil executive to understand that humanity needs electrons, not molecules, because his shareholders' obscene wealth depends on it.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

[lothlorienlover]

The largest tanker on Earth is the Hellespont_Alhambra 

It is capable of carrying 441,893 tons of crude oil, which is equivalent to the production of some countries. Its crew consists of only 37 people.....

Deadweight tonnage is 441,893 tons,

Total length is 380 meters,

Width is 68 meters.

Draft is 24.5 meters, and it can carry up to 3.2 million barrels of crude oil.

 The ship is powered by an HSD-Sulzer 9RTA84T-D engine, which produces 36,900 kW at 76 rpm, allowing it to achieve a service speed of 16.5 knots when loaded and 17.5 knots in ballast.  Classified by both Lloyd’s Register (LR) and the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the Hellespont Alhambra features a double hull for enhanced safety. Ballast tanks are emptied to reduce corrosion, and a unique white paint system above the waterline helps reflect sunlight, keeping cargo cooler and reducing hydrocarbon emissions.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

In a step toward solar fuels, durable artificial photosynthesis setup chains two carbons together

A key step toward reusing CO2 to make sustainable fuels is chaining carbon atoms together, and an artificial photosynthesis system developed at the University of Michigan can bind two of them into hydrocarbons with field-leading performance. The system produces ethylene with efficiency, yield and longevity well above other artificial photosynthesis systems. Ethylene is a hydrocarbon typically used in plastics, so one direct application of the system would be to harvest carbon dioxide that would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere for making plastics. "The performance, or the activity and stability, is about five to six times better than what is typically reported for solar energy or light-driven carbon dioxide reduction to ethylene," said Zetian Mi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan and corresponding author of the study in Nature Synthesis.

Read more.

[thehousepatron]

Some Spider Silk Facts

The strongest spider silk is produced by Darwin’s Bark Spider, which is twice as strong as any gossamer recorded before. It has a tensile strength of up to 520 megajoules per cubic metre.

Gossamer is stronger than steel and kevlar, and it has been suggested that a single pencil-width strand of the stuff could stop a Boeing 747 in its tracks.

The reason we can break such a strong material is because it is 20 times thinner than a human hair, usually measuring just 0.003mm across.

There are seven types of silk produced by a spider of Araneus Diadematus: dragline/major ampullate silk (which forms the basic structure of a web and also the web the spider itself dangles from), minor ampullate silk (which forms the auxiliary spiral in the centre of a web), flagelliform silk (which forms the core fibres of the ‘capture spiral’) , aggregate silk (forming the aqueous coating on a web), cylindriform silk (tough outer silk of an egg sac), aciniform silk (soft inner silk of an egg sac also used for swathing prey) and pyriform silk (which is used as a sort of cement for joining and attaching different parts of the web).

These little architects have seven different silk glands, as a result, all of which are employed by the spinnerets at the spider’s rear end.

Gossamer is made up of a blend of different proteins linked together in a chain: it consists of proteins rich in nonpolar (example; fats, oils, gasoline and petrol) and hydrophobic (example; oils, waxes and steroids) amino acids like glycine (C₂H₅NO₂ - white solid) and alanine (C3H7NO2 - white powder) but no (or very little) tryptophan (C11H12N2O2).

Glycine is a compound our bodies use to make protein. It is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, cryoprotective and immunomodulatory in peripheral and nervous tissues.

Alanine is an alpha amino acid also used to make proteins. It is a hydrocarbon. Hydrocarbons are divided into two classes in biochemistry: aromatic compounds and aliphatic compounds (from the Greek word ‘aleiphar’ - fat/oil). Alanine falls into the latter category. Another example of an aliphatic compound is squalene, which is found in shark livers and the stomach oil of birds.

So spidersilk seems to be mainly made up of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, with more hydrogen and carbon than any other element, making it an aliphatic hydrocarbon based substance. (I think. I’m not a scientist, I’m just making an educated guess.)

So why have we not spun our own clothes / harvested spidersilk? Multiple reasons.

The main reason being that spiders can’t be farmed like silkworms due to the fact that they will cannibalise each other in close proximity. The silk is so fine that it would take harvesting from 400+ spiders to make a single yard of silk. And the silk also hardens when exposed to air which makes it difficult to work with.

