Here a real farmer speculating that the recent mob of drones seen methodically mapping something near Colorado / Kansas might be looking at water use due to western water wars being the usual big deal. He also touches on soil health and ground water recharge issues.
In particular, he cites real world experience where grazing captures more water into ground water while till farming loses a lot more.
This has implication for the aquifer as well as surface temperatures. So the next time someone complains about meat eating and water use for cattle, point out it takes less than till farming and builds up soil instead of degrading it. Cows are good for the land AND the water table. 30 minutes.
I don’t know if his ideas on the drones are right, but it sounds a lot more likely to me than most other speculation.
I do know his statements about rotational grazing as restorative are correct as it has been physically demonstrated.
Robert Murray-Smith makes lots of different batteries so if you are interested in batteries, exploring his videos is enlightening.
In this one, he makes a supercapacitor. It is hard to follow the audio as the sound is low, but hang in there. It starts with “chalk talk” then moves to the lab. He starts with using a zeolite as a super electrolyte, (clay paste) then moves to seaweed (think sushi nori from the Asian grocer), then ends with a home made emulsion of sugar, salt, water in oil with a drop of emulsifying agent. Dish soap in this case. But I can’t help thinking that sounds a lot like cake frosting…. mostly fat with some salty sugar water emulsified into it. Vanilla anyone? Or a bit of egg yolk as emulsifier.
This is spread thinly on electrodes. First aluminum foil for the seaweed, then a stainless steel mesh for the “frosting”. Starting near pf theoretical ranges, he ends at about 0.3 Farads at about 1 Volt.
I find myself wondering if a bit of tissue paper would standardize the thickness? He has videos about a “hemp battery” that looks rather like a hemp carbon mat supercapacitor, and searching on hemp battery finds a lot of hemp supercapacitor pages. He also has one where he wraps one plate of a lead acid cell in carbon mat and dramatically extends battery life cycles (from about 500 to near 15,000). For hemp, the bast layer under the bark, roasted for hours in a 350 F oven, makes a material about the same as graphene, or better, for making supercapacitor devices.
So perhaps a very thin hemp carbon layer smeared with emulsion between two plates?
This also has implications for biology, as our cells are oil and sugar/salt water devices. Makes a fella go Hmmmm.
He also made a kind of graphene ink (if I heard correctly) that may have been where he started. Here he shows the effect of coating an electrode with it. A 128,000 time improvement over a simple capacitor.
This is revisiting the strange capacitive behaviour of graphene ink as a possible solid state storage device – here we use PET and concentrate on the plate material that doesn’t exclude the exotic dielectric materials to get further performance increases from this device.
According to Phys.org, fibres from hemp may have just as much energy storage capacity as graphene, an atom-thick material that can be made into electrodes. Graphene has been the favourite choice for use in supercapacitors.
Supercapacitors have the ability to charge up in a matter of seconds, unlike traditional rechargeable batteries that can take hours. They also have a large capacity for energy storeage than traditional batteries.
[…]
By heating the hemp fibres for 24 hours at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists were able to produce carbon nanosheets, which was then used to build supercapacitors.
Fully assembled, the devices performed far better than commercial supercapacitors in both energy density and the range of temperatures over which they can work. The hemp-based devices yielded energy densities as high as 12 Watt-hours per kilogram, two to three times higher than commercial counterparts. They also operate over an impressive temperature range, from freezing to more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Small-scale manufacturing of the hemp-based supercapacitors is due to begin soon.
His team found that if they heated the fibers for 24 hours at a little over 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and then blasted the resulting material with more intense heat, it would exfoliate into carbon nanosheets.
Mitlin’s team built their supercapacitors using the hemp-derived carbons as electrodes and an ionic liquid as the electrolyte. Fully assembled, the devices performed far better than commercial supercapacitors in both energy density and the range of temperatures over which they can work. The hemp-based devices yielded energy densities as high as 12 Watt-hours per kilogram, two to three times higher than commercial counterparts. They also operate over an impressive temperature range, from freezing to more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
“We’re past the proof-of-principle stage for the fully functional supercapacitor,” he says. “Now we’re gearing up for small-scale manufacturing.”
Though I’m sure there is a “some assembly required” issue…
Here’s the one where he shows how to upgrade a simple lead acid battery (and with much better sound):
Robert Murray-Smith
113K subscribers
An Ultrabattery is an Australian invention that is a mix of battery and supercapacitor designed to improve the qualities of lead acid batteries. They are stunningly easy to make and in this video I show you how. You can buy materials for your own experimenting from our webshop at www.workingink.co.uk.
I like his attitude about risks ;-)
So as someone thinking about DIY power storage, I find these advances very interesting. From a simple lead-acid upgrade for very extended cycle life, to ultracapacitors made from farm waste and “frosting”, it looks like the science is still not quite settled ;-)
Then the notion that plant black carbon ink can make supercapacitors is rather shocking, as we’ve had carbon black ink and metals for thousands of years. One wonders if the archeologists looking at the Bagdad Battery looked for a carbon black layer?
