DeepSeaBase

So Mr. Enthalpy would you say there's "promise" to using the pressures of the ocean (as in my DAC thread) because of the simplification of the device? I figured seals to the hydraulic device would be a critical fail point but because I read about very high pressure devices I figured those fail points were much of a hurdle. But for the scales of creating gigapascals it does seem this is a critical hurdle. A deep ocean device may not have as much pressure from its primary mover (in this case the ocean) at just 110MPa, but the device can be as simple as a large block of metal holding back the ocean on one side and 1atm (101,352 pascal?) on the other side. Put something between that block of metal and you get however much force it applies based on the difference of the area exposed to the ocean versus the area the block is pressing against in the diamond anvil cell. Such a device doesn't have as many fail points because at some point the-metal on metal contact becomes its own seal (gasket). That's the only justification I can come-up with so far and I realize it's really reaching into the realm of science fiction and quite a stretch. But, maybe it's a useful application of deep ocean pressures? See this fascinates me because a deep ocean item can theoretically do this with NONE of those issues you described. In a very simplified form...all you need is a block of metal (cylinder) pressing against another block of metal (pressure hull). That's it...you don't need a cylinder head to match the pressures of the pump, you don't need screws, you need nothing but that.... And when you want to turn it off...you close the hatch. If the hatch is also a pressure hull...it's like shutting a valve and all the pressure is gone from the system, all of it. If you want to elaborate on that last part just look at how torpedo tubes function. They are quite simple devices even though there is still complexity to them. The simplification of the device makes sense to me, but how to describe the technical comparison to the performance of existing machinery makes no sense to me. I just can't figure out how to show that 110MPa pressure over a simple cylinder head is superior to whatever pump-performance and hydraulic performances we have today. By the numbers it's not superior. It's only superior if its more easily scaled with less problems of design. Not quite. That device is in part what I'm describing. But what I'm ultimately describing is a target being pressed upon by a primary driver...the driver could be a 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 meter cube of uranium. All I'm trying to do is compare the primary driver to the target. To quantify it in a way that I better understand why we can create a building-sized megawatt consuming 80,000 ton hydraulic press that can lift an aircraft carrier...but it can't press two diamonds together to make metallic hydrogen. 80,000 ton hydraulic press should be 784,480,000 pascals (784.5MPa) per square meter. If we took a pyramid of infinitely strong material and that press pressed all that pressure onto the tip no bigger than 1mm^2 shouldn't it therefore be 784.5Gigapascals? Now I realize my managing these ratios is fuzzy, I make errors, but just bear with me. All I want to know is why creating 100GPa in a diamond anvil cell is consider godlike when we have presses capable of exceeding that by a huge amount? And I know the answer is in design, cylinder heads, size of equipment, material strengths, I know the reasons are there. So all I want to know is if we can literally build a block of metal, put an object at the end of it (a diamond) and let the ocean crush it with 110MPa across the entire area of the block....is there a purpose to do so given all the problems of building more complex machines to do it?

