Monthly Archives: September 2022

And, so it was

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The President of South Korea, Yoon Suk-Yeol, was heard to utter into a hot mike that the US Congress were a bunch of idiots. To quote, he said “What an embarrassment for Biden, if these idiots refuse to grant it in Congress”. This occurred after a New York visit with President Biden after a discussion on US electric-vehicle subsidies. It is making headlines all over the internet. My schadenfreude detectors couldn’t resist this.

How defensive of the red, white and blue should you be if the guy is right? In theory the election process should select the best and brightest in the land. Instead, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Witness #45’s embrace of QAnon. If this was a story arc in a movie script, it would be rejected as too silly. Political parties and elections are supposed to exclude exemplars of bad judgement. I guess that nut jobs elect nut jobs.

And speaking of nut jobs, #45 was heard to say that presidents can declassify things “by thinking about it.” Even if this is true, it shouldn’t be as the present example illustrates. If this idiot learned to simply shut his damned mouth he’d have avoided half of his legal troubles automatically. He has his t*t in a wringer where it should be.

Possible Trouble for the BASF Ludwigshafen Verbund Site

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The colossal Baden Aniline and Soda Factory (BASF) verbund facility in Ludwigshafen, Germany, may have to make due with diminished energy supplies if the German state rations gas this fall. This facility is one of six BASF verbund sites and is the largest integrated chemical complex in the world. The site consists of 125 interconnected production plants on 10 square kilometers that share waste heat and generates it’s own electricity and steam. Forbes has described verbund as “… the intelligent interlinking of production plants, energy flows and infrastructure.”

There are many fascinating facts about BASF and the Ludwigshafen verbund site which can be found on the interwebs, so there in no point in duplicating it here. The point of this essay is that the global chemical industry is highly interconnected. Interruption of just one chemical complex like the BASF verbund in Ludwigshafen can lead to disruption in many supply chains in diverse markets. The chemical industry is a web of supply chains where the product of one plant is the raw material for another. Interruptions in energy or materials for one link in the chain will have knock-on effects in others all the way to the final consumer. Nothing unusual about this.

We’ve come to rely on a highly interconnected, interdependent world market that is susceptible to the consequences of political adventures from certain nations. Uncompromising nationalism, ethnic conflict, political turbulence and the current trend of fascist and violent ideology overrunning democratic freedom is threatening this house of cards we’ve built.

Technology can be quite delicate. The success of any given technology constantly depends on people practicing it, improving it and training for it. Whole technologies can be lost if interruptions in continuity from war or deep economic calamity last long enough.

Hossenfelder and Poliakoff

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One can learn interesting but off-topic things along the way to a particular subject of research. Below is a compilation of interesting things.

We are all aware of the games Russia is playing with the interruption of natural gas supplies to Europe. A noteworthy consequence of this applies to the refining of petroleum. Evidently, refineries use natural gas in the refining process, likely as a fuel for heating process equipment. A shortage of natural gas may/will have an adverse effect on the ability of European refineries to produce fuels from crude oil.

There is a German theoretical physicist named Sabine Hossenfelder who has been producing short videos for YouTube. I’ve seen a few and they are quite good. She doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator. Instead she speaks like a theoretical physicist talking to intelligent non-specialists and does a bang-up job of it. She gives a thoughtful and skeptical analysis of current topics in theoretical physics. She always gets back to basic concepts and what is possible for science to understand. She has moved on to subjects of popular interest as well.

And speaking of videos on YouTube, I’ve taken a shine to a channel called Periodic Videos. The presenter is professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff of the University of Nottingham. It may take a few moments to overcome the shock of his wild white hair. Poliakoff has produced a great many short videos over the years specializing in the chemical elements. A good one I viewed recently was about burning magnesium in a nitrogen atmosphere. Yes, it can happen and it will produce magnesium nitride. Contact it with water and you get ammonia. It is easy to think that nitrogen is an all around inert gas and for the most part it is. Lithium metal springs to mind when inert atmosphere questions arise. Better use argon.