A bit slow and dense, but important. Picks up in the lsst 10 minutes when you get to conclusions. The basic point is that the computer models use a computation for radiation by CO2 that it wrong, increasing the effect, due to incorrect handling of the “wings” ( further out emission frequencies from broadening) of IR emissions.
Note the the graphs don’t look that much different, but they are LOG graphs, so it is a big deal.
For just general FYI notices, use to “tips” pages. All the old ones remain for historical reference:
“Tips Pages”
What’s Going On?
Australian Fires Continue
A contingent of California fire fighters is off to Down Under to help out. Expected to stay for about a month. Hopefully it doesn’t take that long.
Combustion Triangle – FUEL Oxygen heat
Maybe NOW the Government will realize that in a place that has always been hot, and where you can’t keep the oxygen out, the one thing you CAN do is remove the fuel.
It is absolutely evil and insane to forbid fuel removal in places with a known history of wild fires. The folks responsible need to be sued into poverty.
Harry & Meghan
Took a long while in Canada, then decided they were not keen on actually doing any of those Royal Duties so decided to pack it in… but didn’t do it via protocol. Want to keep on getting the Royal Money though (but with a nod to finding their own funding sources, maybe)
Do have to wonder, if they move to Canada how will they feel about Grams staring back at them from all the money?…
Non-Impeachment
We entered this year with the non-Impeachment and it is still in no-man’s-land. Pelosi sitting on it hoping it grows into something bigger? Trying to hide it? Embarrassed to admit it’s all a fraud?
Giuliani on Fox had an interesting take. Have Mitch take it to the Supreme Court on the grounds that it is an unconstitutional impeachment. No crime (high, low, or misdemeanor) was done nor cited, therefore it does not reach the level required in the constitution. Whole thing just gets erased.
Pelosi says it will be handed to the Senate Real Soon Now. Sure it will…
Iran
Trump whacks a Very Bad Man, who’s also a General so as a uniformed officer of an opposing power who has attacked us, is fair game, and the Left has a terrible outbreak of TDS. So much so they are defending terrorists. Go figure.
The PEOPLE of Iran are protesting in the streets about Iran shooting down the airliner, and The Left here in the USA is busy trying to blame it on Trump. Come again? Was trump in charge of the Iranian army? Was he in control of the air space and Iranian airports? Was he running the Ukraine airline company? Just a stunning level of stupid by the Dims and The Left of all flavors.
In the mean time, Iran has become very quiet about the whole thing. They do seem to be doing a bit of “Clean Up On Isle Terrorist” perhaps figuring if they kill the whole command they will get the leaker too? (My guess is we did it with technical means… not an insider).
Still a bit of “watch this space” but hopefully fading out fast.
BREXIT
Looks like the EU has entered the “bargaining phase”… soon to be followed by depression.
This video covers a lot of the current state of affairs. EU demanding free movement of peoples and fishing access, UK saying “Ah, no.”. Even Gibraltar on board with a Hard Brexit if needed. 11 minutes:
Going For Woke
Another franchise you can write off and movies you need not bother seeing. Now I’d not seen any Marvel film since… well… since so long ago I don’t remember when or exactly what it was. I think it was one of the first ones out, back when I was at Disney.
There had been a controversial scene in the first Captain Marvel movie where she (yes, they made Captain Marvel a woman) gets hit on by a guy so of course just beats him up and steals his motorcycle. This video says that scene is now deleted as folks said it made her a villain type. Well, seems the writer for Captain Marvel 2 is a rabid Fem-Lib with rampant TDS on a mission to destroy all things male. So prepare for another round of “Get Woke, Go Broke”…
In the mean time it’s nice to know I don’t need to try any of the Marvel films to see what’s in them. 12 minutes of Akkad:
Snow Season & Cold
We continue in the Loopy Jet Stream mode with things colder and snowier than usual on one side of the loops and warmer than usual on the other. Bit of crap dice at times deciding what to pack for travel.
https://www.iceagenow.info/ does a great job of tracking the places with lots of snow, so I’m not going to list them. Right now the top article says it’s a volcano popping off in Phillipines that’s the big deal. 8000 evacuated:
Philippine Volcano Fires Ash 55,000 ft into the Sky — Direct Cooling Effect
January 12, 2020 by Robert
At least 8,000 evacuated. All flights to and from from Manila’s international airport suspended.
A high-level stratospheric eruption was recorded at Taal Volcano today, January 12, 2020, the volcano’s first eruption since 1977.
The eruption propelled a thick column of ash to 55,000 ft (more than 10 miles, or 16.8 km) above sea level, according to the Tokyo Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC).
Supposedly volcanic activity picks up in times of low solar activity. I guess we’ll see in time.
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