In continuing my series on a deep sea base, another hypothesized reason of being there is biotechnology. This one seems more probable than the diamond anvil cell. The most obvious need is to research piezotrophs in their natural habitat. If the lab can be ambient pressure then the lab really can just be as flimsy as tin foil. Not literally, but relatively speaking that's still true. The problem of deep ocean comes from pressure hulls and ballasts that can survive those depths. Even the best ballasts, syntactic foams, are likely to crack and their failure means the loss of the lab to the Deeps. Enthalpy has shown some other interesting solutions to ballast, but ultimately, if the lab is staying on the bottom, it doesn't have to be substantial and can be exposed to the ambient pressure. If the lab environment needs some inert gas or such to keep the experiments more pure, well the lab can still be at no pressure gradient and a moonpool etc would function normally. So I have been looking for biotechnologies that would benefit from such a high pressure lab environment and there's quite a lot. I believe, and would like to test this rationale, that a high pressure environment would allow for a simply built high pressure laboratory, since if the ambient pressure is 110MPa then a 110MPa internal pressure would have zero gradient. Thus, the lab environment would reduce the need for specialized equipment which interferes with cell-cultures. This is actually true if you think I'm just rambling about science fiction. I have citations to the peer reviewed research that is in my actual proposal that someday I hope to publish. But for the purposes of this thread, basically, the equipment needed to provide pressure to cell cultures also impedes natural processes that the cells would otherwise use, such as oxygenation of the samples. As such...the experiments are by their nature flawed. However, if the experiment were conducted at 110MPa and the whole lab were pressurized, then the experiments can be conducted using normal lab equipment with little modification to the equipment themselves. The experiments would have higher fidelity. The question is why not just build a room-sized pressure vessel at sea level buried into the ground or something to prevent rupture of the containment vessel. My only argument to that thus far is that both a high pressure containment or a high pressure hull are similar technological challenges and so we might as well put it at the bottom of the ocean where a deep sea station will better be able to facilitate MORE local habitat conditions than just a pressure vessel at sea level. There's also a few technical considerations, primarily a pressure hull is self-sealing where as a containment vessel is likely to explode if any component fails. When working with deadly pathogens, that simply is unacceptable. Since the ONLY way to kill viruses and keep them intact for faithful-analogs and for high-fidelity killed-virus vaccine prototypes is to kill viruses with 100+MPa; pressurizing equipment to 100MPa in a BSL4 lab at sea level sounds like a bad idea, and is impossible given regulations. So this advanced methodology for vaccine production is virtually shut-off for more dangerous diseases. But, put them at the bottom of the ocean and put them in a pressure hull that has zero pressure gradient (no likelihood to explode) and now you have a very attractive BSL4 lab at the bottom of the sea that if it fails it doesn't explode into a weapon of mass destruction, instead if it fails it self-sterilizes. So I'm very excited by these probable reasons for being at the bottom of the sea.

TL;DR - I'm keeping Diamond Anvil Cells in the "Improbable" category of why a deep sea base....I've been looking into other reasons this weekend focusing mostly on biotechnology. There's actually 4,000 bar hand pumps. So something is missing, because I just talked to a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and they are fascinated by the idea of a 6,500 ton press to create 100GPa pressure on 1 inch-square. Long story short: I'm still hopeful that a deep ocean high pressure anvil for large volume material synthesis (phew that's a mouthful) will be a thing.... But, unfortunately it's nowhere NEAR as straightforward as just comparing strength of pumps. This is correct, I have used a research paper from Cornell University's Department of Geological Sciences to define all the "force provider" types of the typical anvils, and inquired at the Stony Brook University for how they are providing force to their multi-anvil system (they are leaders in that field). Lastly there's the Kawai-type anvil press. Basically, there's dozens of methods of trying to get hundreds of gigapascals pressed onto tiny objects usually micrometers in size but sometimes as high as 1mm^3 to even 10cm^3 for the few gigapascals. Of all these methods, the Oak Ridge Laboratory person seemed quite fascinated at the idea of generating hundreds of gigapascals over more than a square inch. A 6500 ton press to work a square inch is actually quite a lot of hydraulics. No "4,000 bar" hand pump is going to move that thing....and while 50,000 or even 80,000 ton presses exist, they are also the size of buildings. Then comes the technical issue of marrying the press to a diamond anvil. And in the case of Gigapascals of pressure it's also material limited. Single diamond crystals are required to make larger cells that can withstand those Gigapascals. So they are limited on size based on the crystal size.

As far as I'm considering, the module itself will remain dry. While the pistons are exposed to ambient sea-pressure, the module will be designed such that a hull breach/leak doesn't form. What I'm struggling with more is proving that such a contraption is superior to just a super high pressured pump.... Such pumps can reach 2000 bar and are used for diamond anvil cells, but the cells are still quite small. So I don't know if the cells are pressure limited i.e. the pump can only move so large a cylinder, or if its materials limited, or both. I'm trying to conceptualize how the super high pressure pumps work to be the "primary driver" of a diamond anvil cell, so that I can thought-experiment whether or not it is more efficient or more scalable to put the anvils under the ocean and let the ocean depth become the primary driver.