This silk hardens as it passes through the spider’s spinnerets. Also, the problem with trying to genetically engineer spidersilk ourselves is that we can only partially replicate its chemical makeup.

Also here’s the heckin chungus of a spider in question, with the world’s strongest web:

He’s buff and he knows it. Proud chonky fella. He’s cute. 😭🥺

[clatterbane]

Oh yeah, about that persistent anemia that the new endo pretty much flipped over...

Yeah, I developed some suspicions of my own there, and it took maybe 2 seconds of searching to turn up plenty of info about PPIs directly causing iron absorption issues too. 🙄 Besides the other minerals I already knew about. They're pretty well known for that, leading to bone density problems for some people. Most likely also the reason my sodium and potassium levels have kept coming back just under the acceptable range too. You fuck around with the balance of digestive secretions and pH, it may have some unintended effects!

I've been stuck on high-dose PPIs ever since that big DKA crash in 2020 damaged my digestive system. They've actually kept me on the maximum dosages approved for adult humans, but I've ended up cutting it back some myself to the point that it's just higher than usual. (Partly to hopefully also cut back somewhat on potential side effects like this, but also thanks to repeated pharmacy supply issues with formats I can reasonably swallow with my now fucked-up esophagus!)

Never had any notable reflux issues before, but with that damage there's nothing really keeping the stomach acid down where it belongs. With evidence of that from some truly unpleasant testing where they dangle sensors down your throat. And of course they're trying to keep more acid from doing more damage. Some of that effect if I don't have the meds is probably from rebound acid overproduction, but if I don't take them for whatever reason now it gets ugly within a few days!

So yeah, I do seem to be stuck on the PPIs for the forseeable future now, whether I like it or not. It's just good to know that I do need to make sure to take in extra of certain minerals on a regular basis to try and compensate for that.

Am I surprised that two endos now, and the GP I got referred to for more tests over it have just completely overlooked well-known effects of meds they knew I was taking regularly, and which are readily found immediately by plugging "PPIs iron" into your search engine of choice? Not remotely.

Nope, they'd prefer to mutter direly about rare liver diseases and all kinds of less likely possibilities--and order a zillion blood tests. At least they DO seem to like to order various testing here when something looks off instead of just ignoring it, I will give them that. Guessing they are not under the same kind of pennypenching pressure that kinda got me needing the freaking PPIs at all.

PPIs are more within primary care's wheelhouse than endocrinology's. But. the gastroenterology guy who has been prescribing the stuff for a good while now ALSO did not put together that the borderline low electrolytes he was concerned about in the context of anesthesia might have some connection there before I brought it up as a possibility. To his credit, he also did not act like I must be on crack mentioning it, or seem to take it as some weird challenge to His Authority. But, the guy--who does come across as smart and competent enough--had obviously never considered this as a possibility.

This shit may be anything but unexpected by now. But, it really does sort of bring home just how bad at least 95% of clinicians seem to be at diagnostic pattern matching, in general.

(I mean, working with patterns like this is just one of the things my own brain has Always Just Done. Getting it to fucking shut up sometimes when it's not being useful, and channeling it into actually productive avenues are the bigger challenge. Seems to be another on the less shitty side of those neuroweird superpowers. But, some of these otherwise intelligent people are just so damn terrible at it by just about any standards. At the risk of sounding like some kind of condescending prick.)

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Carrying out this kind of test using 7.3 kW engines burning gasoline, the exhaust was found to have the composition shown in Table 4.3.

"Environmental Chemistry: A Global Perspective", 4e - Gary W. VanLoon & Stephen J. Duffy

[dailyanarchistposts]

Air Travel – A Faster Car?

Like the automobile, air travel appears to offer humans benefits anarchists cherish: the freedom to travel widely, to experience new cultures and relate to more people, to develop culturally and spiritually, to walk a mile in other people’s shoes, to find a place for ourselves in a world going mad. But modern air travel, because of its huge volume and vast infrastructural needs, is one of the most uniquely polluting activities humans have ever invented. Acres of concrete. Vast areas taken up by terminals, facilities, access roads, warehouses, hotels and shopping malls. The noise of take-off and landing and the misery caused by the increasing number of night-time flights. The destruction of habitats as runways are extended and new terminals built. The unremitting damage to the atmosphere, especially the troposphere (where weather systems form), which is vital for human life on Earth. Greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s aircraft fleet currently account for 4% of all global warming from human activity. By 2050, emissions from air travel may be contributing 15% of predicted climate change if left unchecked.

