CaptainPanic

First step is coal gasification. Second step is a Fischer Tropsch reaction. Chemically, it goes: Coal --> synthesis gas --> linear hydrocarbons (alkanes and alkenes (also known as paraffins and olefins)) I just wrote something about this technology's history in the other thread (where it was off topic, so good job opening the new thread!), so I'll quote myself. The newer challenge is to do a similar reaction (gasification, Fischer Tropsch) with biomass. This is a little harder, because the variation in biomass can be quite large.

Engines can chop up quite a bit of bird... but at some point it is just too much. They're jet engines, not meat grinders. There have been many incidents where airplanes had to abort a takeoff because of too many birds in the engine. (For example a Ryanair airplane had a similar incident in Rome, Italy a few months ago - note all the red spots on the nose of the airplane - yuck). I'm mostly impressed with the landing, because of the things Pangloss already wrote. I'd like to know the details: how did the pilot manage to land the airplane without breaking it into pieces?

Ayup. Sad, isn't it? Not really. I'd rather have a ship with tested 90's rockets than beta-version modern rockets. Guns don't kill people, bad software does.

I'm considering to have the beta (it's free, like my Ubuntu)... but I'll be reading some reviews first about stability, malware and privacy issues, and dual-boot problems (Windows in the old days just overwrote the boot thingy, so that upon booting the computer, Linux seemed non-existent). Let's see if Microsoft learned to behave. I'm no computer wiz, so if it doesn't behave, I probably can't fix it (and I don't plan on studying the problem). Main reason I'm hesitating is that I don't have a free partition at the moment. I never even considered the option of having a modern, free, version of Windows.

So, not only is the 1st clickable piece of info irrelevant and not giving the friendly impression that we want to give... it's also outdated and incorrect. That's just another reason not to have that sticking on top of our lovely forum.

Antifoam is often used in ethanol fermentation to reduce foaming (duh). I have learned from searching around that antifoam (in general) is an oil, or sometimes a silicon oil (not 100% sure about that). Does anyone know: 1. What type of antifoam is used specifically in ethanol fermentation on industrial scale? 2. What organic oils (if they are organic at all) are used? I'd like to know (a) specific example(s). And if possible, a price for the antifoam (price for industry - this is probably not possible to answer. Prices that industry pays for chemicals are notoriously hard to find.) [edit] I cannot change the thread title. Antofoam... tsk.

First of all, thanks for the link I don't understand why diesel is suddenly such a mixture of different compounds. Diesel is supposed to come from a refinery, where it has been separated based on its boiling point. That generally means that: 1. the "large molecules", which can be taken as "suspended particles" do not end up in the diesel fraction, but in the asphalt (bottom) fraction. 2. the light molecules end up in the LPG fraction or another lights fraction. Diesel is a fraction of the crude oil, and all molecules have roughly the same boiling point. Since the majority has no hydrogen bonds (sulphur is removed from fuels inside the refinery nowadays), but are normal alkanes and aromatics, they all have roughly the same size. Now, I also know that distillation never gives that 100% separation that we want... Diesel is definitely a mixture. It is also possible that US regulations regarding diesel are different from European regulations, meaning that it's either more or less of a mess. I don't have enough time for it today - unfortunately. I'll see if I can find out more about types of diesel this week. From the quoted text, I conclude that the efficiency of the invention depends heavily on the type / quality of diesel.

MW is microwave, I guess? (Note that it is also the standard abbreviation for MegaWatt (1E6 W)... and without the opening post (OP) that would actually make sense as well). Never use symbols or abbreviations without explaining them... it is worth the 2 seconds to type it out. On topic again: if you want to vary the microwave's output power, why don't you use the built-in system to vary the power? Most microwaves can vary the power from thawing (unfreezing) to max power (usually 700 W, or 0.7E-3 MW ).

You are completely correct. Everything radiates heat. Colder objects just radiate less than hot objects. With thermal radiation, you can calculate quite easily the difference. When other forms of heat transport come into play (they always play a role, only not in a vacuum), our formulas are more and more based on empirical formulas so the two way transport is not described in the theories (the heat transfer is a function (among other things) of the difference between the cold and hot material.

Yeah, ok... so my point that it's going to scare people away might not be the most likely thing to happen. It's not the end of the world when nothing changes. This is also not called the "bugfixing" or "major catastrophe" subforum, but it's the "suggestions, comments and support"... do with it whatever you like In the meantime, allow me to point out that the announcement that I-AM-A-GENIUS has been auto-suspended for 3 days has been up there longer than the actual duration of the suspension.

