3 ms·

Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?

by foota 5mo ago

fc417fc802 5mo ago
They have been doing exactly that for the past 24 hours. However the contents of the tank are polymerizing, that reaction is exothermic, and the tank is quite large.
- koolba 5mo ago
  I wonder if they’ll try drilling or shooting a hole into the bottom. A semi controlled leak to disperse it locally. A mess for sure. But better than going up and out.
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Both of those seem likely to risk causing sparks.
Jtsummers 5mo ago
Read the article. They have been doing that, but that is just slowing things down and buying them time.
- Freedom2 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - fcsp 5mo ago
    Read the article in the context of the comment clearly means "I have read the article - here's my conclusion of its context relating to your post". Did you even read the thread?
  - vitally3643 5mo ago
    Unprompted rules-lawyering is not productive or interesting discussion either
- foota 5mo ago
  They are not. I said ice cold. I read this article and several other articles about this.
  - gwbas1c 5mo ago
    I suspect it is impractical to refrigerate a large volume of water in short order. Heck, if I take 2-3 glasses of water out of my refrigerator's water dispenser, it's at tap temperature. To put it differently, think through what it would take to refrigerate the volume of water that they are spraying. Can someone pull that together in a matter of minutes or hours?
    - foota 5mo ago
      Yeah that's fair. It does make me wonder what there is that would allow this. Maybe importing some snow machines from Tahoe? :-) I'm actually a little surprised that a quick search for "refrigerated liquid transport" didn't turn up anything. I would have sort of thought this was something that would exist (just because there are so many random things that are necessary for _some purpose_).
      - defrost 5mo ago
        > "refrigerated liquid transport" Well, "Ice Cold" water is ice and ice trucks are a thing - not to mention for fast substantive cooling 0 Celsius ice blocks on top of the tank would soak up far more heat energy than the same weight of 0 Celsius water. As for the transportation of cold liquids, there are many LNG / Propane trucks about - pressurised containers for Liquefied Natural Gas.
      - itishappy 5mo ago
        Snow machines are just big spray nozzles. They don't chill the water the way you might be thinking. There's some adiabatic cooling from the expansion of compressed air, but that's about it. Refrigerated liquid transport absolutely exists. Milk trucks is an example off the top of my head. Liquified natural gas is another.
      - 5mo ago
Rekindle8090 5mo ago
[dead]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
gus_massa 5mo ago
I guess you ask why they are using water at ambient temperature (20°C; 68°F) instead of very cold water (0°C; 32°F). Some reasons I can think now: They are using a lot of water, as most as possible, from pipes at whatever temperature it is. There are no enough mobile refrigerators, not enough electricity to make them work, and it's very hard to transport cold water or ice if you don't use the pipes. Also, the center of the tank is hot and reacting, but the external part is a nasty block if plastic that acts like a shield and isolate it from the cold water outside. This is a common problems in big chemical plants when you have exothermic reactions. It's not enough to cold it down, you need to ensure all parts are cold down. For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.
- foota 5mo ago
  Ah, that makes sense. It's too bad they can't drill into it to relieve pressure without destroying the integrity of the tank (not that I'd want to be anywhere close to it either). If they didn't have to worry about it imminently exploding I wonder if they could somehow wrap it with reinforcement (e.g., wrap some high strength metal around the tank to prevent it from deforming when drilled into) and then drill into it to extract the liquid? One of my other less serious ideas was to helilift a Chernobyl style containment structure around it, but I imagine they don't have one of those just sitting around waiting to be used.
  - tolciho 5mo ago
    Wrapping metal around it sounds like one of those mythbusters episodes where they did not get as much shrapnel as they wanted.
- jandrewrogers 5mo ago
  The difference in cooling potential between cold water and water at ambient temperature is minimal. Cooling with water primarily comes from phase change or heat exchange; both can move vastly more heat than a small difference in temperature. Chilling the water would massively complicate the logistics with a very marginal improvement in heat removal.

Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?

by foota 5mo ago

Is it not possible for them to just... spray it with ice cold water?

They have been doing exactly that for the past 24 hours. However the contents of the tank are polymerizing, that reaction is exothermic, and the tank is quite large.

koolba 5mo ago
I wonder if they’ll try drilling or shooting a hole into the bottom. A semi controlled leak to disperse it locally. A mess for sure. But better than going up and out.
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Both of those seem likely to risk causing sparks.

Jtsummers 5mo ago

Read the article. They have been doing that, but that is just slowing things down and buying them time.

Freedom2 5mo ago
[flagged]
- fcsp 5mo ago
  Read the article in the context of the comment clearly means "I have read the article - here's my conclusion of its context relating to your post". Did you even read the thread?
- vitally3643 5mo ago
  Unprompted rules-lawyering is not productive or interesting discussion either
foota 5mo ago
They are not. I said ice cold. I read this article and several other articles about this.
- gwbas1c 5mo ago
  I suspect it is impractical to refrigerate a large volume of water in short order. Heck, if I take 2-3 glasses of water out of my refrigerator's water dispenser, it's at tap temperature. To put it differently, think through what it would take to refrigerate the volume of water that they are spraying. Can someone pull that together in a matter of minutes or hours?
  - foota 5mo ago
    Yeah that's fair. It does make me wonder what there is that would allow this. Maybe importing some snow machines from Tahoe? :-) I'm actually a little surprised that a quick search for "refrigerated liquid transport" didn't turn up anything. I would have sort of thought this was something that would exist (just because there are so many random things that are necessary for _some purpose_).
    - defrost 5mo ago
      > "refrigerated liquid transport" Well, "Ice Cold" water is ice and ice trucks are a thing - not to mention for fast substantive cooling 0 Celsius ice blocks on top of the tank would soak up far more heat energy than the same weight of 0 Celsius water. As for the transportation of cold liquids, there are many LNG / Propane trucks about - pressurised containers for Liquefied Natural Gas.
    - itishappy 5mo ago
      Snow machines are just big spray nozzles. They don't chill the water the way you might be thinking. There's some adiabatic cooling from the expansion of compressed air, but that's about it. Refrigerated liquid transport absolutely exists. Milk trucks is an example off the top of my head. Liquified natural gas is another.
    - 5mo ago

Rekindle8090 5mo ago

[dead]

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

gus_massa 5mo ago

I guess you ask why they are using water at ambient temperature (20°C; 68°F) instead of very cold water (0°C; 32°F). Some reasons I can think now: They are using a lot of water, as most as possible, from pipes at whatever temperature it is. There are no enough mobile refrigerators, not enough electricity to make them work, and it's very hard to transport cold water or ice if you don't use the pipes. Also, the center of the tank is hot and reacting, but the external part is a nasty block if plastic that acts like a shield and isolate it from the cold water outside. This is a common problems in big chemical plants when you have exothermic reactions. It's not enough to cold it down, you need to ensure all parts are cold down. For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.

foota 5mo ago
Ah, that makes sense. It's too bad they can't drill into it to relieve pressure without destroying the integrity of the tank (not that I'd want to be anywhere close to it either). If they didn't have to worry about it imminently exploding I wonder if they could somehow wrap it with reinforcement (e.g., wrap some high strength metal around the tank to prevent it from deforming when drilled into) and then drill into it to extract the liquid? One of my other less serious ideas was to helilift a Chernobyl style containment structure around it, but I imagine they don't have one of those just sitting around waiting to be used.
- tolciho 5mo ago
  Wrapping metal around it sounds like one of those mythbusters episodes where they did not get as much shrapnel as they wanted.
jandrewrogers 5mo ago
The difference in cooling potential between cold water and water at ambient temperature is minimal. Cooling with water primarily comes from phase change or heat exchange; both can move vastly more heat than a small difference in temperature. Chilling the water would massively complicate the logistics with a very marginal improvement in heat removal.