Solar Perplexus- Is the Sun Electrically Neutral?

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I wonder to what extent a star can accumulate an electrical charge?  Nuclear transformations conserve charge, so electrical neutrality should be preserved in nuclear chemistry. But what about CME’s– Coronal Mass Ejections or other energetic bursts of plasma from the sun?  Are such mass ejections electrically neutral? Do the processes that accelerate solar protons provide a mechanism that includes an equivalent number of electrons? Are electrons swept along with the proton burst like lepton groupies?

If the sun is 1.4E6 km in diameter, then it is about 4.7 light seconds in diameter, using the vacuum velocity of light in the estimation (this may not be the velocity to use). It seems that an electrical imbalance could occur on one side of the sun and be “unnoticed” by the rest of the star for a fairly long period of time.

The magnetic processes that eject mass from the sun perform work on the solar plasma by accelerating some of it from the sun into space.  My question is this, is it possible that charge separation can occur as well. If mass-flows are directed (or partitioned) according to charge and occur by confinement or acceleration in pinched magnetic fields (like in a cyclotron or a Tokamak), then it seems plausible that ejected particles streams could be charge imbalanced on a local scale. On a broad enough scale, the charge would be balanced, of course. 

Here are the questions that follow:  How much charge imbalance could a star accumulate and how would it get back into equilibrium?

Comments?  Pure Bullshit? Partial Bullshit?

On Importing Chemicals

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Th’ Gaussling has previously written on issues related to doing business with China.  The business climate in China resembles a gold rush in some ways. It is a Chinese Klondike bursting with optimism and strutting confidence.  Rather than streams full of gold nuggets, however, China’s hinterlands provide a bountiful stream of entry-level labor anxious for a chance for the good life in the city.

But just like other gold rush periods, a very few strike a rich vein, a larger minority make their fortunes on the miners, and the majority making up the big bulge in the bell curve labor like mules to energize production. Inevitably, some move from rural poor to urban poor. 

You can feel the glow of optimism radiating from the Asian land mass when you go shopping for products on the internet or at trade shows.  Entering a CASRN into Google will often bring back a collection of sites, often enough one in particular comes up first.  Chemexper is a site that presents a large list of suppliers for many compounds. However, the list is notably lacking in US suppliers, favoring those in Europe and Asia.  When sourcing non-commodity, specialty chemicals it is useful to have foreign supplier resources handy.

I’m not biased to foreign suppliers. I am admittedly biased toward US suppliers. However, sometimes entry to a piece of business requires rock bottom raw mat pricing, even in the specialty chemical market. You have to do what you have to do.  But to help maintain a strong US manufacturing base, US companies individually have to be competitive and strong.  If the US has trouble competing on the raw materials end, then it has no choice but to excel on the back end of the chain where the final assembly occurs.  It is not uncommon for specialty chemical companies to source outside the US to find bulk raw mats that domestic suppliers don’t want to offer at less-than-railcar levels.

We’re all familiar with Aldrich, Alfa Aesar, GFS, Strem, etc.  Sometimes you can justify going to a catalog company for bulk raw material or reagent.  But very often in scale-up the economics favor direct supply from the manufacturer.  While R&D level sourcing can almost always be done from US vendors, bulk supply is increasingly an international game [remember, Th’ Gaussling refers to the specialty chemical market]. International sourcing is an acquired skill.

Importers of chemicals must be wary of many pitfalls awaiting them. There are regulatory concerns and among them  TSCA is a big one.  Before you import a chemical, be sure to understand the TSCA ramifications.  However, TSCA is just the tip of the iceberg.

It pays to seek general business advice on this kind of activity.  If one has designs on a long term supply relationship, there is no substitute for a visit to the suppliers facility.  Reputable foreign manufacturers are there for the long term business and want a relationship with their customers. 

Google McGoogle

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I cannot account for why I never looked previously, but there are web resources that explain how Google does its job and how to make better use of it.  Doh!!  Even if you aren’t involved in marketing and have nothing to sell, it makes sense to have a better knowledge of how this system works.