I unfuzzied my head with a long walk, so I can better ask my question: For a given pressure of the prime driver, to increase the final pressure at the end of a hydraulic ram, do all I need to do is increase the cylinder head size?

But the prime mover has an area and the lifting piston has an area. What is their relationship to each other that we need more powerful pumps? Can a 1 psi pump lift 1,000,000 pounds if I just have a piston that is 1,000,000 sq. inches?

I don't know why this isn't making sense to me, maybe I'm burned out. The idea is this: a pump rated to 1,000 psi. A cylinder head of 100 sq inches. That cylinder can move 100,000 lbs. What prevents the same tiny 1,000 psi pump from moving a 1,000 sq inch cylinder head, a 1million^2? An infinitely sized cylinder head with any amount of weight on it? The goal of this question is I want to determine what is more efficient to provide pressure onto my hydraulic ram. Basically how to design the darned thing with the pump in mind. If my pump can do X then I can have an X-sized cylinder head. Would I ever want my pump to do 1/2X but my cylinder head be 4X in size? Things of that nature.

I'm not quite so sure...tehom is quite literally the "bottom of the ocean"or "abyss" in Greek. Or the "primordial waters" which to me is more of an Egyptian reference...or Genesis reference to the waters in the void...which would suggest some creation parallel in the flood. A new creation? hmm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehom It looks like Genesis 7:11 also gets into this word Tehom.

I read all this thread and am fascinated. I want to get your attention to help think about the need for and building of a deep sea base. I just launched my much less well organized thoughts than yours in the thread on diamond anvil cells and I'm wondering if you have opinions on adapting them to the higher pressures of 114MPa for the cylinder rams in order to give much more volume to the cells themselves without losing any performance?

Genesis 8:2 - Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. Particularly the "springs of the deep". The source of water therefore would be the crust, the fact it also rained is irrelevant, I think. At least in terms of where, hypothetically, the water came from. Now 12,800 years ago is it? Something like that... We've determined that the greenland icesheet along with most of the northern ice sheet during the ice age was temporarily vaporized by a meteorite impact. If true, it also could be a very real and known event that would create the flood story so many cultures retain. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/massive-crater-under-greenland-s-ice-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans So whether or not an ocean's worth of water was released from the crust, something is likely certain. Some 100-200 feet of sea level rise came crashing down across the whole earth in a torrential and cataclysmic impact 1/3rd the size of the impact that senta wall of fire 6,000 miles in every direction and destroyed most land animals bigger than a rat, some 65 million years ago.

So the question arises, why be at the bottom of the sea? The international space station has a lot of scientific experiments that can only, or best be performed in microgravity. So I ask the question what experiments can best be performed at the bottom of the sea? What comes to mind is the pressure. Immense pressure. Almost 2x the pressure that we can generate with pump technology. 690bar seems to be the upper limit of pump technology, but Challenger Deep rests at 1014 bar. And so I suggest that there is opportunity for experiments here. Enter the "Diamond Anvil Cell." https://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/kawazoe/html/Kawazoe04-Method-EN.html https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S167498711000037X?via%3Dihub https://www.apexhydraulics.co.uk/guide-hydraulic-cylinders/#:~:text=Therefore%2C the weight that can,the range%3B around 210 Bar. So, the problem with diamond anvil cells is they have to apply pressure on a very small area. This comes from limitations of the apparatus due to pressure seals, hydraulic fluids, and at 690bar, the larger size of the hydraulic ram. I propose that the hydraulic ram can be simplified, exposing the head of the cylinder to ambient sea pressures, and use ~1014bar pressure instead of 690bar. As such, a 9inch radius cylinder would produce 25GPa over a square inch. This is an increase in performance of a Diamond Anvil Cell by some 25,400x. That's a huge performance increase. All we have to do is develop the machinery to use the ocean pressure to drive the rams. I've drawn a basic idea built off a pressure hull design. But I'm still intently working on the thought process for this. Including checking to see if there's anything in the design of the Diamond Anvil Cells and their various types of construction that prevents adaptation to the ocean pressure, or negates the need for it such as it has higher performance than 1014bar and I misunderstood something in its hydraulic design. As for the pressure hull drawing, I think it may be possible to develop a pinhole design to equalize the pressure of a hydraulic fluid (water) in the cylinder head. Such a design may better secure the pressure hull than the large hatch design I present.

