I’m not feeling especially peevish just now, truly, but I will say that a linguistic habit I’m running into more frequently is beginning to rub me the wrong way. That habit is the misuse of the word “spectra”.
I hear many people using the word “spectra” as the singular form rather than the word “spectrum”. Spectra is the plural form of the word spectrum.
The spectre of spectra as spectrum shines like a specular glare from a speculum mirror in the corner of my consciousness.
International soft drink giants Coca Cola and Pepsi have been charged with greenhouse gas emission violations by the Europese Kooldioxidecommissie (EK) in Modderkip, The Netherlands. The soft drink manufacturers were indicted for their part in the worldwide spread of efforvescent emissions of a greenhouse gas.
Viktor Fischkopf, Titular Comissioner of the EK, issued a press release stating that the soft drink companies have been brought before the court for international conspiracy to supply carbonation for the express purpose of emission through direct efforvescence and by fugitive emissions from bottling, eructation, and flatulence. While the charges fall short of crimes against humanity, a conviction by the EK may result in embargo of goods in participating nations.
Representatives of Coca Cola and Pepsi have declined to comment. However, one executive from Coca Cola subsidiary Fanta spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We will fight this with all of the resources we can summon. If we lose this fight, the peoples of the world face the grim prospect of flat, uncarbonated Coke. It’s unthinkable. The word ‘soda’ will become meaningless.”
See you at the ACS meeting in San Diego. I’m the guy with the pocket protector.
Cheers,
Th’ Gaussling
Everybody knows by now that China is flush with rare earth elements (REE’s), or at least to the uppermost extent that any country can be. And, everybody knows the market hijinks that China has planned with REE’s, namely, buy all the REE’s you want from them, as long it is in a value-added manufactured good.
What most folks are probably not aware of is that the ore bodies that carry the REE’s (Sc, Y, and the Lanthanides) are usually enriched in thorium and/or uranium. So much so that no little amount of skill and equipment is needed to separate Th & U from the REE’s. The US and USSR developed much of this separations technology post WWII and for decades thereafter. Much of this art is in the US patent literature. The rest of it is buried in dusty, obscure volumes on library shelves.
The art of REE separation is arcane and somewhat isolated from the rest of inorganic chemistry owing to its specialized nature. Most of the separations art relies on leaching and elaborate solvent exchange schemes. Ion exchange technology is also highly represented in this domain. Few chemistry students are exposed to this science and most of the cold war era practitioners are retired, ailing, or deceased.
Chemistry students rarely see this art for another reason. It is generally practiced by engineers and metallurgists who seem to be in a perpetual phase separation from the standard chemistry curriculum. I would argue that this distinction is mainly cultural.
Back to the Chinese. While Americans have been busy yammering about drill-baby-drill, or following the escapades of reality show imbeciles or a thousand other idiotic distractions, we have failed to focus pressure on our government to consider technologies like thorium power or molten salt reactor technology.
While a gullible and frankly, cognitively impaired, vocal minority in the US accept that we have a right to $<3.00/gal gasoline, we are being distracted into the warm feather bed of self-congratulation and delusion about our supposed exceptionalism. I sense that our culture is beginning to show a type of exceptionalism that is not very admirable.
While American voters are being spun up into a frenzy again about commodity oil prices, China has been promulgating its national industrial policies. American industrial policy seems to be about lining the citizens up for accelerating consumption. China’s industrial policy emphasis seems to be about putting infrastructure and capacity in place for exports as well as anticipated internal consumption.
China has a substantial presence in mineral rich Africa. China imports copper ore from Peru and Chile. Not finished copper- but copper ore. China keeps the value added steps for its own coffers. Most distressingly, China is busily working on copper mining in Afganistan while our kids fight and die there in an intractable cultural shooting war. Did you get that?
China is mining in Afganistan and Americans are paying to die there.
While the US pays to make the world safe for commerce, China is spreading out over the world looking for scarce resources like copper under the umbrella of stability. While China mines copper in Afganistan, the USA consumes copper in Afganistan in the form of brass bullet casings ejected over the landscape. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.
Is this a diatribe against all things Chinese? Absolutely not. If anything, China has skillfully mastered it’s range of control and made purposeful, long term plans to reach its goals. Like its plans for Thorium-based molten salt reactors. Thorium power is undergoing a bit more examination now, as described in this Forbes article.
Here is a point I’d like to get across. The present boom in REE exploration and mining is in a good place for thorium extraction. If thorium were to be part of the extracted value rather than a costly sidestream in need of segregation and remediation, then the subsequently improved economics of REE extraction and greater availability might translate to lower REE costs for users of rare earth metal technology.
There is a crucial synergy here that the US would do well to exploit. But it requires vision, long term planning, and regulatory flexibility in the handling, accumulation, and processing of thorium. These attributes the US now lacks. The current lead pipe doctrines of American politics represents a critical systems failure of our culture. We cannot continue to regard middle-ground compromise as total forfeiture.
This is too cool. See for yourself. Sweet Home Alabama. Kinda makes ya wonder about the RF interference for the neighbors.
Here is a link to a US Chemical Safety Board video summarizing several recent lab accidents. If you have never visited or heard of the CSB, here is a link to their web site. Have a look around.
This link is to the case CSB case Study of the Texas Tech explosion with nickel hydrazine perchlorate. It has a nice illustration of the Swiss Cheese Model of safety. This model was devised by British Psychologist James T. Reason at the University of Manchester in 1990.
I had an evil thought just now as I attempt to write 2 reports simultaneously. Why do we keep using that superscripted circle in front of C (i.e., ºC) that designates “degree”?