If you are involved in selling things, eventually you have to turn to the internet and view your ranking on the various search engines.  Google uses some kind of black magic to rank websites.  While the details may be proprietary, many of the general principles are out in the open. One of the criteria is the extent of interconnectedness the site has with other sites.  Sites that are linked to by many other sites will be ranked higher than those with fewer links, all else being the same. Clues to the ranking mechanisms are revealed in the Google patent appln link here. 

Th’ Gaussling is not so bored with life yet that this patent appln is high on the reading list. But digital savants and code monkeys out there may dig reading this stuff.

Booyah

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It is worth reading the latest essay in New York Magazine by Jim “Mad Money” Cramer on the sub-prime lending crisis. No booyah’s or sound effects in this article.  I hear some commentators going on about this circumstance as a normal equilibration of the economy. But after reading Cramer’s editorial it is hard to believe this is just a “correction”.   Sounds like a train wreck.

It is hard to fathom how the massive upset in the mortgage market will play out for those of us engaged in chemical manufacturing. Anything that depresses home construction and mortgage lending is sure to slow down orders for raw materials in some fashion.  The rat is moving through the snake. This disturbance could eventually effect those remote from the mortgage business. 

Cramer is clearly an expert of some sort in the finance field. But it is good to remember that it was finance experts who fabricated the house of cards that got them (us) into this problem in the first place. This supprts my theory that we have too many MBA’s in the world.

Markush Claim Reform

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The USPTO is proposing changes in the rules related to the practice of writing “Markush” claims. Markush claims are used heavily in chemical patent applications and allow applicants to claim vast arrays of chemical species by way of composition of matter or by association with a claimed process. The Markush claim makes use of generic formulae that represent the substance of interest as well as a class of equivalent entities.  It is not difficult to specify features of a simple formula that claim many hundreds or thousands of chemical species. 

The PTO admits that it is overwhelmed with the workload associated with these large collections of substances.  I have no doubt that this is true. Patent prosecution requires a search of the prior art for the novelty requirement. A Markush space filled with a large number of compounds slows down the workflow.  

I would hope that the congress and the PTO consider the cost to the public in performing due diligence as well.  I wonder if our cheminformatics friends can find a way to map the space defined by a Markush claim. This would make a due diligence exercise more cost effective and reliable.

Colorado History- Gold and Tuberculosis

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Recently Th’ Gaussling & family spent some time at a mineral spa in Idaho Springs, CO. Having been to a number of mineral springs in the West, I have some sense of what is reasonable and ordinary.  All hot spring operators preach or otherwise encourage the benefits of soaking in a hot mineral bath. Mud treatments and massage are lucrative extras offered by proprietors of mineral springs.  Sadly, by constitution Th’ Gaussling is refractory to the mystical enchantments of this hot saline jive (wisdom or weakness?). I really need to see a mechanism.

Hot springs are egalitarian destinations where the young and old, rail-thin and morbidly obese, tatoo’d and blank skinned can comingle in the hydrothermal aqua from the plutonic realm. 

This particular hot spring was a hotel-pool establishment that had seen better times, but the proprietors were managing growth by adding cabins and a ribs catering operation.  We enjoyed our stay there and will probably return.

My only critical comment is that the water was not particularly loaded with minerals and didn’t favor the bather with even a whiff of sulfur.  A hydrothermal pool without the primordial tang of sulfur is but half of the experience. 

We visited the Phoenix Mine, which is a shoestring gold mining operation a few miles west of Idaho Springs.  If you want to understand Colorado, you have to come to grips with mining. It is one of the two great enthusiasms that lead the settlement wave in Colorado in the mid 1800’s- gold / silver and sanitariums (tuberculosis).  

Much of the activity stemming from the gold rush of 1859 occured along what is now the I-70 mountain corridor.  The discovery of placer deposits of gold and silver quickly lead to hard rock mining activity in the many canyons connecting with Clear Creek.  Placer gold was also found in streams in what is now the Denver Metro area and Cripple Creek.

The recovery of gold from stream sediment (placer gold) is called prospecting.  Hacking it out of hardrock is called mining.  The recovery of placer gold uses somewhat different technology from hardrock mining. Placer gold is isolated by direct settling of the higher density metal from a slurry of gravel and sand. The prospector uses a pan, sluice, rocker, or trommel. The owner of this particular mine has several miles of stream that you can pan from to get the experience of seeing placer gold first hand.  It is hard work and seems to appeal to people who like to gamble.