The convenience of air travel and the rise of the no-frills carrier obscures the extent of the problem. Passenger-kilometres flown from the UK increased from 125 billion in 1990 to 260 billion in 2000. Government forecasts predict that, without controls, British airports will be serving over 1bn passengers a year by 2050. Air traffic worldwide is predicted to increase six times by 2050 and we will be burning at least three times as much fuel as at present. The problem is bad and is going to get a lot worse over the next 30–40 years.

During flight, aircraft engines emit carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulphur, water vapour, hydrocarbons, sulphur particles and soot. Your share of a return flight to Florida pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a whole year’s driving. These emissions alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere in a variety of ways: they have a massive and widely-acknowledged impact on climate change. Air travel causes large-scale reduction in ozone levels in the stratosphere and increased UV radiation at ground level, i.e. increased risks of skin cancer. Activity at airports cause changes to the troposphere for hundreds of kilometres downwind and greatly reduces local air quality. When all planes in the USA were grounded after 9/11, the nights got warmer and the days colder, evidence that air travel causes global warming right now.

Air travel is big business, and getting bigger: airports expanding, regional hubs, new terminals, the associated sprawl of commercial development, government subsidies for each new generation of planes, the bidding wars for landing rights. Air travel is subsidised by £9bn a year in Britain alone, because there is no tax on kerosene or VAT charged on fares. In 1944, the great powers decided that to rebuild a shattered world and reward the aircraft companies building military aircraft to win the war, air travel would not be taxed. But who knew then what the environmental effects would be or just how big air travel would get? Sixty years have gone by and we are staring over the abyss.

The working class bears the brunt of the destructive effects of air travel and airport development, yet the poorest 10% of us never fly. The rise of charter flights to Ibiza and no-frills flights to Prague – which carry a surprising number of the comfortable middle class (75% or travellers are from the ABC social classes) cannot alter the basic facts. Our health, sanity, quality of life and future are all at risk. Governments say air travel is good and cannot be restricted or curbed. Business says demand for air travel – a demand created and fuelled by big business – means that airports must expand and the volume of flights must increase. We must build bigger planes that are more fuel efficient. Why? We shouldn’t forget either the point where big business and the state truly meet: in the 1990s, military aircraft consumed one third of the fuel used by all planes and produce proportionately more emissions of climate-changing pollution. Who’s going to regulate them?

There is no latent demand for more air travel and bigger airports, it is being stoked by hidden subsidies and government collusion with big business to do nothing to halt runaway growth. Government studies pointing to a ‘need’ for new airports and runways are always based on taxation regimes and subsidies remaining the same: one study found that if fuel were taxed at 46p a litre and VAT phased in, passenger numbers would rise so slowly that existing runways could cope till 2030 and beyond. At the same time, if we invested in high-speed rail links huge amounts of air travel across Europe could be avoided.

People often say that technological improvements will reduce environmental impacts. But air travel is increasing so much that no amount of technological advance will reduce damage, merely slow the rate of environmental destruction. By 2010, increased CO2 emissions by the aviation industry will totally negate all other climate-change protection policies and regimes: we are being asked to change our ways and tighten our belts just so the rich can go on flying. There is no technological fix, only a massive reduction in the amount or air travel will do. That will only come about by us choosing not to travel, by a massive change in culture and social relations. This is what an anarchist society of the future, a sustainable society for all to share and enjoy, is all about. Our society is on a truly human scale, where we live, travel and interact in ways that meet our human needs without damaging others and destroying the environment.

There is beauty all around us if we choose to see it. There is something in every human face. There are places of interest and leisure within hundreds of miles, why travel thousands? If communities can be re-engineered to be self-sustaining – and they can be – will we need to travel thousands of miles to do business, to negotiate deals, exchange ideas, meet people? If we need to work only a few hours a day and tasks get done when they can, not when someone says they must, will we need to travel at hundreds of miles an hour to do them? Did people invent the internet just so we could buy on-line? The massive amount of air travel today and in the future isn’t good for people or the planet and isn’t necessary for society to function or people to live rich lives of experience and pleasure. It is necessary for the airline industries and those who are running things: the politicians, bureaucrats, generals and businessmen who enjoy looking down on us.

