California- Our Problem State

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It would be easier and would consume less bandwidth if the days in California without a wildfire were reported, since they seem to be fewer in number.

What will the Feds do if California legalizes and taxes pot? Will they declare it a Narco-state and allow Lou Dobbs to supervise the construction of a morality fence along the borders? What affect will it have on the SWAT apparel and black helicopter industries?

This could give a whole new range of possibilities for our next Disneyland vacation. To hell with Florida!

No Business Like Show Business

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Th’ Gaussling has a minor part in a play produced by a local community theatre group. Opening night is May 22, so the pucker factor is presently in überdrive. I’m in 5 scenes, one of which involves some shouting and pushing. Lots of opportunities to goof up. I play a farmer, so I get to do my Fess Parker accent and country mannerisms.

Rehearsals are getting pretty intense. This is the first time this play has been performed, a fact that is both good and bad. We have the blocking in place and most everyone knows their lines. Now it is just a matter of refining the performance.  A mark of an experienced actor is the ability to recover seamlessly from mangled lines. I’m not as far from that ideal as I used to be.

This is Th’ Gaussling’s 2nd production. My acting isn’t terrible, exactly. Folks are polite with me, at least to my face. I can perform certain kinds of parts acceptably. I’m more like a Slim Pickens than a George Clooney.

Putting on a good show is much more difficult that it might seem. I do it for personal growth and the satisfaction of pulling off a good performance. It is wildly outside my normal activity and is a good outlet for nervous energy.

“Don’t Even Taste Like Sewage”

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I spent 4 1/2 hours saturday touring our town’s water system from both ends. It was quite a detailed tour and, since it involved chemicals, how could I not tag along?

We began with the sewer reclamation plant first. Lots of interesting details here. Turns out that one of the big problems to running a waste treatment plant has to do with keeping large debris out of the pumps- rags, underwear, shoes, plastic parts, etc.  Once you get past the shock of learning what your fellow citizens can and do flush down the toilet, it is plain to see that a bit of money spent on screening out the the big chunks is returned in the form of reduced down time and pump repair costs.

Our little hamlet of 6,000 souls sends 450,000 gallons of waste water to the reclamation plant on an average day. The flow peaks at about 8 am every day in the form of a sudden 5-6 x increase in flowrate. It takes about 90 minutes for an average volume (i.e., a flush) of wastewater to get to the plant. A lot of groggy citizens hop into the shower at around 6:30 am.

After the incoming stream passes through a grit removing station at the entrance, it is lifted to the first treatment operation for aeration and fermentation. This is the physical high point in the process, meaning that the stream is subsequently transferred by gravity for the remaining process steps.

I won’t go into further process details other than to say that the final step prior to discharge into the stream is a sanitizing step where the effluent is exposed to a large jolt of UV radiation. At this point in our tour, the plant manager dipped a sampler into the flow and withdrew one liter of clear, colorless liquid with a few strings of algae floaters. Only too eager demonstrate his faith that the water was sanitary, he dipped a finger into the effluent, put it into his mouth and exclaimed with a grin as wide as his mullet

“It don’t even taste like sewage!” 

As he passed the sample around so others could share in the experience, I wandered over to the control panel and feigned interest in the LCD display. The UV just renders the wee beasties non-viable. Their little microbial carcasses are still there. Pathogen free it may well be, I didn’t have the stomach to taste it. Yes, I know that microbes are everywhere and that our notions of what constitutes “clean” are merely a fantasy. But I just couldn’t do it.

A hot little number

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I see these shipping casks on the highway at least once a month.  This time I had a Canon with me (Powershot A470, you know, a camera). While sitting at the off-ramp stop light next to this container I began to wonder how much activity shines through the shielding. I began to daydream … if I could see in the gamma spectrum, would this thing be bright or dim?

Then, in the blink of an eye the spell was broken. The light turned green and I parted company with this hot little number.