In the bible it didn't come from the rain. The water came from the ground. Which is at least consistent with the fact there's some 2x oceans worth of water in the Earth's crust. At certain temperatures the water would have to be released from its mineral bonds.

As mentioned above I'm not really concerned with what is the "best" pump for a job, but what is the most powerful pump. The most powerful pump in the world currently seems to be somewhere around 690bar. ( https://www.castlepumps.com/pumps/pump/cat-plunger-pumps/ ) I haven't really found one more powerful than this. It is irrelevant if a pump is better at pressure differences or higher flows if the pump cannot handle the head pressure. Head pressure in Challenger Deep is approximately 1014bar. There may be more powerful pumps, I just haven't found any yet. Was talking with a submarine buddy of mine (fire control), and he relates to my view of the torpedo tube analogy. Flooding simplifies the equalization of pressure, so should be able to flood and de-flood a pressure hull to expose it to ambient pressure. Just need a self contained water source because the inability to pump at those pressures prevents any open circuit to the ambient pressures outside. Hence the water tank in the design. Stress and everything else as far as pumps are concerned seems to not be a concern because the 1014+ bar pressures well exceed any pump to-date?

I call it the "hydrolock". People may not realize, because often times "space" is considered the most difficult frontier, but there currently is no docking system for deep ocean. If you want to go to the deep ocean you have to enter a pressure vessel on the surface before your long descent. We are basically at the Mercury mission stage if comparing deep sea exploration to space exploration. Space was easy for a reason I'll mention below. I've been working on this thought problem about how to create a docking system for deep sea bases. It's not as straightforward as one might originally think because the system has to: 1) maintain hull integrity the whole time. 2) transfer between extreme pressure differences while: 3) -not having any pumps capable of doing so. 4) maximum pump depth right now is 5,500 meters. And that's pushing the limits of 100 years of development. This pump is also centrifugal, meant to operate on liquids not gasses, and so there's a whole host of issues with a high pressure pump that might not even be applicable to a docking mechanism between huge pressure differences and between liquids and gasses. So bottomline, you can't just pump your way out of the problem like in a normal airlock that transfers gas from one pressure to another pressure usually between 0atm to 0.3atm (or 0psi to about 5psi). And you therefore can't pressurize the gas, so the airlock can't be one contained system with pressure tanks. So having mentioned the hurdles, here's the basic thought process so far. 1) Have two pressure hulls capable of maintaining 1atm at 1000atms (10,000meters seawater). 2) Have one of these hulls contain water. 3) Transfer water between these hulls to transfer a relatively incompressible material from one hull to the other. 4) Equalize pressure between the hull containing water and ambient pressure so its hatch can be removed. 5) Dock another pressure hull to the removed hatch. 6) Re-equalize the pressures again, back to 1atm. 7) Remove the water from the docking hull to the water tank. I call this a "hydrolock". In principle it works much like a torpedo tube. The pressure hulls are subject to massive stress at the seams (where the spheres meet). I'm not sure if these seams would rupture or leak. Seals are formed by metal-on-metal contact, so I believe that the greater exposed surface area will keep a strong metal-on-metal seal at the seams since the seams represent a very small amount of total surface area. This of course is the most crucial assumption. The settling of a spherical hull into the removed arc of the other spherical hull might create a fatal seam that has no strength against the pressures outside and form a leak. Now to make it "structural connected" I was thinking of magnetic locks. Magnets on either side of a nonmagnetic hull (titanium?) or magnets on one hull locking to the steel of the other....this would provide rigidity or locking in place...but it will NOT provide a pressure-lock. That has to come from pressure outside mating the metal-on-metal contact. So if that can't form at the seam, a leak will form. @exchemist Unfortunately I can't answer you yet (cooldown on my posts), but I'll update here incase I forget. Firstly, I didn't choose the worst pump, I simply researched the highest pressure pump. This is used in the oil-industry at depth. So it may be worst for the application but it's, as far as I can tell, the highest operating pump pressure there is, at approximately 5500meters that's 550atm or 550 bar which are roughly equivalent. (500bar = 493 atmosphere to be precise). The problem here is I want a system that works below that...10,000meters or 1,000atm or about 1,013.25 bar. I don't know of any pump that can withstand that. But if we can find one we can start to consider it, and the hydrolock (torpedo tube) will probably still be necessary to reduce stress and increase safety and redundancies. I need to evaluate the second stage you mentioned.

