Chemistry and misc. stuff concerning it.

TN4994 wrote:

TN4994 wrote:I'm waiting for the accidental discovery of a comparable voltaic pile (battery).

fallsfromtrees wrote:Might be a while before they recognize the equivalence of the spark from the pile and lightning, but eventually someone will, and then the cat will be well and truly among the pigeons.

??? "and then the cat-lizard will be well and truly among the wyverns."

Well that too

Aegis99 wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:The problem with distillation without cracking is that you end up with a large amount of very heavy (long chain) gunk that used to be just burned. You don't want tot do that anymore, as that gunk now forms the basis for the entire petrochemical industry.

You're operating under a couple of potentially erroneous assumptions here. Fractional distillation is only about separating the natural composition of your crude oil, and so it is entirely dependent on the quality of the crude oil you are refining. If you are refining Venezuelan crude you are quite correct about the large amount of heavy fractions that you will get (hence why the US is still the largest market for Venezuelan oil because only the gulf coast refineries have built in the needed (expensive) technologies to crack Venezuela's heavy oil into the more useful and valuable lighter fractions). But if you are refining a high quality feed stock, for instance something like Nigerian Bonny (light and sweet), then you will get a much higher percentage of those lighter fractions.

Or Gas Condensate and just burn it in an engine without further refining. (Moomba Crude is similar, heaviest fraction is diesel / kerosene).
The Russian aircraft piston engines are specified for a 63 Octane fuel so can burn straight refined naptha.

Captain Igloo wrote:

AirTech wrote:
The Haber-Bosch process, as implemented currently, uses natural gas as a feed stock which is burnt/reacted at high pressure with compressed air and steam and an iron catalyst replacing the osmium used originally(but uranium works better). No electricity needed except generally the plants produce a significant level of excess power in operation so you need to soak this up. (The Compressor/Expanders usually have a motor-generator coupled for this reason - motor for start-up & shutdown purge, generator for operation).

Using natural gas as feedstock for hydrogen opens another can of worms. Steam reforming is restricted to light hydrocarbons ranging from natural gas (methane) to light naphtha. For higher hydrocarbons, such as fuel oil or vacuum residue this technology is not applicable on account of impurities as sulfur and heavy metals which would poison the sensitive nickel catalyst. In addition cracking reactions are more likely to occur on the catalyst, depositing carbon which might block the catalysts pores and also restrict the gas flow. As the nickel catalysts are highly sensitive to sulfur compounds, these catalysts poisons have to be removed prior to the reforming reaction. For this purpose any organic sulfur compounds contained in the hydrocarbon feedstock are first hydrogenated on a cobaltmolybdenum catalyst to hydrocarbon and hydrogen sulfide, which is then absorbed with zinc oxide to form zinc sulfide.

The biggest problem with natural gas is the use of sulfur containing odorants. The acid gas content is usually stripped at the source using an absorber bed because it wrecks the pipes and compressors (particularly if they are not plastic lined). (H2S is nasty and the Mercury in a lot of gas is not much better.) All this is basic hydrocarbon chemistry which a good text book will cover.
Finding a sweet gas field would be a good start...

Natural gas isn't the best option for at least few years and oil would be much safer and easier to use. There is really small chance of something unpleasant happening. Cracking and distilling of oil is one best things to do soon, we should be able to get fuel for industry, lowest grade fraction of oil, cus they could be burned. A higher garden could be used for ships, cars and planes.

chrisd wrote:

Keith_w wrote:Since they are drinking whiskey, I am pretty sure they already have a distilling industry

Bit of a difference in scale and rate of throughput, though.

Yes, but since it was in reference to:

MPCatchup wrote:
.
Low octane gasoline will work just fine in a internal combustion engine it just doesn't combust as evenly.
Of course once distilling crude oil becomes common then some smart hillbilly will adapt it to distill alcohol and kick start the liquor and spirits industry.

this was totally appropriate, I thought

Is there any chance for alloys with tungsten or titanium? They would be quite useful for military and for industry.

Draken wrote:Is there any chance for alloys with tungsten or titanium? They would be quite useful for military and for industry.

Not a prayer; those both take electricity. (And the parts of tungsten refining that don't use electricity involve "horrible things, heated, at high pressures; now stir".)

They're also expensive.

Current tungsten prices are about 40 USD/kg for ~80% pure ferro-tungsten alloying material.

Titanium prices (due to improved electrical refining methods) have fallen a lot in the last decade; it's about 9 USD/kg for 6Al 4V (percents of aluminium and vanadium, respectively) metal now. Which means it's only just starting to show up in things like carriages for air-mobile artillery. It's still difficult to work; you need a high-purity gas industry and electrical welding.

So Charis couldn't plausibly produce much of either; maybe maybe some tungsten tool steels because you can, if you find the right ore, get there without ever having to get pure tungsten.

Really, though, this is an area in which Charis has enough of advantage. Just the ~20 year head start will keep them ahead as long as they continue to invest.

So there's no chance for rediscovery of modern alloys?

Draken wrote:So there's no chance for rediscovery of modern alloys?

Aluminium, magnesium, and titanium are refined using electrochemistry; they're impossibly expensive to refine chemically. (The Emperor Napoleon had a set of 24 seatings of gold dinnerware and one aluminium seating for himself. There are some really gorgeous aluminium and gold parade helmets and such from that period, too; chemically refined aluminium is more expensive than gold.)

A whole lot of modern steels depends on having thermocouples (temperature sensors) and lasers (spectrographs) which depend on electricity and repeated iterations of pure materials for laser crystals, to provide process control. (Those cheap five dollar bread knives involve really consistent alloys.) Lots of modern steels pass through electric furnaces or are electrically impulse hardened in applications like saws, too.

Nickel-steel they've already got, it's being used for armor. Chromium uses electric furnaces for refining; don't know offhand about vanadium and molybdenum. But in general chemistry is all about electrons and benefits enormously from having electricity involved. No electricity will seriously matter to the progress of chemistry on Safehold.

What about adding iridium to steel? It shouldn't be that hard to refine iridium and add it to steel. What about uranium it shouldn't be hard to mine and if it's not enriched it shouldn't be dangerous. We could use it as a core for bullets, similar to US Army AP bullets with tungsten or uranium.
Could you use symbols instead of names of elements? English is my secondary language so it's easier for me when you're not using names of elements.