6 ms·
Have a source? That seems like an awesome way to recycle grocery bags.
by robbmorganf 6y ago
Have a source? That seems like an awesome way to recycle grocery bags.
- 1-6 6y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01707-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01707-2
- tyingq 6y agoThe peer comment posted a source that has lots of references. Though most of them are tests in space, where I assume the thickness requirements would rule out grocery bags. I am curious how thick a layer of HDPE you would need on earth to make any notable difference.
- ortusdux 6y agoThat linked nature paper seems to indicate 10g/cm^2 for a 50% reduction. A standard shopping bag is about 5g, so you would need roughly 20k bags/m^2, or ~2k bags/ft^2. At 0.9g/cm^3, that would be roughly 11cm of solid polyethylene
- tyingq 6y agoAh, so bags are out, as is practically the ceiling. But cut sheet HDPE is easy to find, so tiles atop your machine would be relatively cheap and easy.
- robbmorganf 5y agoI just squished a plastic bag as much as I could, and got it down to an inch cubed. So if I hypothetically did that for 2000 bags in 1ft^2 (sorry for English units), I think that would mean it could be 13-14in thick. So maybe it is reasonable to attenuate radiation by about 50% in a rather generous drop ceiling?
- wyldfire 6y agoDoesn't sound like that solution is plenum-rated.
- supernova87a 6y agoWater is also a good protector. And the polyethylene is actually a proxy for "hydrogen atoms". The reason is that dense hydrogen has a lot of protons to interact with the incoming radiation. But unfortunately plastic bags are not dense polyethylene. You would kind of need full blocks of solid polyethylene...
- teachtwolearn 6y agoYou can make solid polyethylene out of plastic bags by pressing them in a mold heated to ~100-150C. But it's quite flammable, so you might not want to use it as a building material.
- pezezin 6y agoI work for a particle accelerator, and I can confirm you that our beam dump uses polyethylene for neutron shielding: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920379618301029 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092037961...