Re: [TML] Fueling from an icy asteroid or rock? shadow@xxxxxx 08 Dec 2014 04:01 UTC
On 8 Dec 2014 at 1:22, Alex Goodwin wrote: > When does said crud buildup (mud/dust/deep fried cheesy fnord) get > cleaned out? Annual maintenance? Given that the *intended* use is refueling from bodies of water, the answer is that you aren't supposed to be feeding it dirty water in the first place. :-) Or, rather, not *that* dirty. So there are likely filters that someone gets to pull out and backflush. Which won't be fubn. Especially if they waited too long and the filters are clogged badly. The "right" way would be to heat the ices, coillect the methane that bubbles off and beed that to the "gas" input. You'd probably get some ammonia as well. But as the temp rises, you'll get most of the ammonia as a mix with water in various proportions. Heating that carefully will give you more vapors to feed to the "gas" input. If you are *sensible*, you'll let the water/ammonia mix sit so that the solids settle out. Then use a carefully filtered hose to suck it up and feed the liquid to the "liquid" input of the refiner. Being PCs, I don't see them letting it sit long enough to settle. Which means dealing with clogs and deposits in inconvenient parts of the piping. If you are *really* patient, you just keep pumping gases out and keep the "tank" at low pressure so the ice & liquid boil off leaving the crud behind. So you could shovel the remains out. But that'll be a lot slower (you don't want the stuff to "boil", just evaporate really fast). Oh yeah, ammonia gas dissolved in water ("household ammonia") is a powerful bleaching agent and a lot more corrosive than you'd think. Like most strong caustics, it'll strip the oxide coat off of aluminum, magnesium, titanium, etc. This lets the metal react with the water creating hydrogen and metal hydroxides. So careless choices of materials will have the water/ammonia mix eating holes in things. -- Leonard Erickson (aka shadow) shadow at shadowgard dot com