You may have heard that there are many stories on the internet about adding some magnets somewhere in your engine to make it run more efficient. On most scientific forums and websites, these stories were put in the category of hoaxes, nonsense and such. I recently found an article which seems to come from a more reputable source: Philedelphia's Temple university. They too claim that an electric field will significantly increase the fuel efficiency of the car (a diesel Mercedes), because the viscosity of the fuel is reduced in the electric field. This in turn makes the fuel injection more efficient. I'm not convinced, mostly because I don't understand how it's supposed to work. I have 2 questions for you all: 1. How can combustion become more efficient (by as much as 20%) when the exhaust of a car engine is already very low on uncombusted materials? (I have little data on the combustion efficiency of a standard car). I always thought that the main loss of efficiency came from the fact that so little of the combustion energy is turned into motion, rather than incomplete combustion. I have a strong feeling that kinetics of the combustion play a role here, but I'm not sure how those kinetics interact with the rest of the system. 2. How does an electric field influence viscosity? Is that because molecules try to line up? Does that then also influence the density? And why would it work with a non-polar fuel such as diesel? Surely, a linear hydrocarbon doesn't care much about an electric field? The chemical composition of diesel is 75% alkanes (paraffins) and 25% aromatic components. None of these are very polar.

As suggested before, the solution lies not in keeping the zombies out (they pile up, dead or aliveless), but in removing them completely. Therefore I stick to my idea of rapid zombie combustion. Since it has to be an ad hoc solution (I doubt that zombies will announce their plans in the paper), you just need to go with a simple solution, but none the less a solution that really removes the zombies, and turn them into CO2 and H2O. We can all agree that you cannot zombify a molecule, so once they've been combusted, you have removed the problem. Zombies also come to you, all by themselves, so you don't have to worry about trapping them. If animals die from eating a zombie, then a zombie body also does not rot. So, you can shoot all zombies in the head, but the bodies will be around forever. So, again: combustion is the only permanent solution. Gas stations can be a good start for your zombie annihilation program (ZAP). But in the end, you need to realize that it is possible that you need to annihilate a number of zombies equal to the world's population. That's a lot. You need to think Big. Bigger. Biggest. Petrochemistry is the type of industry that also thinks that big. It provides energy for a continent, and all that is situated on a few square kilometers of land. So obviously, that's where you need to be . And I wish to bring up Godwin's Law. Talking about zombie annihilation... we're asking for it

I oppose the point of view that reforming our energy sector will cause a loss of jobs and an economic setback. It is possible that prices go up. But, if investments also go up, and jobs will be created the economy grows. The basics of economic growth is to get the same product, but in higher quantity or of higher quality. Car prices went up, but cars are also more luxurious. Prices of communication went up, but we became mobile and connected to internet. Prices of all kinds of goodies go up as quality goes up. Prices of energy may go up as we will live in a cleaner environment with less dependency on the Middle East. Of course, there are examples where products are the same price but of higher quality (computers are a good example). The bottom line is that we all still live in a house, have a car, some furniture, a garden, means of communications and decorative stuff... and that hasn't changed much in the last 4-6 decades. But our economy has grown a lot. The economy will only take a step back if your country is one of the last ones to change, because then you have to buy all the technology (knowledge) and hardware from other countries. Sustainable energy has a high initial investment, and therefore a longer payback time. But the nice thing is that once it has been paid back, you practically get your energy for free (only maintenance to be paid). Economic models comparing sustainable energy to fossil energy or nuclear energy almost never encompass the entire lifetime of the investments, which is not very fair, since initial investments for sustainable energy are higher, but the operating costs are lower. In short: I believe that investing in sustainable energy right now might even reduce the effects of the crisis.

If you look inwards, the stars in our galaxy "overtake" us. Same like the planets Mercury and Venus - they orbit the sun much faster than us. Mars and the giant planets are slower. None of them seem stationary. And it's the same thing for stars in the galaxy. They just seem stationary for observers because (as was previously mentioned) the majority of stars don't orbit so fast. So, in a human life it all seems stationary, but in a different time frame, like millions of years, the inner stars orbit faster than us. The ones further from the center than us orbit slower than us.And then there are the random movements that should be taken into account. What I described goes for the average speeds.

Umm, yeah That would be more useful than x, y and z. I guess you mean polar coordinates? I learned different letters, but the idea is, of course, the same. What's the "average rotational frequency of the galaxy"?? Stars close to the center can orbit in less than 16 years: Of course, we (earth, and our sun) take a bit longer.

I'll stick to my signature. Always trying to simplify things into a model that I can understand.

Umm... I prefer to use the center of the galaxy as a reference point, and then draw a x, y, z line through that... would that be a problem? The whole changing reference frame thing is a bit beyond me... but I am aware that the center of the galaxy is not at the position where we observe it, since it took thousands of years for the light to reach us. Still, in this discussion, the "center of the galaxy" seems like the logical point from where we'll define things like direction and velocity. Or is there a reason not to do this? I found an interesting article regarding "Runaway stars" that have been found by Hubble: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1619375/hubble_finds_runaway_stars_going_ballistic/index.html These stars don't have the enormous speed of 500 km/s, but in stead "merely" travel at >180,000 kilometers an hour (50 km/s)... still, that's pretty fast... By the way, Earth rotates around the sun at about 30 km/s... which is also pretty fast distance from the sun: 0.15E12 m. Orbit: 2*pi*0.15E12 m Velocity: 2*pi*0.15E12/(365*24*3600) = 30E3 m/s, or 30 km/s.

