aliceinwonderland

I don’t use iPhysics myself on a daily basis, but my employer is familiar with it, particularly with regard to virtual commissioning. The exciting part, I've learned, isn't the attractive 3D view, but whether the mechanics, control systems, material flow and operational behaviour all fit together. If you only use it to make a machine move smoothly, the benefits are limited. However, it becomes more interesting in practice if you can observe things beforehand, before it gets expensive or if you get the timing wrong. What I would advise against, though, is modelling the entire line right from the start. It makes much more sense to use a smaller model or a proof of concept in the initial phase. This will also help you to see how well it fits into the team and existing processes. What kind of systems do you want to simulate?

In terms of practicality, I would say the key factor for me is the activity of the alumina, rather than just the surface area per gram. I may be wrong, however, and I’d welcome any corrections on this point. As far as I know, the water content makes a significant difference, particularly with alumina. Things suddenly run more smoothly With very non-polar substances because not everything rushes straight through or gets stuck when the alumina is slightly less active. On top of that, silica is slightly acidic and interacts quite differently. Alumina in contrast can be neutral, acidic or basic, and I believe this can affect sensitive or weakly polar compounds. This is precisely why, I wouldn’t just use more material when scaling up and try to keep the grade, activity and moisture content as consistent as possible. Otherwise, it quickly ceases to be a nice experiment.

First, these people build their unscrupulous business on a foundation of mistrust, then they come along with their supposedly all-purpose formula. Let’s not beat about the bush if something could really cure lung diseases quickly, it’s hardly likely we’d be seeing it as a mobile phone video with a contrived sense of urgency. Especially when it comes to the lungs, this is no laughing matter, because shortness of breath, chronic coughs and other conditions are, in my view, things you shouldn’t just experiment with. These clips still don’t provide a proper study about where talking about, a clear dosage or a genuine explanation... even after a quarter of an hour. Just some blah, blah, hype and big but dubious words. Was there a specific mention of these substances, or did it stick to the typical “the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want it” line, or is there also any reliable data on this?

For heaven’s sake, I may well be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t view IQ as something like a muscle that gets increasingly toned at the gym. I see it more as the pressure of expectation that is inevitably associated with school life, than the actual starting point, and if every problem solved is immediately met with “I should have done that faster”, the way one internally processes success is the real problem. So, a minor defeat can be represented even by solved puzzles as a minor defeat, or I would also compare it to the moment after studying. To be more precise, I honestly think of it as when you believe you’ve got it down, and then you’re completely unsure. Striving to become wiser would probably be more enjoyable if you didn’t treat it as a race for a higher score. Personally, I too often lack the time for it, but reading, discussing, noticing mistakes, and developing patience with difficult things bring more to our daily lives than an abstract score, as often as possible. A game show is a poor model here. Real life rarely locks you in a room just because you needed three minutes longer to think.

Sediment and water, a small percentage in the specification naturally, look and sound completely harmless on paper. It’s a different story in practice, though, because, unfortunately, there’s often salt water, fine sand, sludge, rust deposits, emulsions and a bit of oil in there. So I really don’t want that in the product stream, and I hope nobody else does either. Where there is oil present in quantities worth recovering, attempts are made to extract it. But the balance quickly shifts if the water is, at least in part, hopelessly contaminated with sludge. In that case, treatment is possible, but it is not automatically what actually happens on site. Which brings us back to the original question: the pure hydrocarbons often become products or by-products. The unpleasant residues – containing oil, water, chemicals, etc. – tend to be found at the interfaces. It is there that it is decided whether a material stream is properly treated or disappears somewhere as quietly as possible. This “quiet disposal” is therefore precisely the point where I would start.

I’ve already read about this in recent weeks, though when it comes to the sand battery, I’d really stick to the concept of a heating network. Please do correct me if I am mistaken on this point, but to me, it sounds more spectacular as an electricity storage solution than it actually is. If you convert electricity into heat, and then want to generate electricity again later, the process of converting it back to electricity will most likely consume a large portion of it. The situation is quite different with pure heat, because you don’t need that detour. That is precisely why I find the approach interesting. It should definitely not be seen as a battery for all and sundry, but rather as a down-to-earth storage solution for district heating, process heat, or seasonal peak loads. It does, however, have certain advantages: it is a relatively cheap storage medium, has few moving parts, operates at high temperatures, and contains no rare battery metals. But it simply cannot replace a lithium battery if you want to recover electricity quickly and efficiently. For me, the question is rather where heat is needed directly. In Finland, with its district heating networks and cold winters, this makes more sense than in other latitudes and longitudes without this infrastructure. As soon as you add steam, turbines and electricity generation, the simple sandpit turns back into a proper power station problem.

In my opinion, the question of whether or not aliens are involved is irrelevant; what matters is the type of visit we’re talking about. After all, there is a huge difference between a fly-by and a large spacecraft. The basic idea of solar sails does sound elegant. However, the counter-argument involving an extremely low payload, huge sail areas, heat from imperfect reflection, beam divergence, accuracy and, ultimately, the question of how to slow down is not long in coming. A fly-through of a neighbouring star system would be extremely difficult, but still within the realm of hard physics. A tourist visit with a return journey would be in a completely different league. I therefore like the distinction between 'not prohibited by known physics' and 'practically feasible'. There's a world of difference between the two. Quite honestly, I'm out as soon as someone starts waving a 'Gravity Warp' around à la Bob Lazar, at least until it becomes verifiable physics. I’m not denying that one can speculate, though. But that doesn't make calculations involving energy, momentum, heat and braking any less important. They just get hidden behind a fog.

If I may add my two cents, in my humble opinion, when it comes to hydrocarbons, a lot of it is more “low value” than actually useless. The heavy residue that comes out at the bottom during distillation isn’t simply a pile of black rubbish; depending on the plant, it’s processed further. For goodness’ sake, of course it’s not elegant, but from an economic point of view, it’s still usable. Things get more interesting when it comes to the by-products and process residues. Sulphur is removed from fuels and can be sold on its own. Petroleum coke can also be utilized, although one must, of course, consider the environmental implications. Then there are catalyst residues, sludges, contaminated water, salts, trace metals, or very heavy aromatic components. To me, these are the real “problem children” of the plant. And one more thing I’d like to get off my chest... I actually don’t think the beef comparison in this discussion is bad at all... In fact, you don’t just get fillets out of it, but almost everything ends up somewhere in a value chain. Which by no means implies that it’s clean or harmless. So, one should distinguish between having no market value and being ecologically problematic.