Engineering

I have a nitrogen stream that I need to find out the max flow in SCFM from a 1/4" tube at 50PSI. What is the best way of determining this? I dont have a pitot tube, what can I do? I broke my anemometer trying to measure this. Thanks,

Hi. Noticed in some non-residential buildings, that toilets drain the waste brutally fast. Is there any vacuum implementation of some kind in modern/specialized sewer plumbing like in hospitals, hotels... ?

I really like the book for how much it covers. There's not a single topic that's missed that is relevant to nuclear reactor design/analysis. Often other books can miss a topic or two. It's just that the style is not to the point and often time is wasted talking about things that are irrelevant or won't be explained, at least until way later.

So long as two-way roads have a grid structure, every intersection will include an option for turning left a green light. And every time a driver makes a judgment call on whether or not it's safe to do so, this risks getting them killed. I'm just wondering, wouldn't one-way streets create fewer options, per intersection, on which way to turn? For instance, if a north-heading street met an east-heading street, the north-heading cars could only turn right onto the east-heading street, not left. The east-heading cars could only turn left onto the north-heading one, sure, but you could also reserve one lane for traffic that is "joining" the street, suc…

Hello dear friends! As an alternative to heavy pressurized tanks and to complicated turbopumps, an electric pump can feed the propellants in the chamber(s). Conceivable at small chemical thrusters, where a high pressure improves the efficiency and injects enthalpy from the Solar panels. ----- Scale up: electronics can control 1MW motors from the main's voltage. A 70% efficient centrifugal pump brings then 72kg/s of oxygen and farnesane C15H32 to 96b; expansion from 80b to 0.02b in a 2.6m nozzle to push 260kN with Isp=375s, enough for the main engine of a 30t upper stage. Rotating at 780Hz in vacuum, the motor is small. Its rotor can be a permanent magnet of Magneto…

Hello. How to find at which pressure, which edible oils ignite/decompose ? Where to look for such data ? Say plain soybean oil; will it withstand being pumped/compressed at 6000 psi / 400 atm ? And other edible oils...

Hello everybody! I've spent some time comparing rocket propellants suitable for pressure-feed at a launcher, and have gone away from oxygen-methane and cyclopropane to room-storable fuels (and liquid oxygen). Though they may offer a lower specific impulse, the tanks they need are lighter, resulting in slightly better stages - and safer if the fuel leaks and ignites less easily than a gas does. Amines outperform hydrocarbons as well. The heaviest tank stores helium, and cold liquid methane needs more helium than a room-temperature fuel does. Also, a reasonable layer of microballoons-filled polymer can insulate the fuel tank from the colder helium tank and keep a si…

I have already created a post on another forum for the development of a new type of Stirling engine. The new concept is radically different from the Stirling alpha beta gamma engines. I'm looking to significantly increase the heat transfer exchange time. It takes two engine revolutions to make a complete cycle. On the other hand, the Stirling engine is in engine phase every half engine revolution. My site presents the engine. advertising link removed by moderator I'm looking for an industrialist who wants to develop this engine. One patent has been filed

So last night I threw away some aluminum foil. It was in contact with food I was using it to keep warm, I didn't think I'd have much use for washing it and saving it, and I thought nothing of it until afterwards. I just realized... if there were some program to collect everyone's pre-washed aluminum foil, and/or wash it after collecting it, it could be arranged in an increasing variety/size of concave shapes, be used as a solar collector, and boil water, whether to distribute energy directly as heat, or to turn turbines and generate electricity. So why aren't we doing this? Have the fossil fuel and nuclear industry lobbies bribed politicians into n…

So I'm just wondering, short of building an outright bridge, what would it take to impede waves travelling through a strait? If one were to build barriers around the strait, would floating ones be adequate, or would they have to extend all the way to the ocean floor? Would they need to be on both sides, or would just the one upstream from the highest waves be enough to block out those particular waves?

I thought this may pique the interest of some contributors, bearing in mind the recent conversations about law enforcement, guns and alternatives to killing people... The UK government has launched a competition to develop an Advanced Less Lethal Weapons System. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/competition-advancing-less-lethal-weapons/competition-document-advancing-less-lethal-weapons The UK's current hands-off less lethal options are incapacitant sprays (~4m), Taser (~6m) and baton rounds (~40m). I've used all three and one major obstacle I see with a 'one size fits all weapon' is how to make it effective at 50m without being haza…

Im detecting noise coming from a servo amplifier and its effect on a nearby signal cable. the received signal is being split into two mirror copies about zero. What is the reason for this? How can I show just the one signal. Thanks

