Knowledge is Power - Comments on Thinking inside the tank

Thinking inside the tank

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How to clean a Corgi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9y22VID_3w

Comment by mojo — April 17, 2012 @ 9:24 am
Aaaaaand:

“Nano-scale materials mean that you can harvest the hydrogen [in human waste] and turn it into hydrozene – which is basically rocket fuel.”

1) Um, isn’t there rather a lot of hydrogen in, y’know, water to begin with? What’s the crap for? Flavor?

2) “Hydrozine”? Possibly you mean Hydrazine, but I sure hope not.

Comment by mojo — April 17, 2012 @ 9:33 am
PPS: Actual humor, of the satire variety:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXtvdwZgU-U

“Who’s on first” performed by Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan

Comment by mojo — April 17, 2012 @ 11:14 am
from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine

Fuel cells
The Italian catalyst manufacturer Acta has proposed using hydrazine as an alternative to hydrogen in fuel cells. The chief benefit of using hydrazine is that it can produce over 200 mW/cm2 more than a similar hydrogen cell without the need to use expensive platinum catalysts. As the fuel is liquid at room temperature, it can be handled and stored more easily than hydrogen. By storing the hydrazine in a tank full of a double-bonded carbon-oxygen carbonyl, the fuel reacts and forms a safe solid called hydrazone. By then flushing the tank with warm water, the liquid hydrazine hydrate is released. Hydrazine has a higher electromotive force of 1.56 V compared to 1.23 V for hydrogen. Hydrazine breaks down in the cell to form nitrogen and hydrogen which bonds with oxygen, releasing water.[28] Hydrazine was used in fuel cells manufactured by Allis-Chalmers Corp., including some that provided electric power in space satellites in the 1960s.

Comment by Steve_in_CA — April 17, 2012 @ 11:33 am
Dont forget that the potassium nitrate (saltpeter) used to make Medieval black powder was skimmed from poop pits. Right up through the Revolutionary War there were teams in each town assigned to gather it.

Comment by TimO — April 17, 2012 @ 12:40 pm
Steve (4) is right.
Dunno what hydrozene is, and hydrazone (an organic-compound family similar to ketones) ain’t rocket fuel, although it can be used to make hydrazene (N2O4, an inorganic), which is a rocket fuel/propellant.

I’m biased (having dealt with the Agena and its derivatives’ hydrazine-based propulsion systems for over a decade), so I just assumed they meant hydrazene, which is pretty handy stuff. Yeah you can do the fuel-cell thing, or you can pass it through any number of catalysts to produce high volumes of high-temperature gas (nitrogen, hydrogen, ammonia) very rapidly.
• It’s a mono-propellant (without oxidizer) used commonly in attitude-control or spin-up thrusters (small rocket engines) for tens of pounds of thrust.
• If you combine the various forms of hydrazene with the various forms of nitric acid (as oxidizers), it makes a really, really good bi-propellant (fuel + oxidzer) booster-rocket fuel for tons of thrust (dangerous as all get-out, though).

The hydrogen produced, as well as the high-temp, high-pressure gas are useful in producing useful work. However, I wouldn’t recommend that those devices be made in third-world shacks. Then again, maybe they’ll come up with something.

Maybe if black powder makes a resurgence, they can get into the niter-making business. UPDATE: just noticed that TimO (5) beat me to this.

The rest of the article is nano-geek Greek to me.

Comment by DougM (jackassophobe) — April 17, 2012 @ 12:49 pm
Well, the incinerating toilet has the problem of fuel.

Staggeringly poor people over the world barely have fuel to cook food, let alone to burn poop.

Composting is more plausible, but still requires vastly more capital than the poorest people in the world have.

Holes are cheap (practically free); a composting setup requires actual construction and materials that are competing for other uses.

Comment by Sigivald — April 17, 2012 @ 12:56 pm
DougM, niter from urine is old stuff.

Comment by rickn8or — April 17, 2012 @ 1:33 pm
Cow patties burn good— if we tried cleaned Bert the Most Beautiful Bassett like that we’d have to tie him down. Just the sound of the vacuum sent him into hiding–

Comment by geezerette — April 17, 2012 @ 2:30 pm
Staggeringly poor people over the world barely have fuel to cook food, let alone to burn poop.

Well, I know what you meant, and would have to agree, but just for humor I’m going to point out that primitive people have been cooking over burning cow chips, etc. for thousands of years. (and didn’t need a fancy plant to do it)

Speaking of humor, I have decided to become the world’s latest third world dictator. I will refer to my coup as “the green summer,” and get myself one of those plants so I can — with utter disregard to to erudite discussion above about WTF this thing really is — build & fuel a bunch of short/medium range ballistic missiles to fart on all my neighbors if everybody doesn’t do what I want.

