Chemistry and misc. stuff concerning it.

Aegis99 wrote:

fleadermouse wrote:Last I checked there were no active oil or gas fields on safehold nor have I seen any real indication of the drilling technology to put them in. An oil field does not go in over night. Ten plus years from start of project to first production is common.

While that is common today (or even longer) you need to look back in history to get a proper perspective on how long projects used to take. The early pioneers of oil drilling used only steam powered hammer drills and had no understanding of the true nature of how oil is made, moves, and accumulates. Yet Drake produced the first intentional oil well in only a few months in 1858. In 1901 Spindletop was drilled to about 600 feet down and the salt dome was producing 100,000 barrels a day within 11 months. I challenge anybody to claim that 100,000 barrels a day would not be enough to kick start an oil industry, especially considering that the first use I would propose for the oil would be as fuel oil in naval boilers. Also, standard oil went from founding to mega-corp with a global monopoly in only three decades between 1870 and 1900.

We have textev that Owl has already identified promising fields, so if a clue can be dropped where to drill (and I imagine Owl can be very specific on a good place to start), then Charis could have an oil industry in a few years, not the decade you might imagine.

Another couple of reasons for the length of time to bring a new field into production. 1) Massive number of regulatory agencies that have to be satisfied, and 2) the easy fields on Terra have already been identified and utilized. What's left now are the fields that are considerably more difficult to exploit, the the North Shore of Alaska, or the North Sea fields, the the West Texas field, where it was almost a case of poke a stick in the ground, and get an oil well.

fallsfromtrees wrote:
... What's left now are the fields that are considerably more difficult to exploit, the the North Shore of Alaska, or the North Sea fields, the the West Texas field, where it was almost a case of poke a stick in the ground, and get an oil well.

If it wasn't for the religious hold of the CoGA, I could see several citizens using a divining rod. Then for the right amount of marks ...

fleadermouse wrote:SNIP
Finally back to the Acids, yes they can be made in other ways like mixing halogens and nonmetal oxides with water but you have to make the chlorine etc. first. All industrial acids can be made from concentrated sulfuric which is most commonly manufactured as a byproduct from electrolytic separation of metals in areas that have lots of cheap electricity like the Tennessee Vally River Authority.

Without electricity Large Scale production of acids is very expensive and dangerous.

Sulfuric acid production is the backbone of the chemicals industry it is used in countless processes and without it the entire industry grinds to a halt.

In the 19th century the Lead Chamber process was a well known and understood process for producing sulfuric acid. The process starts with hot sulfur dioxide gas entering the bottom of a reactor called a Glover tower where it is washed with nitrous vitriol (sulfuric acid with nitric oxide, NO, and nitrogen dioxide, NO2, dissolved in it) and mixed with nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide gases. The Glover tower serves two functions; concentration of the chamber acid and stripping of nitrogen oxides from the liquid to the gas or denitration. Concentration of the chamber acid (62% to 68% H2SO4) is achieved by the hot gases entering the tower which evaporate water from the acid. Some of the sulfur dioxide is oxidized to sulfur trioxide and dissolved in the acid wash to form tower acid or Glover acid (about 78% H2SO4). The dissolved nitrogen oxides are stripped from the acid and carried with the gas out of the Glover tower into the lead chambers.

From the Glover tower a mixture of gases (including sulfur dioxide and trioxide, nitrogen oxides, nitrogen, oxygen, and steam) is transferred to a lead-lined chamber where it is reacted with more water. The chamber may be a large, boxlike room or an enclosure in the form of a truncated cone. Sulfuric acid is formed by a complex series of reactions; it condenses on the walls and collects on the floor of the chamber. There may be from three to twelve chambers in a series; the gases pass through each in succession. The acid produced in the chambers, often called chamber acid or fertilizer acid, contains 62% to 68% H2SO4. Both types of acids could be concentrated by heating to 93% H2SO4.

And if catalytic chemistry is available (and accepted) there is also the contact process. The process
was first patented in 1831, but in spite of the obvious advantages of the contact process over chamber plants for the production of high strength sulfuric acid and oleum used for dyes and nitrocellulose (smokeless powder), the commercial development of the process was extremely slow. Chemical technology of the time, especially involving catalytic reactions, was limited.