The tour guide stated that the Phoenix mine operation is centered on a sandstone vein containing 6-15 troy oz of gold per ton (the number varied considerably during the tour so it is hard to tell what it actually is).  But what is interesting is that the vein is a sandstone matrix varying from a few inches to 4 ft thick with a large variety of metals- Au, Ag, Cu, Pb, and Zn.  Glinting xtal faces could be seen as well as green Cu salts in the “Resurrection” vein.  As you walk through the mine it can be seen quite plainly.  The miners just follow the vein where ever it goes.

This is a type of mining that targets a highly concentrated vein, so the amount of mass that has to be processed is relatively small as these things go. This is in contrast to very large ore bodies that contain highly dilute levels of gold value. Such operations require large scale equipment for beneficiation and produce vast quantities of tailings. The operators of the Phoenix mine limit their beneficiation to milling and frothing. Concentrates are sent to Canada for the final recovery and refining. The guide was reluctant to say it, but my guess is that they ship out drums of liquid concentrate.

The other great enthusiasm for Colorado in the 19th century was for the convalescence of patients afflicted with consumption, later called tuberculosis. The thin dry air and the sunny climate was thought to be beneficial for consumption patients. Throughout history, hot springs have attracted the afflicted and the infirm.  The abundance of hot springs in Colorado attracted spa operators who catered to tourists.  The railroad provided the means of transportation for patients to arrive from distant quarters for their convalescence.  

Colorado Springs was an early destination for consumption patients as was Glennwood Springs. The ill-tempered old west figure Doc Holliday died from a long bout with consumption and is buried somewhere under a subdivision in Glennwood Springs, his marker sits on a hilltop cemetery above town. 

REACH for the Sky. EU Comes Down on Chemicals.

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I suppose there are more than a few out there who are not familiar with REACH.  Those of us in the States are a bit confused about the implications on trade and the possibility that the US EPA will attempt to adopt and promulgate the same sort of regulation. REACH has formally begun, as of June 1, 2007.

From the EU Parliament website-

Parliament adopted the compromise it negotiated with Council on the new regulation for chemicals, REACH, which will oblige producers to register all those chemical substances produced or imported above a total quantity of 1 tonne per year. Registration will affect about 30,000 substances. For more hazardous substances, producers will have to submit a substitution plan to replace them with safer alternatives.

When no alternative exists, producers will have to present a research plan aimed at finding one.

Hold the bus!!  “Where no alternative exists, producers will have to present a research plan aimed at finding one.”  Hopefully, there are provisions for reactive precursors or intermediates.

Reactive chemicals are useful chemicals.  Synthesis chemistry is about the management of reactivity.  Differential reactivity gives selectivity.  Chemical manufacturing is all about selectivity.

What if you need a ton of butyllithium or triphosgene or PCl3? Hopefully there is language that provides for manufacturing non-commodity, specialty chemicals with reagents that are highly reactive.  

It will be interesting to watch the unintended consequences pop out of the ground on this program.  The business of testing may end up being more profitable than specialty chemical manufacturing.  The bedrock of western economics is manufacturing. I hope the EU doesn’t chase away to much of its manufacturing base.

Rove Bails

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Interesting overlap of events.  The current issue of the Atlantic has a rather detailed and unflattering account of the “Rove  Presidency”.  This morning, Karl Rove announces his resignation, effective at months end. This bombshell was released by the Wall Street Journal.

Given the nature of the characters, it is hard to believe that a hundred articles like the one in The Atlantic would be enough to compell Rove to resign.  My guess is that he has been calculating a departure for some time.  The endgame of the Bush II presidency is probably not something he wants his name associated with. Rove is all about election “strategery”.  Guiding a battered ship to permanent drydock is not his gig. Rove is a builder, not a custodian.

Rove and his sort are like skittish sea otters. You try to swim up to them and they pop below the surface only to come back up in the distance.  Rove seems to breath politics. The idea that he is retired from such activity is tough to swallow. Rove is not on-air talent. He is the guy running the editing booth off-stage.