Happy Mole Day greetings from Th’ Gaussling! I’m presently in Las Vegas to serve as Parade Marshal for the Mole Day Extravaganza on Las Vegas Blvd. I’ll be riding in the honorary parade marshals car behind the Radio City Rockettes and the MIT chemistry faculty as we make our way through the ticker tape and the cheering throngs. The parade starts at 6:02 this evening and will progress to the wee hours.
Earlier in 2008 OSHA issued directive CPL-00-008, Combustible Dust National Emphasis Program. This program is meant to induce industry to develop a greater awareness of dust explosion hazards via the threat of greater scrutiny by OSHA inspectors.
Dust explosion hazards have been poorly appreciated by plant operators in a wide range of industries. The recent explosion at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, GA, on February 7, 2008, has helped to raise awareness both from regulators and plant operators. Part of the problem has to do with a poor understanding of the explosibility of dusts generally, and with the lack of data on the explosibility of a great many common products in particular. Safety consultants I know have been busy with clients from the sugar refining field. It caught their attention.
Th’ Gaussling is on the road again this week somewhere in fabulous Las Vegas just off the strip. What a strange place this is. Underneath the friendly veneer everyone is mad as a hatter- jabbering, drooling wacko. Chronic exposure to the chiming drone of slot machines and the “Thunder from Down Under” puts the brain into a continuous limbic overload.
Field Phrenology Notebook. While waiting in line for some cheap fast food at el Pollo Loco here in Vegas, I had the opportunity to study the skull of the fellow ahead of me. The fellow was sporting a bristling soul patch under his bottom lip as the only bit of hair on his head. When I queued behind him, he was already in the middle of a tiff with the manager. He was waving his arms up and down (el Pollo Loco) and making a show of his contempt by constantly shifting his weight from one leg to another. To his credit he never uttered a rude word. Though it was dark outside, he was wearing wrap around sunglasses clamped to his shiny head.
The back of his head was notable by the pronounced eccentricity of the occipital region of his skull. On the back he had a 1 inch diameter, hemispheric, protuberance that obviously posed a hazard for the daily whole-head shaving ritual. Because this guy was skinny, he didn’t have that horizontal rear mustache of fuzz that occurs when the skin folds prevent the razor from covering all of the scalp.
Finally, the man was released from his agony with a $26 refund and stomped out. We were all relieved and went about our business.
Here is a link to a cute little nuclear reactor applet. And here is reactor simulator demo download. The demo is free but the actual product is $10.
A symposium in honor of the late Professor Albert I. Meyers is being held at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins on Friday, 24 October, 2008, in the late afternoon and all day Saturday, 25 October, 2008. The symposium speakers are Clayton Heathcock, Peter Beak, Daniel Comins, Kyoshi Tomioka, Daniel Romo, Victor Snieckus, Jeff Seeman, and Paul Reider. I look forward to attending.
Chemical reactors come in a variety of designs. Ordinarily, they range from bullet shaped pressure vessels to a pipe for plug flow reactions to a variety of cylindrical vessel designs. A big metal reaction vessel has several names- a pot, kettle, or reactor. Reactors can be customized with add-on components to suit specific requirements for agitation efficiency. Reactors can be used for continuous reaction as in the case of a CSTR, or for batch and semi-batch operations. Custom reactors may be built to provide unique performance specifications.
General purpose reactors can be purchased new or used. They come in a variety of materials of construction. Glassed reactors have a layer of vitreous glaze on the interior walls- often blue in color- and are resistant to corrosion, but may be harmed by thermal shock or electrostatic discharge.
Steel and stainless steel reactors come in a variety of alloy compositions. Hastelloy reactors can be acquired for enhanced resistance to corrosive materials, but at a steep price premium. Vessels with various types of cladding are available- Zr, Ni, Ti, Monel, Inconel, Hastelloy, Cupro Nickel. It is possible to obtain titanium or tantalum condensers for pots with particularly harsh duty.
Processes that require highly specialized materials of construction are usually more expensive. This can put considerable constraints on the process economics, since it is desirable to have the product requiring the specialized materials pay off the extra costs in a reasonable time period. This pay-off is in the form of a product price premium and/or depreciation. Taking on a project requiring specialized equipment often requires the cost analysis skills of an engineer to throw together a business case study. Perry’s Chemical Engineers Handbook is an excellent resource for this kind of activity.
Agitators are a very important part of the reaction vessel system. Motors, gear boxes, and impellers of various performance specs can be mixed and matched for projected requirements. Impellers are power absorbing implements. They absorb power from the drive motor. The job of an impeller is to dump the required number of watts per kilogram of solution into the reaction mixture to provide satisfactory shear. The energy required depends upon the geometry of the impeller and the density and viscosity of the mixture.
When trying to simulate a reaction on the bench top, it is critical to reproduce the big reactors shear at the smaller scale. Very often, this means that the rpm must be adjusted upwards to get the proper energy transfer. A great resource for this kind of work is the Pilot Plant Real Book, by Francis McConville.
Scooter Labs claims to offer tutorials on building a 2-wheel, self balancing scooter, or a self-balancing propulsion unit. This is a homebrew version of the Segway. Another site, Suicidebots, conducted an interview of the founder. Oh, to be a fly on the wall the day the injunction arrives from Segway.
Note: The following has been determined to be a diatribe and not a screed. A screed would be several times longer.
