On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:52:03 -0500, "JJS" jschneider@remove socks
cebridge.net wrote:
"Morgans" wrote in message ...
"JJS" jschneider@remove socks cebridge.net wrote
You are in way over your head Ludwig. I've worked with all these gases
for 28 years, in well, let's just say very
large quantities. I do this stuff for a living. You don't have a clue.
The more you try to defend your incorrect
drivel the deeper you get.
God forbid that I would in any way defend anything that this nutjob says,
but I think there is incomplete statements on both your parts going on here.
You store these gasses at low temps, because it is impractical to store them
at the crazy pressures that they would have to be, if kept at room
I worked for a company that used a *LOT* of H2. Probably as much or
even more than NASA. We had a very large tank farm which "as I
recall" had 12 tanks. (This was well over 20 years ago so I may be
mis-remembering some of it) We had a lot of tankers loaded with H2
coming into that place.
Of course the tanks were insulated, but we used the pressure of the
vaporizing H2 to move the stuff. N2 for us was a contaminant.
Cold? I noted some liquid running off one of the fittings and figured
it was way too cold for water, but it sure looked like it. The tank
farm operator remarked; "Water? No, it's way too cold for that. That
stuff running off is liquid Oxygen".
temperature. The way things are done, in a real world? Very cold, with
some pressure to help out, so you get a you are right, on this one.
For us the only alternative for pressure besides the evaporating
liquid H2 was Helium (analysis grade which I believe is five nines)
and even with all those tanks the stuff didn't evaporate fast enough
go keep the pressure up.
Purity was our problem as we were working at less than one part per
billion. That is difficult to maintain.
Yes, as he said, they can be kept at room temperatures. Almost anything can
be. Practical? No. Wrongly stated? No.
Times change though.The output of that plant is many times what it
used to be and they have gone through two very large expansions since
they became the world's largest supplier of that product. Currently
(according to the local paper) they are looking "world wide" for a new
site to build another plant and it's my understanding there are a lot
of places that want them.
With improved recovery techniques and some "other processes" that
tank farm has disappeared. Last I saw there was only one small tank.
Probably 5 to 10,000 gallons give or take a bunch as I don't know how
much they kept in there. Stuff that was byproduct is reused in one
form or another. Recovery techniques have dropped the H2 use to a tiny
fraction of what it was at one time.
However I would add that there is a way to keep a lot of H2 in a
relatively small space at room temperature that is "physically
practical". Unfortunately it takes a lot of some very expensive
material that is also toxic. They can use metal Hydrides as "metal
sponges" and the things do hold a tremendous amount of H2. Also a
ruptured tank is not a fire safety issue as you normally have to use a
small heater to get the H2 out.
I believe these are the same type of Hydrides they use in batteries
which are a disposal problem. They aren't supposed to go in the
garbage, but being sold to the general public I'd bet way more than
half of those batteries do end up in the trash. Think of what NiMH
batteries cost and then think of a chunk of that stuff the size of the
gas tank in a car.
A bit of history. I started working for that company about the time
they moved from using an old two story farm house for an office and a
large cement block garage for production to a new office building plus
a new production facility about the size of a basketball court.
With the first expansion we were using so much H2 we installed the
World's largest electrolytic cell for generating H2 as there wasn't
enough liquid H2 capacity in the US to supply us and NASA. For some
strange reason they gave NASA a higher priority than us.
You should have heard that cell. When running at capacity it was
deafening. The O2 was just vented to the atmosphere and that was a
*lot* of O2. It was sorta like standing in front of an F-16 getting
ready to taxi. That cell was dismantled not long after sufficient
quantities of liquid H2 became available.
I worked there 26 years, quit and went back to college to earn my
degree. Never went back except in an official capacity to consult on
a computer system as they were a subsidiary for the corporation I
ended up working for after graduating.
--
Jim in NC
Sorry for the late reply, Jim. We had to restart the plant and I was working some long hours. What you say above is
correct. But some things he has stated, not included above, are totally incorrect. I'm just sick of Ludwig making
blanket statements that are only partially correct so that he can forward his troll agenda. Some of his statements
are correct enough that some people "partially in the know" might accept them as gospel. That was my sole reason for
responding to the group. I try hard not to fall for troll bait If you'll go back and read his drivel, he says
things like, "you can't condense methane". Yeah right! He makes statements about the way products are stored when
there are multiple ways to store them. I tried to reply that in my experience he was wrong. There are other ways.
He attacks Van and Rutan, two of the icons of the experimental aircraft movement. He calls Van's keen observations
blather. Another "for instance": His assertion that natural gas is methane: Natural gas varies in composition
depending on a host of factors including what processing it has gone through, if any, and also from gas well to gas
well. It is not "only" methane: Here is an example. From one of our supply pipe lines, on August 9th it was 96.00
mole % methane, .43% carbon dioxide, .08 helium, .0012 i-butane, .0012 n-butane, 2.4621% ethane, .9300 nitrogen,
.0957 propane. Another pipeline was 95.76% methane, .00220 C6+, .64 carbon dioxide, .04 helium, 2.7004 ethane, .74
nitrogen, .1101 propane, .0023 i-butane, .0020 n-butane. So what? He replied that 96% is mostly methane. Each of
these constituents affects the BTU value of the gas. The first pipeline was running 1017 BTU's and the second 1027
BTU's. This is a huge factor not only in using the gas as a fuel but also in process it into other commodities such
as ammonia, methanol, carbon dioxide, etc.
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Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com