beatrix bitrot

here's some pretty 💪 🔥 ⚗ shit for you tonight

"Catalytic molten metals for the direct conversion of methane to hydrogen and separable carbon"

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6365/917

alright so what you wanna do is is get yourself a meter (~3ft) tall column and fill it with a mix of molten metals (23% Ni / 73% Bi) yeah no don't worry

you want that shit about 1000 C (~1800F) nice n toasty

now just bubble your methane through it and there ya go!

hydrogen and carbon

just like that

damn

#science #hotshit

Nov 19, 2017 at 1:12amWeb
Show threadAlex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKNov 19, 2017

@bea in Northern Europe until 1970s something similar was done (albeit in a much cruder way) at the gasworks, where coal was slowly roasted to give off gas which was a mixture of methane, CO, H, mercaptan, and some of the CH4 was converted back to H again and all this piped direct to houses (so if valves let by folk got poisoned *as well* as blown up).

Eventually we realised there was a whole load of much "cleaner" natural gas directly below us on the bed of the North Sea....

Show threadbeatrix bitrotNov 19, 2017
@vfrmedia aye, you get better coal/coke out of it and the gases are useful too... though probably better things one can do with them than cooking as you say....
Show threadAlex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKNov 19, 2017

@bea in UK they used to collect the benzol and put it in the petrol, National garage was called National Benzole until folk realised it gave people cancer.

In 1970s they rebranded as just
National, and if your parents filled up there you would get a Smurf (the UK ones had often been rejected by rest of Europe and *Hong Kong* too for having *way too much lead* in the paint for a kids toy (on top of the lead we then also put in the petrol))

Show threadbeatrix bitrotNov 19, 2017
@vfrmedia it's easy to under estimate how much better we do at shit these days eh?
Show threadAlex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKNov 19, 2017
@bea true, although it took UK until about 1987/88 though before the Govt stopped fighting World War II in their heads *on top* of the Cold War - until then anything vaguely "European" or "Continental" was viewed with suspicion - Canada was then thought of as "still a bit of the Empire" and "good place to get asbest from" (another thing that was used just about everywhere until the 80s; if Thatcho hadn't stopped the school kids free milk it would likely have ended up in there as well)
Show threadbeatrix bitrotNov 19, 2017
@vfrmedia the route the bus takes from ottawa to toronto has a rest stop in (what's left of) a town called actinolite
Show threadRoseNov 19, 2017
@bea 😰