Franz Ritter von Soxhlet and the Hungarian Siphon

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Franz Ritter von Soxhlet is credited with inventing an extraction apparatus in 1879 that now bears his name. Soxhlet was a German agricultural chemist of Belgian “extraction” from Brünn (now Brno in the Czech Republic) working in the area of milk characterization at the Vienna Agricultural Institute.

Soxhlet spent most of his career in the analysis of milk and its constituents. In an attempt to isolate the fatty constituents from milk, he (and students) had been attempting to use an extraction apparatus developed by another Brno chemist, Professor Zulkowski. Soxhlet developed a technique whereby milk was absorbed into a quantity of calcium sulfate powder and then submitted to extraction by ether. The Zulkowski apparatus proved problematic, however. Solids were able to find their way over the extraction tube and into the solvent reservoir. Modifications of the design also suffered from inefficiencies that apparently required extended operation.

A student of Soxhlet, a Hungarian fellow by the name of Mr. Szombathy, contrived a solution to the problem. Szombathy is credited with coming up with the clever siphon feature that so distinguishes what we now call the Soxhlet extractor.

It has been lamented that the efficiencies gained by the siphon discharge design have been partially lost due to the entertainment effect. Generations of chemists have dropped what they are doing to stand and watch the collection thimble fill and subsequently discharge dramatically through the siphon. You have to take your fun where you can find it.

Well done, Szombathy!

Mineral deposits on other worlds

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As one begins to understand the manner in which mineralization and elemental concentration occurs as a result of terrestrial geology, it is only natural to wonder how this would occur on other worlds. On earth, the concentration of the elements in the form of mineral deposits is a partitioning phenomenon that benefits greatly from fractional crystallization, metamorphic modifications, and from a variety of transport mechanisms.

Fractional crystallization of magmas provides a condition whereby a mixture of simple and complex ions may associate to form mineral compositions that partition from the molten phase by virtue of high solidification temperature. In this way, solid, higher melting compositions precipitate from a melt sequentially, leading to the selective partition of certain combinations of elements into a new solid phase. The molten phase may be enriched in certain combinations of other elements by default- many of which may be relatively volatile.

The composition and cooling rate of the magma will determine the nature of the solid rock that is formed after cooling.  Over time, rock may be lifted toward the surface and subjected to modification by hydrothermal action or by erosion and redeposition by gravity. Cooled igneous rock may be subjected to crystalline modification by exposure to heat further down the timeline.

Hydrothermal water, superheated under high pressure, is a major force in the formation of mineral deposits. The sulfides (and hydrosulfides) of transition metals (i.e., Au) are thought to be transported from source rock through cracks, faults, and porous formations to be deposited in locations where transport can no longer be sustained. The accumulation of economic quantities of uranium are thought to be the result of hydrothermal or aqueous transport as well.

So here is the point of this essay–  If preconcentration of elements to viable deposits is critical for the success of value extraction on earth, what about mining on the moon or Mars? To what extent are we dependent on these mechanisms to make viable the mining and extraction of useful materials?  If lunar geology has not been quietly concentrating minerals in the manner to which we earthlings have been accustomed, how will we come to grips with using native materials on the moon for self-sustaining habitation?

It is one thing to find x ppm of oxygen or y ppm of titanium in the lunar regolith. It is quite another to enable extraction of critical elements from low-value (dilute) material. The chemical energy inputs for processing will be severely limited owing to the scarcity of reducing materials on the moon or Mars. Reducing materials are really just reservoirs of inexpensive and useful electrons. Reducing materials would include carbon or electropositive metals for the reductive winning of other metals. 

In the absence of an inexpensive supply of electrons, all phases of extraterrestrial mining and processing will be subject to large cost multipliers. Cheap electrons are required to energize machinery, move materials, or conduct refining. All of these familiar activities are energy intensive on earth and there is no reason to think it will be different on another world. On earth, cheap electrons come in the form of diesel and coal. On the moon and Mars, it seems likely that solar and nuclear will energize most work for those who try to set up camp there.