What the hell? We don’t use it for the Kelvin temperature scale. And, who knows if the engineers use it for Rankine? The thing is useless like an appendix or a titular chairman. Get rid of it!
What do you think?
There is considerable handwringing over hydraulic fracturing fluids and their potential effects on “the environment”. I use quotes in ironic fashion because I see very little parsing of the issue into relevant components. The chemical insult to the environment is highly dependent on both the substances and the extent of dispersion. But I state the obvious.
There are surface effects at the drill site and there are subsurface effects. A spill on the surface is going to be relatively small due to the limited size of the available tankage on site. I drive by these sites almost daily and can see with my own eyes the scale of the project. A surface spill of materials will be limited in scope.
The subsurface effects are complex, however, and the magnitude of consequences will depend on both the extent of the fluid penetration into aquifers and the nature of the materials in the fluid. Much criticism has been dealt, rightfully I think, over the secrecy claims on the composition of these fluids. The default reply from drillers has rested on trade secrecy. To be sure, the matter of government forcing a company to reveal its art is a serious matter. But the distribution of chemical substances into the environment requires some oversight. Especially when substances are injected into locations where they cannt be readily remediated. The remediation of an aquifer is a serious undertaking which may or may not be effective.
If you want to see what is potentially in frac fluids, go to Google Patents and search “hydraulic fracturing fluid”. A great many patents will be found. This will give the length and breadth of the compositions patented. Of this large list only a few are used in current practice. The potential carrier fluids vary from water to LPG (!). Water is a common component, but brine is said to be preferred. Additives include hydrochloric acid and surfactants. The MSDS documents may be a good source of info. Consider that a substantial threat to ground water may be that it is rendered non-potable rather than outright toxic.
Gas and oil in the ground is like money in the bank. We know where much of it is and it will only appreciate in value over time. Why are we so hasty to suck it out of the ground and burn it? Is it because we think we need it now? Extra supply will indeed drive global motor fuel prices down for a time.
A side effect of supporting continued cheap petroleum is that ever more infrastructure will be constructed that is dependent on cheap hydrocarbon energy and less infrastructure constructed for other forms of energy. Inevitably, supply will become scarce and a society constructed on a foundation of cheap petroleum energy will collapse.
This perilous proposition seems pretty simple in concept. What history shows is that a small number of highly dedicated people can swing the mood of a larger population. Many revolutions begin with a dedicated core who exploit some dissatisfaction to effect a desired change.
Right now we see a GOP that is driven by a minority of religious zealots wrapped in the flag and bent on an orgy of fratricide. What drives the Democrats is a mystery to me. They are a herd of cats.
Americans need to find meaning and a place in the world that does not involve urban warfare. We need to throttle back military spending and direct resources towards a sustainable market economy unified by peaceful common purpose. We are at a place in history where the Enlightenment is at risk of ending.
A colleague and I were discussing the Sangji case off-line and I did what I am pathologically prone to do which is to blurt out suggestions. I’m passing them along to my other friends out in the ether as a rough guideline to thinking about training and due diligence. My suggestions are merely a watered down version of a typical industrial EH&S SOP.
Due Diligence
Your university EH&S department no doubt has some some form of written policy, but having your own arrangement with your student workers will accomplish two things for you- 1) you will have written and signed documentation on having trained your students to use what you might call, if not “best practices”, then “reasonable and ordinary practices” in the lab, and 2) you will have made it perfectly clear to them what kind of expectations you have in regard to their work practices, open lab times, types of activities they may perform unsupervised by you, and your absolute dedication to lab worker safety.
In a civil or criminal action you will be under court order to surrender your documents in a process called “discovery”. Your attorney, being an officer of the court, is legally obligated to ensure that you surrender all of your documentation related to the action.
So, wouldn’t it be useful to surrender documentation of your diligence in all matters of safety?
Making a student or other lab worker’s activity in your lab contingent upon some basic operating rules is not at all unreasonable. And, if the rules are clearly written with consequences for violation of policies, then everyone knows the expectations.
No one can predict the future. But what you can do is some due diligence. Have a written training program with goals and scope. Run your research students and other coworkers through it every year and have them sign off on their attendance. Put it in a file and hope that you never have to pull it out in self-defense.
Such a program would be a solid basis for your defense attorney to argue that you went to reasonable measures to train students on escape plans, shower and eye wash use, sharps, proper PPE, fire extinguisher use, lab hygiene, proper storage, and special techniques to use when handling reactive/toxic/corrosive/flammable materials.
A policy on the amount of flammable materials you have in your lab space is a good thing as is a policy of segregating chemicals in storage according to their flammability and corrosiveness.
Get a signature from coworkers on the policies as well and file it away. I think this is critical. Give a copy of your policies and training plan to the department chairman.
Possible Blowback
Once you have given instruction on your policies, collected all of the signatures, and neatly filed them away, the hard part begins. You must be consistent in enforcing the policies. You have to tear yourself away from the word processor and make periodic safety inspections. If you’re off to a week-long NSF study session, a proxy should be appointed to monitor your labs.
The last thing you want is to have a plan that crumbles under scrutiny. You want to have a gap free history of due diligence. Former coworkers may be called to testify as to your enforcement of safety rules. Nothing rings hollow like a safety plan that was constructed only for show.
Benefit
A benefit to all of this due diligence is that you may have actually made your lab a safer place to work and have instilled a level-headed safety mentality in your coworkers. Fancy that.
Lamentations on Chemistry 