Hmm... Dutch news hadn't mentioned the type of rockets (it was also front page news here). I should perhaps have completely read the BBC article. Apologies... Katuscha rockets indeed looks like Hezbollah. Seems hezbollah would like the conflict to escalate? Anyway, the bottom line what I don't understand is: Hamas and Hezbollah - are they a group of terrorists or an army? It makes a huge difference, no? Because I always thought they were considered terrorists? - Since when do terrorists agree on things like a cease fire? Isn't the whole purpose - the definition even - of terrorism "disruption through intimidation and violence "?

If you are in a gravity field (centered around the center of the galaxy) then it costs energy to move away from the center. Since any possible straight line eventually will move away from the center, the object will certainly be losing energy (kinetic energy) as it moves away. It's like rockets that we shoot into space. With enough speed to get into orbit, you'll stay there (in orbit). The higher the initial velocity, the higher the orbit. Therefore, it is likely that objects at the peaceful edge of the galaxy (where we find ourselves) will be relatively calm compared to the center of the galaxy. That is regarding the amount of stars and heavy objects and also the velocity that these have. In other words, the most likely case is that the heavy objects have found higher orbits. I'm not sure if many stars have elliptical orbits through the galaxy (like some asteroids or other space rocks have in our solar system). If you have speeds of a significant fraction of c (light speed, 2.99E8 m/s), then you are going so much faster than the escape velocity of the galaxy (as previously mentioned: approx. 1000 km/s) that you might as well ignore the differences in velocity as you pass the heavy objects. Only at extreme close proximity to extremely heavy objects will you encounter problems. I think others mentioned that for most stars, only the position is known, but not the velocity or direction. There is another thread (also active right now) deals with mapping the universe in real time. Since we don't know the velocity and direction of most stars/objects in space, we should conclude that we cannot answer the last question with measurements. But since the escape velocity of the galaxy is not approaching c, it should be possible to permanently leave the galaxy.

I advocate the distinction between "harddrugs" and "softdrugs". Softdrugs is almost only marijuana. The rest is often either synthetic (therefore not safe, because drugs labs are a mess) or drugs that will ultimately melt your brain, and that have severe physical effects. Yup. A similar study in the Netherlands - published only about 1 year ago in the newspaper (article in Dutch, sorry) concluded the same. The study was done by the Dutch research institute for health and environment (RIVM). /offtopic

I don't understand how 2 rockets fired from Lebanon are described as "Lebanon fires rockets into Israel". In the article (same link as in the OP), it says "Rockets hit Israel from Lebanon". Quite a difference. In the OP's words, it suggests that the Lebanese government sent those rockets. In the BBC's words, it's suggested that the rockets originate from Lebanese soil, but it gives no information whether the government was involved. It's like saying that America shoots over 10000 people every year... whereas the normal wording is "Over 10000 people die from shootings every year in America". Please be careful with these words - the situation in the world is already explosive enough. Plenty of governments are being accused of terrorism already. We don't need more. Governments have disputes. Wars are being fought. But that does not automatically mean that governments are terrorist groups. We don't negotiate with terrorists, and you should at all times keep the option of negotiation with a country's government open. If the attack was approved by the Lebanese government, you can be sure that the response would have been a bit heavier.

Copy paste all troll and spam posts into the thread, then close it.

Electrons orbit an atom's core. Atoms can be clustered in a molecule that itself rotates around its center of mass. Especially in the gas phase, molecules have a lot of freedom to rotate around. Note that electron orbits may not be as spherical as planetary orbits (which are also not a perfect circle, but molecular orbits (orbitals) may have even weirder shapes). And then there's of course the funfair which has machines in which you're the "moon" that rotates around the "earth" which rotates around the "sun". Doesn't go further than that luckily... I'm sure everyone would get sick. Also, the funfair is not exactly "nature".

Why would the walls move away? In a piston, you'd have to move the walls away pretty fast to make a serious impact on the movement of the molecules. Typical laboratory piston setups move the walls rather slow. As a comparison, your average gas molecule (nitrogen ([ce]N2[/ce]) at room temperature) moves around at a mean velocity of: [math]\overline{v}=\sqrt{\frac{8\cdot{R\cdot{T}}}{\pi\cdot{M}}}=\sqrt{\frac{8\cdot{8.3145\cdot{298}}}{3.14159\cdot{0.02802}}}=474.5[/math] m/s Obviously, car engines do have pistons that move fast enough (Formula 1 engines reach 10000 rpm. Say their pistons are moving 30 cm, then they do 50 m/s (average speed). That's 10% of the nitrogen's velocity at room temperature. Anyway, I still suggest using the kinetic theory of molecules (link 1 and link 2) to describe why molecules slow down... the moving wall theory totally fails to describe what happens in case of a relief valve where there are no moving parts, but where the gas itself escapes some container into a bulk environment (atmosphere).

I-AM-A-GENIUS, Get a job in an advertising agency. I'm sure they'll love you, and you'd do an outstanding job there. Shouting, not making any sense, but still getting the most important message through - you're amazing.