Beryllium Mining

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The aerial view above shows the location of the Brush Wellman beryllium mine near Spor Mountain, Utah. It is reportedly the only major beryllium mining operation in the USA and one of the very few economic beryllium ore locations in the world. The host materal is called “tuff”- a compacted and cemented volcanic ash composition. Coincident with this Be deposit is low grade uranium and fluorspar. Occurances of Cu, Au, and other base metals can be found in the area.

The concentration of Be in the ore body is thought to be due to the mineralization action of meteoric and hydrothermal fluids. The region is marked by the presence of 3 Oligocene-era calderas, with the Spor mountain Be mineralization found along the ring structure of the Thomas caldera.

The action of hot, saturated aqueous flows transporting solublized components from distant host bodies is one of the chief mechanisms for the appearance of “ore bodies” near the surface of the earth. Very often, such deposits are found in regions of faults and fractures of various kinds of rock formations. Mineral laden water follows the fracture system and, as it moves toward the surface, begins to cool and deposits the burden of now insoluble compounds. Deposition can occur due to simple solubility properties, redox from exposure to atmospheric oxygen, or via ion exchange with available chemical species to form high Ksp compositions.

This is nothing new to geologists who have been aware of these mechanisms for generations. But for a non-geochemical chemist like myself, the matter of how elements like beryllium come to be concentrated is less than familiar. Indeed, the question of how any element comes to be concentrated in rock formations is a question of increasing interest to Th’ Gaussling. I hope to spend a lot of time in the future exploring this matter.

Libertarians and Epidemics

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If the USA were more substantially libertarian in construction and demeanor, how would we respond to the arrival of an epidemic or pandemic of some nasty pathogen like swine flu? If the USA were decentralized into quanta of individual market units, each responsible for his/her own well being, how could the spread of contagion be averted?

Would a libertarian republic be philosophically opposed to collectivist activity like combining resources to marshal a defense against a virus. Or, would the Austrian-school economists brush off the event as nothing more than a Malthusian disturbance in the direction of a much needed equilibrium between resources and population? If you cannot afford to protect yourself, then you are lazy or sadly unlucky. In any case, you’re on your own.

Would a Libertarian system first act to protect property and guns? Would libertarian economists issue a statement condemning collectivism and promoting the rights of individuals to buy as much Lysol, duct tape, plastic drop cloths, and surgical masks as the market will allow? Perhaps a Libertarian President (whatever that means) would put a team of economists on a pandemic, or better yet, the lowest bidding epidemiologists available from Craigs list?

Libertarians make a good deal of noise about the horrors of taxation and their unflinching admiration for the genius of the marketplace, property, and the right to stockpile guns and ammo.  I agree, we’re paying too much in taxes. Government is way too big. And the dynamics of the market do provide lots of cool stuff for better living. True enough.

But the market is like a stomach (I had a better analogy, but it was rather unwholesome). It only knows that it is hungry. The stomach has no brain. The stomach only wants more. The stomach did not invent antibiotics, polyethylene, Buicks, antacid, jet engines, or bikinis. But the stomach did facilitate the invention of each of these items. We need a market mentality, but we also need an overarching sense of direction. We need a market that can sense and avoid driving off a Malthusian cliff.

Civilization is about infrastructure. And part of the infrastructure that the country as a whole can provide is biotechnology.  Biotechnology was not developed by Warren Buffett or Ronald Reagan or the legions of celebrated MBA’s. It was slowly developed by publically financed university institutions over many years of apparently irrelevant research projects. University educated scientists were hired by private and public corporations who began to find ways of marketing biomedical technology.  It evolved into molecular biology and medicine and eventually commercialized as a result of front funding by millions of skeptical and myopic taxpayers over several generations. Yes, the market has a big part in this in terms of the rational distribution of goods.

As a result of all of the initial “collectivism” through publically funded science, we have a first class infrastructure (the CDC) that is capable of monitoring the onset and progress of contagious diseases. This system funded originally by the public is able to mobilize vaccines and small molecule medicines to prevent suffering and the spread of disease.  It is able to coordinate efforts and resources to benefit even the chronically irritable Libertarians.