This period in US history contains enough meat on the bone to keep both scholars and crackpots gnawing for decades. Collectively, we are in the overlap space of a sociological Venn diagram. The overlapping domains of economic calamity, political paranoia, shrinking international stature, and withering military expense combine like cyan, magenta, and yellow to form a white hot zone of malcontent.
It is no overstatement to say that many if not most Americans have chosen a part of the political pool they want to swim in. Listen to the voices at McCain/Palin rallys. Listen to people being interviewed upon leaving a McCain/Palin rally. They’re invariably angry and fearful. They distrust the “Liberal Media”. Do they mean to include Rupert Murdoch’s media empire? Do they also include most of the AM band talk radio programs? Is this the deep end of the pool or the shallow end?
I cannot help but conclude that conservatives are a fearful bunch. Study the McCain/Palin campaign advertising. Go back to any recent presidential campaign and recall Willie Horton or the Swift Boat attack on the democrats. Fear is the unifying ingredient in conservatism and the people who run the GOP machine know how to swing this stick. Democrats do the Fear theme poorly and as a result, cannot summon the same kind of existential panic that the GOP can pull from their bag of tricks.
McCain is starting to see some of the visceral response to the possibility of Obama as president from underneath all of the rocks and behind all of the tarpaper shacks in the political back-40 acres. He has been openly challenged by angry citizens about the viability of his campaign.
That cartoon figurehead of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, was practically apoplectic in his frustration with McCain. Strangely, this political freakshow impressario is now towing the line on McCain and has focused his leagions of ditto-zombies on bringing down the reputation of Obama with a mezmerising whisper campaign of slander.
I’m beginning to think that McCain wouldn’t be the worst kind of GOP president to have, especially if the conservatives of the land are this uncertain of him. But Palin as runner-up to the Whitehouse leaves me speechless. A country so brain-addled as to put Palin in national office is perhaps a country that needs to have its nose rubbed in it for a taste of its own collective stupidity. McCain/Palin in Washington may be what it takes for the complete implosion of the GOP.
Having watched the rise of Bush II and the conduct of the 2008 campaign, I have begun to understand what it might have been like to have lived in the period leading up to the American Civil War. This was a period intense division between citizens regarding deeply held beliefs. Civil and religous laws were invoked by both sides to justify their actions. Both Lee and Sherman believed that they marched in righteousness. It was brother fighting brother with a kind of hostility that is startling to people even today.
I sense a widespread and internal hostility along with a rigid adherence to doctrine that marks a divided country. I believe that America is in a type of cold civil war. There is a fulmination of anger and frustration out there that is beginning to partition the meaning of America into distinct translations that suit the adherents.
Countries that experience economic and political upset are prone to the surfacing of latent fascism. Fascism is a kind of fever that spreads through the vectors of blame and jingoism. Anti-intellectualism and ethnic hatred are common manifestations of a country having a bout of fascism fever.
Witness the accusations of “elitism” and the whisper campaign questioning the citizenship and religious affiliation of Obama. We have elite military forces, elite police forces, and elite athletes- why not elite chief executives? Why would we demand that politicians be just like the down-home folks like you see, say, running the Tilt-O-Whirl at the carnival? Don’t we want the chief executive to be someone who has honed his skills for public life? The Army has its War College. Why can’t the executive branch have its Administration school?
I think we have a civil cold war brewing in the USA right now and if 20-25 % of the workforce loses its paycheck because of the banking fiasco, I think there’ll be trouble. But no doubt, the DHS has thought of this and has soldiers and Darkwater contractors ready to deal with the sh**storm.
Savoir faire is one of those ethereal attributes that a lucky few are born with and something that most of the rest of us have to constantly work on. The world of sales and business development folk very often involves a business dinner in a fine dining establishment. Very often dinner is a prelude to the next days work, so dining is a great opportunity to get to know the customer.
It is important to realize when taking a potential client out for dinner, one is very much under inspection. A client can be put off in many ways. Poor table manners, boorish behavior, poor listening skills, and shabby taste in restaurants can turn the dinner from a plus plus into a minus minus.
Here is how you make a big impression on a client. I learned this from a professor at Denver University’s hotel & hospitality school. Go to the restaurant the day before and meet the maitre d’. You introduce yourself and explain that you have an important engagement the next night. Give him/her a business card and a several $100 bills. Explain that you want to be addressed by name as you enter the restaurant.
Next, you find the waiter and repeat the instructions. You want to be greeted by name as you are seated. You don’t want their life story, you just want them to be efficient and scarce. Finally, you go into the kitchen and greet the chef. Explain that the next evening is important and ask if he/she has any items that are not on the menu. Thank the chef profusely and go about your business.
The next evening after dinner, overtip the staff. Throwing around a few hundred dollars will get peoples attention and should get you a better table and better service. Doing it ahead of time invests the staff in the gig and will be gratefully appreciated.
I couldn’t help but reprint this list of Tips on Tipping from Bruce Feiler at Gourmet.com. His 3 page essay on learning how to get a table in a posh restaurant and how to tip in advance is quite well written and should encourage the socially inept to give it a try. Remember, don’t fumble with your wallet fishing for a crumpled note. Have the note neatly folded and ready for a discrete handoff. Show a little style for cryin’ out loud.
Lamentations on Chemistry 