[jcmarchi]

Transforming Wood Waste for Sustainable Manufacturing - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/transforming-wood-waste-for-sustainable-manufacturing-technology-org/

Transforming Wood Waste for Sustainable Manufacturing - Technology Org

Lignin, a complex organic polymer, is one of the main components of wood, providing structural support and rigidity to make trees strong enough to withstand the elements. When transforming wood into paper, lignin is a key ingredient that must be removed and often becomes waste.

Marcus Foston (left) and collaborators are exploring how to use lignin, a common waste product of paper pulping, as a source of renewable alteratives to petroleum-derived chemicals. Image credit: Jerry Naunheim Jr./Washington University

Marcus Foston, an associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring how to add value to lignin by breaking it down into small molecules that are structurally similar to oxygenated hydrocarbons. These renewable chemicals are key components in many industrial processes and products, but they are traditionally sourced from nonrenewable petroleum.

Foston’s study of lignin disassembly, done in collaboration with Sai Venkatesh Pingali, a neutron scattering scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ONRL), was published Jan. 17 in the journal Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

“Lignin’s structure actually looks a lot like what we get from petroleum,” said Foston, who is also director of WashU’s Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC). “In current manufacturing processes, we spend time making petroleum look like the elements of lignin. Instead, I’m using a catalyst to break lignin down more easily and in such a way that it produces specific chemicals. Once we can produce chemical from lignin in a form we want, then we can make more efficient use of lignin, which is an abundant byproduct of pulping wood into paper.”

With collaborators at ORNL, Foston used neutron scattering to study how lignin interacts with solvents and catalysts during its disassembly under reaction conditions, including high temperature and pressure. ORNL’s advanced facilities allowed researchers to observe the reaction process in real time to improve their catalyst and further streamline reaction systems for lignin depolymerization. This direct, molecular-level view is critical, Foston said, to figure out how the catalyst and lignin behave in solution and to ensure the lignin doesn’t recondense into a polymer with bonds scientists can’t easily break.

“In this study, we’re specifically thinking about how we can take the large amount of lignin that gets produced during biofuel or paper production and use it to make renewable chemicals that replace some of the chemicals we currently get from petroleum,” Foston said. “More broadly, the same depolymerization principles we’re exploring with lignin could be used in other applications. For example, the same lessons from this study apply to plastic waste scenarios, where one approach is to deconstruct plastic waste into small molecules that could be used to make plastic or other useful products.”

“Ultimately, we want to take a bunch of chemicals that are coming from petroleum and figure out how we can make those renewably,” Foston added. “Everything we’re learning about lignin will apply to other spaces as well.”

Source: Washington University in St. Louis

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[ivoryminitower]

Echoes of Home: 53 - Steve ("flames")

Echoes of Home: FFXIV AU OC – WoLs on Earth

Tsu'na's exercise in community-building served a couple purposes.  It exposed her to people who hadn't seen her but were nevertheless talking about her, and it gave us a propagation metric.  That very evening, mere hours after she'd served the pies with sugar topping, half the diner crowd wanted sugar-topped pies.  We didn't know if it was word of mouth or social media, but the kids communicated fast.  We might need to try more targeted messages to see how they spread.

The sugar topping wasn't hard to do, once Tsu'na showed me what Mr. Hartman did (and what kind of diner cook has a basting brush in his kitchen?), but it was manual effort.  We might make a hundred pies at a time and they're all the same; unless we make a sugar-topped apple pie recipe, we need to custom-top each pie on demand.  Gotta work on recipe templates, or, God help us, actually cook.

Yesterday morning we took some painting trays, a bottle of corn oil and the Hartmans' gas can over to the Pit and set up outside the shed.  Corn oil went in one tray, gasoline in another.  I stuck a short piece of rope in the oil.

"So, gasoline is made from oil.  For a while now, it's been made from petroleum which is pumped out of underground deposits, but it can be made from plant oils too.  The important part is that it burns."

