LAB COFFEE TIME AND SWOP-SHOP

As you may know, I am spending a lot of time on researching the purification of waste-derived aluminum hydroxide from the 99.9 'ish' I can currently achieve to 99.99% purity. The reason for this work is that so called '4 Nines' hydroxide is a valuable commodity in short supply. In order to push the purity envelope I am gradually eliminating all the known sources of impuritie, just leaving me to battle with the unknown ones.

One of my needs was for a big ball mill, so the budget demands I build it myself. Luckily a another company close to the lab gifted me some very substantial 50mm diameter thick walled tube, and almost everything else has come from dark corners of my store-room., except the 2 jars and the 24VDC scooter motor to drive it. Most expensive items in the shot are those 2 high purity 1 litre alumina jars. Just waiting for another sprocket now to fit to the rollers. When done this will have variable speed, rev-counter and process timer. The little white cylinder in the second photo is solid PTFE - the business end of a bump-roller, designed to keep the jars from walking off the end of the rollers. They don't bounce! The rubber O-rings are to reduce slip and noise.

Ther are more interesting things to be assembled, I will post pictures as I go.

Ball mill almost finished, just waiting for a sprocket for the chain drive now. I also need to make the bumpers- small vertical PTFE 'free to rotate' cylinders that stop the jars creeping off the rollers a bit higher - they are too low to catch the jars. This now has a process timer, RPM counter and speed control.

Not much timefor coffee at the minute, as we are ripping the lab apart to install some new processing and analytical equipment. Hopefully XRF (if it works) plus a lot of other analytical and processing chemistry gear. Problem is it is so full of stuff already! That means a clearout is also underway. Running a lab like mine is a bit like running a fill a la carte restaurant, the chef never knows what he needs until a customer demands it.

Making progress, getting the furniture sorted out before the electrics go in on Wednesday. Now where Russ's bench used to be (which was a draughty spot) is a corridor leading onto the lab and the office, all the bench space (7.0 meters of it) is on the other side of the wall on the left.

Work goes on ...this is turning out to be a big job...

I have 2 of these reactor systems to dispose of - free but anyone who wants one will have to pay carriage- they are bulky and heavy!

They are designed to run on 48V DC at around 6A and are capable of running at 1000C. They could also be run using AC wall-power with a triac dimmer.

Details of how they were built are in the pdf attached. If you are interested, please email me via the forum.

Reactor Design and build short.pdf

Finished wiring my ball mill. Everything functioning but the RPM counter which just needs a couple of wires connecting. Has timer, speed control, and (eventually) RPM counter. The jars are pure alumina ceramic, the 12VDC 300W motor and chain drive are from an electric scooter. The thick wall stainless tube I cut the rollers from was a dumpster find, the shafts fitted into the tube were made on the lab lathe, the pedestal bearings from Ebay. Total cost of machine about £200, cost of a comparable lab machine 'ready to roll uo to £3000. Cost of jars- £500 for two.

BTW- I have 3 (yes, really) 48V SONY DC Server PSU's each approx 2kW outout. They are around 30x30x40 cms in size, fan cooled and probably weigh around 15 kgs each. If any member would like one, and can arrange pick up then I would be happy to pass it on at no cost.

Meanwhile...I am upgrading the Al/H2 system. This will be a 60 litre version (12x the size of the one Mitsubishi built) with a lot of data-logging. (temperatures, pressures, flow,). I tried getting a quote for this btw, best price £7k and delivery estimate August. I can do it in a month for £700.00

The reactor is making progress, a lot of time is spent doing other things while waiting for parts. Last major job is mounting the geared variable-speed stirrer motor onto the top. The stirrer blade fits inside the cooling coils visible below.The rest is mostly brazing, welding, and plumbing plus a new control panel.

This is the view inside, internal cooling coil in place and just visible at the bottom the 'sold start' heater and the bottom outlet sealed off temporarily with a rubber bung.. I have a kilo of very very expensive epoxy paint to coat the inside which has been chemically de-rusted and the abraded for good adhesion.. There's a thermowell (possibly too long) the finger-like insert visible at the top to measure the temperature of the evolved gas, and there will be another one lower down to measure the liquid temperature. The internal cooling coil and the gas outlet are connected to external stainless steel fan-blown heat exchangers yet to be assembled. The 3 pancake coils for those are what is wrapped up in the silver foil package on the left of the picture above. The 6 over-long bolts are temporary, awaiting the right length bolts and dome-nuts for the ends.

The dump valve - last but not least.

Lots more to do, but I expect to hit my target of all done by the end pf the month. It's a bit over budget, endless silicon gaskets and the many proper stainless plumbing parts mount up. But I am happy, and it's at least £6k cheaper than a Chinese one and will be ready before they could deliver..

In case you were wondering, this one should produce 32kWh (hydrogen and process heat) over 4 hours when loaded to a prudent level. Max load should produce around 50kWh over the same period for a total energy input (for cold start up) of around 2kWh. With a warm system the COP is around 30-45:1.

The downstream end of my new hydrogen production system, Angus, my new volunteer technician is being a big help.