_______________________________________________________________________________ | File Name : CRITWATR.ASC | Online Date : 08/17/94 | | Contributed by : Bert Pool | Dir Category : ECOLOGY | | From : KeelyNet BBS | DataLine : (214) 324-3501 | | KeelyNet * PO BOX 870716 * Mesquite, Texas * USA * 75187 | | A FREE Alternative Sciences BBS sponsored by Vanguard Sciences | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| Norm, I know you and a couple of others will be VERY interested in this next message/article...> Bert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Powell To: All Msg #149, Aug-10-94 08:12:00 Subject: Outrider Report: Supercritical Water . * Originally By: JimWils * Originally To: All * Originally Re: Outrider Report: Supercritical Water * Original Area: ParaNet(sm) Science on the Edge * Forwarded by : Blue Wave v2.12 OS/2 . From: jimwils@aol.com (JimWils) Date: 6 Aug 94 14:37:01 GMT Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Message-ID: <32076d$9lh@search01.news.aol.com> Newsgroups: alt.paranet.science . Outrider Report for August 14, 1994 . Supercritical Water: . Superweapon in the War On Toxic Wastes by Jim Wilson . Imagine a chemical so powerful it destroys every known waste, even nerve gas. Now imagine this chemical is not only safe, but actually good for you to drink. . This seemingly magical elixir is no pipe dream. It not only exists, but exists in vast quantities, within a few hundred feet of every chemical plant and toxic waste site. . The superweapon in the war on toxic wastes is water, albeit in a very unusual form. Everyone knows water can be a liquid, solid, or gas. Unless you've studied chemistry you may be unaware water can exist in a fourth state, as what scientists call a "supercritical" fluid. . Baron Charles Cagniard de la Tour, a French scientist, mixed the first batch of supercritical water in 1821. He heated water in a pressure cooker made from a sealed cannon barrel. . Today, Jurgen Steinle is conducting a similar experiment, using a steel reaction vessel fit with an ocean-liner style port hole. As an added precaution he has put his industrial-strength pressure cooker inside an explosion-proof testing chamber, in the basement of his laboratory at Germany's University of Karlsruhe. . Eyes glued to two oversize gages, Steinle watches as the temperature climbs to 705 degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure reaches 3,200 pounds per square inch. It was at these extreme conditions Baron de la Tour noticed the water stopped sloshing when he rocked the cannon. Too hot to remain a liquid, the pressure was too high to allow it to become a gas. It had become a supercritical fluid. . In the decades that followed supercritical water was shown to exhibit several remarkable properties. Oil and water won't mix, oil and supercritical water will. Salts dissolve in liquid water; they settle out of solution in supercritical water. . Steinle prepares to demonstrate an even more remarkable property. Supercritical water can cause hydrogen and carbon containing substances to "burn," without creating smoke or other wastes. . "The reaction vessel is filled with a mixture is 30 percent methane and 70 percent water," Steinle explains as he turns a valve connected to a green capped cylinder containing commercial-grade oxygen. "Now watch closely." . A television set mounted along side the temperature and pressure gages shows the view through the port hole. A metal cylinder, about the size of a hockey puck, appears at the bottom of the screen. A narrow pipe, the oxygen line, pokes through its center. . The valve opens. When the oxygen reaches the chamber, a jet of smokeless flame erupts. The methane, which most of us know as the main ingredient in the natural gas whose blue flame heats our morning coffee, burns for several seconds, then slowly shrinks and disappears. . As demonstrations of high tech wonders go, it is tame stuff. . It is what happens next that raises eyebrows. After cooling, a water sample is drawn from the reaction vessel and analyzed. Every molecule of methane has vanished. In its place is ultra-pure water and carbon dioxide, the gas we exhale as we breath. . Supercritical water's ability to perform this chemical reaction without generating smoke or harmful residues has attracted the Pentagon's attention. It may be the ideal way to dispose one of the Cold War's more dubious legacies, some five million rounds of chemical weapons, including nerve gas. For the present, the shells, some of which are badly corroded, are stored in military warehouses. Conventional incineration leaves lethal residue. . To speed the development of supercritical water disposal technology the Department of Defense and Department of Energy have funded more than a dozen projects. Participants include General Atomics Corporation of San Diego, California; Eco Waste Technologies of Austin, Texas; and Modell Development Corporation of Framingham, Massachusets. . Executives for these companies are hopeful experience gained in disposing of nerve gas and other high risk wastes such as old rocket fuel and PCBs will speed the commercialization of supercritical water disposal technology. . If they are correct, and the technology matures as promised, wastewater discharges from sewage plants and factories may someday be cleaner than premium-label bottled water. . # # # . (c) Copyright 1994. James Wilson. All rights Reserved. . --- Blue Wave/QBBS v2.12 OS/2 [NR] * Origin: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence BBS (1:261/1201.0)