But why the bottom of the ocean? I keep coming to this and getting stumped on the: "There's nothing that can't be done by ROVs". Technically this is true with space exploration as well, but space exploration is immensely easier than deep sea for one reason: Docking systems. I actually worked on a little bit of that problem today so I'll try to post an idea I had about it. Without docking systems, deep sea operations are lonely and costly ventures. With docking systems, like in space, all that changes. It was a far fetch, I was hoping that by the ambient pressure being higher the diamond would maintain its structure enough to get across the finish line so-to-speak. Maybe the ambient pressure has no change on the strength of the diamond? Regardless, while a fuel depot may not exist at the bottom of the sea, the research could maybe be conducted there. I'd probably want to reform the question to what OTHER pressure-dependent research can be done there? In space we do a lot of microgravity research which specifically means 3-dimensional genetic research since on a plate most biological material tends to spread out 2-dimensionally and not interact well. Deep sea advantage is pressure. In this case it's more like clutching at pearls, but, really, it's hard to find a reason for people to be at the bottom of the ocean. There's no reason to be on Everest either. I'm not saying people won't go. But there's a REASON for people to do research in the space station.... Oh also, I have a general idea of how it works, but what I was hoping was to maintain the normal function of these diamond anvils but at a higher ambient pressure so that their structural integrity would be increased by, in this case, 1000atm.

Algae blooms that sequester co2 then after dying they rot and give back co2. Mantle plumes that warm the ocean some.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladoga_Canal I'm pretty sure these are the old Russian Empire canalways that connected the Baltic to the black sea and the Caspian. France has one too from channel to mediterranean and all that's left of it is a petty, wooded trail surrounded by levies on both sides.

I've been looking for a reason to put people at the bottom of the ocean and there aren't a lot of practical reasons. ROVs can do most or all of the work. But I think I finally found one reason that makes sense. Hydrogen is the best rocket fuel but not not long journeys because the tiny atom leaks from the tanks. However metallic Hydrogen will not have this problem. Metallic Hydrogen also seems to have a boost in efficiency by 4x but I don't understand how. However the diamond anvils needed to press Hydrogen into metal are at their limit, right at the limit apparently. So what if we put the diamond anvils at the bottom of the ocean? That will add some 1000atm which may be small in the terms of total pressure needed but may be enough to make the diamond anvil capable of tolerating the job? If so, then such a highly accurate job with sensitive equipment most certainly would need human presence to maintain and operate at such depths? Especially given the high lag times to go to the surface and dive that deep if equipment needs replacement. Inspired by this article. https://www.insidescience.org/news/these-instruments-can-create-pressure-thousands-times-higher-bottom-ocean