I lit a match and held it to the end of the rope. In a moment there was a steady flame.  "What burns is fumes.  Stable oil like this doesn't normally give off fumes unless it's heated up, which is why you need a wick.  On the other hand…"  I tossed a lit match into the gasoline tray.  "...Gasoline is sort of all fumes, so it burns fast.  In fact, leave gasoline out for a bit, and the fumes will escape and leave you with liquid that doesn't burn."

Tsu'na studied the gasoline flames.  "And you want liquid that does this?"

"Yeah.  It's used in Earth engines, like cars and the lawnmower."

"We do not have a car.  Did you want to make one?  Or is this for your winnebago?"

"Our winnebago.  And yeah, among other things."

"Would magitek not be easier?"

"Sure would.  Let's just go find Cid or Nero and ask them how it works.  Oh, wait...they're in Eorzea."

She sighed softly and looked back and forth between the corn oil flame and the gasoline fire. "So, because they both burn, you think we can make one into the other?"

"Because of the hydrocarbons, yeah.  My understanding is that refineries take stuff out of oil leaving purified hydrocarbons behind.  Less purified stuff is called kerosene, which doesn't burn as hot.  More purified stuff is jet fuel, which burns too hot.  This here is what we want."

She nodded slowly.  We contemplated the flames.  It was quiet.  We really should have heard Sam coming.

"Y'all tryin' to barbecue?"

I tensed, and managed a smile as I turned to look at him. "Hey, Sam.  No, we're, uh...working on alternative fuels."

"Do what, now?"

"Husband thinks we can make gasoline from corn oil."

"Oh...like corn ethanol?  Thought that was made outta corn mash."

I brightened.  "Is it?  That could mean we can start with corn and not have to worry about oil."

Sam nodded.  "So...why?"

"Gas is three fifty a gallon."

"Y'all got a car?"

Tsu'na smiled.  "He is asking if we have a car, Husband."

"Hartmans have a lawn mower."

"An' that's, what, a quarter gallon tank?  Gallon every couple months?"

"Yeah, well, we just like to be self-sufficient.  Out in the field when supply lines got screwed up we sometimes had to macgyver fuel out of homemade booze and detergent."

"Uh huh.  So...you're playin' with flammable liquids in a wooden shed?"

"No, we're playing with flammable liquids outside a wooden shed."

Sam nodded, meeting my eye.  "Rather ya didn't."

His shed.  His bat and ball.  "...Okay...well, we'll just wait for this to burn down and then...not do it any more?"

"Sounds like a plan."  He looked at the fire, looked back at me, and headed back to the bar, shaking his head.

We watched him go, then turned back to the flames.  "And we came here because you did not want to do this at the house?" asked Tsu'na.

"This demonstration, yeah.  The actual work we probably shouldn't do anywhere near a building or anything that can burn.  Probably some place with bare rock."

"There is no place like that near town."

"Yeah, we're probably talking a camping trip."

She nodded. "I shall look for a place tonight.  Can you feed sugar to the children without me?"

"I can, but…there's no real hurry on this."

"I would like to get it done.  Your list is always growing."

"Our list.  You can add stuff to it too."

"Then I shall add finding kukuri beans."

We spent the afternoon learning how to make chocolate (since it was easier and safer than gasoline).  She's got an idea for a chocolate cream pie.  We're gonna get a good solid start on introducing diabetes to this town.

After dinner at the diner she headed off to explore, and I settled in with sugar-hungry teens.  Not sure if it energized them, or if they were just more lively for some reason, but my plans for playing Tangerine Dream were dashed by their noise level, so I went with Bon Jovi instead.

Some of the kids asked about Miz Tsu'na and were disappointed to hear she wouldn't be in that evening.  I guess she's making an impression.  Or maybe they like rebelling against their parents, and are happy to use her as a reason.  Which will also make an impression.

[transmechanicus]

The old posts you've been digging up are inspiring the fuck outta me so here's my contribution

You know those engines that accept basically any hydrocarbon as fuel, from jet fuel to cooking oil to tequila? What if we could do that with electronics. A device that can be attached to and siphons from any source of electrical power it can find

Electrician’s nightmare tbh, i can’t even imagine how you would do that bc most of the time electrical power is coming from some kind of infrastructure not a discrete source. It basically sounds like a computer with a cat-o-nine-tails of power cables compatible with every country’s outlets.