My new national flag will have a green background with a crossed gold missile and scimitar in the foreground.

Once I’ve complete that goal (and made some impassioned speeches denouncing the warmongering Great Satan America), I will get appointed to chair a few UN commissions about preventing the proliferation of weapons, promoting peace and so forth.

Oh, and I will insist on my realm being referred to as “a little country that punches above its weight,” even if that’s not exactly a unique designation. Once I’ve gotten hold of some of Gaddafi’s poison gas supply and a few nukes from Pakistan (or soon, Iran) and duct taped them on my shit-fuled missiles that thing about “punching above my weight” will be true, too.

Maybe I’ll have then modify my flag to have Arabic below the crossed scimitar & missile that says: “Praise Allah, we punch above our weight. Death to everybody.”

My new subjects will continue cooking their dinners (when they have any) over burning camel chips since it’s hard to afford both cook stoves and rockets. After I have slaughtered a good number of them for complaining about poverty and miscellaneous abuses, I’ll have the rest turn out to welcome visiting US Democratic notables who will refer to me as a “reformer” while I tell them of my plans to turn the desert into one giant solar cell.

And then I’ll get appointed head of a UN commission on human rights.

If I hurry up and get all this done before November, will POTUS come and bow to me?

Who knows, it could be the foreign policy coup that decides the election.

PS: although I plan to turn the desert into a giant solar cell, I still need a nuclear reactor for entirely peaceful purposes. Plutonium & rocket fuel anyone?

Comment by Ironic in Denver — April 17, 2012 @ 2:46 pm
Well Claire, a few months ago I installed two Jacuzzis in my Mom’s house (Jacuzzi brand toilets, that is).

Not a couple months later, the main toilet started getting slow and not disposing as it was designed to do (so we thought).

After calling a plumber to snake out the lines to the street and run an auger in the brand new lo-flow toilets we learned the the new lo-flow toilets don’t send enough water to move all the waste to the street and stuff eventually stacks up in the pipes. (hence the need to flush multiple times to make all right with the world)

Many cities are having to do some quick redesigning and retrofitting to get their sewer systems to operate with much less water because they just can’t admit they were wrong and give back those wonderfully effective high-flow toilets.

And I just can’t imagine relying on most people to cart their poo compost bucket out to sit on the curb next to the other recyclables etc. once a week. Don’t even get me thinking about my neighbors from the floors above who cannot even take their regular trash to the dumpster without leaving a fragrant trail down the hall carpet and the stairs and everywhere they walk after stepping in it.

Considering the cost of plumbing a parallel grey water system throughout the city and every home and building to use for flushing instead of clean water, I don’t mind using the clean stuff for both.

Comment by mech — April 17, 2012 @ 5:12 pm
“… turn it into hydrozene …”

Well, the Brits never were much good at spelling. They think those wheelie-things on cars are “tyres”, and cars come in all sorts of different “colours”. So maybe for them it’s “hydrozene”.

In any case, it’s one of the early rocket fuels. The Germans used it during WW II for the ME-163B. It flew at around 500 – 600 mph, and tended to blow up a lot.

Comment by ZZMike — April 17, 2012 @ 5:18 pm
Why don’t they dig holes in the sand till they reach water, then filter that to drink and leave the hydrogen dreams to the first world gasbags who don’t even have any systems for utilizing hydrogen?

Whatever the somalis, etc have been doing with their limited amounts of personal waste from the beginning, they can just keep doing until a grant for a real idea comes along.

I suppose a composting toilet would work for a vegan. . .

Comment by mech — April 17, 2012 @ 5:20 pm
“…The Microsoft founder – one of the world’s richest men – has promised to sink his fortune on combating worldwide poverty…”

At the rate he’s going, he’ll succeed in sinking his fortune.

Comment by Jess — April 18, 2012 @ 3:29 am
Mech:

I suppose a composting toilet would work for a vegan. . .

I would rather compost a vegan.

Comment by Steve_in_CA — April 18, 2012 @ 6:35 am
The most *dangerous* night patrols in Vietnam walked close to villages thru a grassy field that you knew in daylight was the village communal “outhouse”. Turds, reenforced…. and—a short flight for blow flies from a turd to the villager`s morning bowl of rice!

Went with the battalion surgeon to some villages where he lined up the entire village and popped red worm pills in every mouth. Coupla days later I saw worms in their droppings the size of fucking anacondas!!!!!!

Comment by Colonel Jerry USMC — April 18, 2012 @ 11:52 am

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