They didn't say anything about advanced chemistry, so if it isn't banned it's allowed to be used. And if we have NO2 as byproduct we could try creat out of it, N2O4 and have very powerful rocket fuel, only problem would be with oxygen/oxidizer, but Merlin should help with that issue.

I think that in terms of dealing with the proscriptions, the real ceiling is that for now electricity is the absolute no-no. Merlin and the inner circle are already stretching matters to the limits and beyond in other things. That trend will continue as Father Paityr continues to apply his "chop logic."

After the power of the inquisition and the COGA is broken, that provess will be accelerated not only in the EOC, but Safehold generally.

Don

n7axw wrote:I think that in terms of dealing with the proscriptions, the real ceiling is that for now electricity is the absolute no-no. Merlin and the inner circle are already stretching matters to the limits and beyond in other things. That trend will continue as Father Paityr continues to apply his "chop logic."

After the power of the inquisition and the COGA is broken, that provess will be accelerated not only in the EOC, but Safehold generally.

Don

Given that Clyntahn has now gotten information about the steam engine, it is going to be interesting to see if he issues an exemption to the Proscriptions to cover it, or condemns it as proof that the heretics are dabbling in the "arts of Shan-wei". The first opens the door to the severe erosion of the proscriptions, the second basically concedes the war to the EoC, as the use of steam power to drive the factories and ships an transportation systems of the empire will make them unbeatable, regardless of the number of Harchongese serfs he throws at the problem.

It will be interesting to see Church steam engines, but they should be much crude than Charis one, I'm thinking about 20-30% less power. Charis should switch to design which use liquids as fuel and power production of II world War design.

What I think will be a bit of a bottleneck is chlorine production, which( as far as I know) can only be produced in industrial quantities via electrochemical cells using brine. Lots of chemistry (poly-carbonate, polyurethanes,CFC's etc). I don't quite recall how RFC's post about producing oxygen got resolved, but cryogenic air separation to produce reasonably pure oxygen will require some very sophisticated refrigeration cycles unless Owl cheats their way into a very sophisticated and well designed distillation technology, CFC's are likely better for that applications than using ethane/propane type light hydrocarbon refrigerants.

sklei0106 wrote:What I think will be a bit of a bottleneck is chlorine production, which( as far as I know) can only be produced in industrial quantities via electrochemical cells using brine. Lots of chemistry (poly-carbonate, polyurethanes,CFC's etc). I don't quite recall how RFC's post about producing oxygen got resolved, but cryogenic air separation to produce reasonably pure oxygen will require some very sophisticated refrigeration cycles unless Owl cheats their way into a very sophisticated and well designed distillation technology, CFC's are likely better for that applications than using ethane/propane type light hydrocarbon refrigerants.

During the last half of the 19th century, chlorine, used almost exclusively in the textile and paper industry, was made by reacting manganese dioxide with hydrochloric acid. Recycling of manganese improved the overall process economics, and the process became known as the Weldon process.The process used at the time consisted of generating chlorine from manganese oxide and HCl and then passing the gas through a solution of potash. In the 1860s, the Deacon process, which generated chlorine by direct catalytic oxidation of hydrochloric acid with air was developed. The HCl required for the reactions was available from the manufacture of soda ash by the LeBlanc process. By 1900, the Weldon and Deacon processes generated enough chlorine for the production of about 150,000 tons per year of bleaching powder in England alone.

Draken wrote:It will be interesting to see Church steam engines, but they should be much crude than Charis one, I'm thinking about 20-30% less power. Charis should switch to design which use liquids as fuel and power production of II world War design.

The church lacks the ability to do the precise machine work needed to develop the sorts of tolerances needed for high pressure cylinder work.

What they might be able to do is make something with leather sleeves in the cylinders. Pokermind suggested that they might get up to about 15 hp with that. It would be similar to some of the more primitive steam engines used in the mines for pumping water in England at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

There is a steam thread that died a couple of months back that explores this pretty thoroughly.

Don