So I work at an office that is constantly warm in the summer, especially when the sun is facing the window. It has blinds, but those blinds aren't fully reflective, and I'm not sure if there is any legal liability to putting tinfoil outside them. However, there is another tinfoil-involving alternative that might work; indoor concave mirrors to collect solar energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CLRTa_ocmo I'm thinking if I did something less precise, but still in a general concave shape, to concentrate all the solar radiation entering the office through the window on a darkly coloured kettle and use this to boil water for coffee or t…

Hi guys, i am new to this website. After reading the kind of subjects i decided to write my own post. As the title says i have had an idea of connecting a valve directly to the cloud, so you can command and read data from it using MQTT/API, no mistery there. I will explain a bit about how i got here. I am a professional embedded developer, in my own time we have developed an algorithm that detects the flow of water just by listening to the sound it makes on pipes using Machine Learning(this is the really cool part). So far so good we actually can detect if there is flow and give a quantity of the instantanious flow with a max error of 10%, just by attaching a s…

The Morandi Viaduct which suffered a spectacular collapse in 2018 has been rebuilt and is about to reopen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53628580 There was an earlier thread about the collapse, but I can't find it ATM.

Hello dear friends! Stretching stiffens polymers a lot, making wonder fibres of banal bulk materials. It brings LCP from 10GPa to 170GPa. Highly stretched polyethylene makes wonder ropes of Dyneema, Spectra and competitors. Stretching *3, easy with a polymer, strengthens much a stripe from a polyethylene shopping bag. Companies that stretch metal (for piano wire and others) could adapt to thicker polymer too. Or polymer manufacturers themselves could stretch or extrude the material cold or lukewarm, so mechanical engineers have stiff strong bulk polymers, lighter and easier to machine without fibre reinforcement. The transverse properties may drop. Rol…

I have developed a totally innovative "Fully Hydraulic Motor" which I submitted to an automotive company and local university lot of years ago. Not any feedback received on it so I post it here for if someone in the world could be interested. I´m not interested in the production patent rights, may be just to be mentioned as the original author of the concept. It is based on an electronical concept applied in hydraulics. Here is the two pages pdf I wrote to present it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J_LnpLlhbFTY-wPqEOk2G5z7545BB674/view?usp=sharing Any comment is welcome.

Hi all. In winter time, aluminium window frames form condensation from any humidity inside the dwelling as cold is easily conducted from the outside exposed metal surfaces, puddling on sills and staining paint, probably causing rot in underlying wood. Is there any treatment/coating that is usually applied to aluminium frames to avoid that damage ? The glass does not condense humidity, just the highly conductive Al frames do. 🙁

Hi Recently my company has wanted to conduct waste testing to determine the composition of the wastes in concentration or wt%. This testing will help us to determine whether there are any excess chemicals in the feed of the process, which in turn can also be used to identify the effective composition of chemicals in the feed needed to produce the least waste or zero waste. However, we can't provide any testing parameter to the laboratory because we don't know what will present in the waste and too little information is given for the feed of the process. Besides, by referring to the material safety data sheet (MSDS) and certificate of analysis (COA) of each chemical u…

I am fascinated by robotic technology, so I thought maybe one or another would post here some examples like the 2 below, Petman and a bird.

As some of you might know, I have designed a crewed interstellar spacecraft that I call Solar One. Basically, large flexible mirrors placed near the Sun would propel a one-mile light sail with a 4–crew spacecraft of 300 tons. To decelerate, an on-board compact fusion reactor would power a photon rocket placed at the front of the spacecraft that would 1) help decelerate and 2) ionize space hydrogen for the nuclear reactor. A Bussard scoop also placed at the front of the spacecraft would 1) collect those protons (ionized hydrogen) and 2) decelerate the spacecraft. Solar One would achieve an average of 22% the speed of light, w…

Hi. Vomited by the sea :

I have most of deionized water system that I am looking for a good home. Everything works, it is just missing an ion exchange tank service associated with it. The pump is 240V 3Phase. Anyone looking to set up a medium sized DI water system?

Hello nice people! Some objects moving against a gas or liquid, especially wind turbines, aeroplanes and water craft, include a vortex generator at their wing, fuselage or hull, usually before the body recesses. The vortices avoid or ease the "flow separation", so a wing lifts at higher angles of attack, and at fuselages, the drag decreases despite the vortices. wikipedia Heat exchangers can use them too. The common explanations are as undetailed as "turbulent flows separate later" or "introduce energy in the boundary layer". Consistently, usual designs of vortex generators are quite crude, as depicted below or with small variations. While quite a…

Please excuse me as i am trying to simplify this as best as possible without having to draw a picture 😃 I questioned earlier about perpetual motion and it led me to idea no2. You have two cylinders. One filled with water and one in a vacuum. You have a container that is denser than air but still buoyant. The container passes through the water filled cylinder pulling a cable that turns a generator. Once it reaches the top it passes into the cylinder with the vacuum and falls to the bottom still pulling the cable. Would this create a positive energy output?