Hij Go >Thanks Keith, > >Loved the blacksmith with a cold slant, it struck close as I do a bit of >hobby smithying myself
Ah, do you? I'm just about to, I guess that's why I made that joke. I need to make a sickle. Or two. I have some worn blades from a tractor rotavator that should do, tough steel, hope it's not too tough. And I don't have an anvil. I'm really sorry I didn't get a cheap one from China when we were in Hong Kong. They cost an arm and a leg here in Japan. I do have a two-foot length of heavy steel girder though, I guess it'll do for now, but I'll miss the fancy bits, the pritchel hole, hardie hole, the table and especially the horn. Actually I don't have any of the tools, but if I can make a sickle then I can make tools too. I do have a couple of really good books, and there are good blacksmithing sites on the Web. > - never heard of Advil before though. I went through >my medicine cabinet and sure enough there on some of the smaller jars were >the letters HDPE and on others something called DUMA. I don't know that one. >I am on a very slow >modem connection but I did some searching in Swedish with a view to being >able later to find local sources - I didn't get very far, though I did get >very frustrated waiting ages for a download only to find it irrelevant. I know the feeling! No broadband here either (we're out in the sticks), but it goes at about 64k, not too bad. >Plastics are a subject I have not taken the opportunity to consider in any >detail previously though now I am beginning to realise that this is a very >interesting area but mostly void in my general knowledge bank. What I found >out last night is that: > >Plexiglas is polymetylakryl > >PET is Polyetylentareftalat > >PE is Polyeten > >PP is Polypropen > >PS is Polystyren > >PUR is Polyuretan > >PVC is Polyvinylklorid and consists of 57%salt and 43% oil/natural gas. > >and that HDPE is similar to PEHD and that DUMA could be a brand name fore >one of these! > >There is a PDF school tutorial at >http://www.nordicpack.com< Hm... Not "nyheter", that's "news", "Fšretaget"? - no, it'll be in Swedish anyway, I won't manage more than a few words. >but my steam >age Mac crashed each time I tried to get it. :-) Is it steam-powered too? I want one! >Now it wouldn't surprise me at all if you had a bunch of URL's on plastics, >definitions, qualities, tutorial etc lounging in your bookmark library, and >needless to say I would be very grateful if you would be prepared to share >and point me in the right direction to get me started. Stand by to be unsurprised... it's on our website, in the biodiesel section in fact. And most of it came from those good folks at the Biofuel list, in their wisdom, because my situation was the same as yours: What's HDPE? How do you tell? It's here: Identifying plastics http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make2.html#plastics To save you the trouble: Identifying plastics What is this "HDPE" plastic that people use for mixing chemicals, and how do you identify it? What sorts of plastics can withstand what sorts of chemicals? Identifying different kinds of plastic and their properties, American Plastics Council: http://www.americanplasticscouncil.org/benefits/about_plastics/resin_c odes/resin.html This helps even more: Plastics Identification -- Society of Plastics Engineers, Mid-Michigan Section http://www.midmichiganspe.org/education/identification.pdf Chemical compatability -- Chemical Resistance Database, Cole-Parmer: To search, select at least one of three criteria to search on, Chemical, Material, Compatibility Level. If you wish to search by compatability level, you must specify a chemical or material. http://www.coleparmer.com/techinfo/ChemComp.asp >The relevancy is primarily to gain insight as to the suitability of various >plastic containers for use with SVO/WVO, bio diesel processing and the >various chemicals associated therewith. That should help then. I think there's more to it than this, you also get different grades - one grade of HDPE or PVC might have better heat or chemical resistance than another. >Also I am very interested in the environmental impact of the different >plastics which are commonly available with a comparison to the newer >biodegradable plastics, the why's and wherefores and so on..... if some of >these plastics are genuinely non degradable is that necessarily a bad thing >if that longevity can be utilised would it not be better to have a few >indestructible containers than a multitude of degradable (degradable into >what) products requiring energy and raw materials to continually manufacture >and distribute a stream of new ones? Yes, it would be better. Unfortunately (IMHO) what we have instead is a packaging industry gone insane, along with a throwaway society, and bulging landfills. The Three R's of the Environment: reduce, reuse, recycle, yes indeed. What a pity shrinkwrap doesn't actually shrink what you wrap in it or we could parcel up the packaging industry rather conveniently. Well, people do collect nearly all the PET bottles here and they get turned into stuff like flowerpots, sports goods, fabrics, carpets, and, um, wrapping material... Everything but new PET bottles, it hasn't reached that standard yet. But they're strong and last well, why not just wash them out and reuse them? Well, the Aquarius bottles are different from the Pocari Sweat bottles from the Green Tea bottles and Coke bottles, you see, the wonders of capitalism. I guess that might happen to a lot of brand-name HDPE bottles too. Styrofoam boxes and trays and so on are recycled to make new styrofoam boxes, hooray. The rest I don't know. Polyethylene burns well, some 3rd World projects have tested PE bags as cooking fuel, but the difficulty is in telling which are PE and which PVC or whatever. The bags are a problem, with various countries trying to take action to curb their proliferation throughout the biosphere. In South Africa the wind blows them into trees, they're now called "the National Flower" there. There are a couple of projects here that turn waste plastics into high-quality fuel, including diesel fuel, but not a simple process, nor a cheap one, the plant is expensive. The new biodegradeable plastics are a growing field it seems, mostly from biomass (starch crops?), and one thing that concerns me about them is how they're grown. Industrialised monocropping I suppose, not exactly sustainable in any way, and heavily dependent on fossil-fuel inputs (same as most of the other plastics I think). And if it's from the "waste-products" of such production, then the soil is probably being depleted even further. Not a simple matter Go, and there might not be very good general answers, only particular ones. There's quite a well-known debate over whether plastic bags are "better" than paper bags, and I've seen convincing arguments on both sides. >Med vŠnlig hŠlsning Thankyou, and to you. Best Keith >Go. > > > > > >> I had a look at the bottom of a bottle of Advil > > > > > >>So what's an Advil when it's at home? > > >Hello Go > > >A brand-name for ibuprofen, a NSAID pain-killer (non-steroidal > >anti-inflammatory drug). Or at least that's what it is when it's at > >home - I didn't realise it's a common household item. Pain is a > >common household item? I suppose so. :-/ (Unless it's what a > >blacksmith uses when he's caught a cold... but that wouldn't make a > >very good bubbler.) I guess a lot of pills and vitamins and so on > >come in HDPE bottles, any of them would do. > > >Best > > >Keith Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. 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