Green Tea Cleans Hard Drive Heads

mprindle writes "Wired.com has an article announcing that a 'study of the use of green tea extracts for polishing the magnetic heads in hard-disk drives has yielded a compound that works three to four times faster than conventional compounds. If the findings can be reproduced in an industrial setting, the compound could reduce the cost and environmental impact of hard-drive manufacturing.' And you just thought that green tea was good to drink."

Comments

Green Tea

[Jane_Dozey]

I always knew green tea was meant for something other than drinking.
It's nasty stuff.

Re:Green Tea

[Pig Hogger]

Go to China, sit in a cafe in a bamboo forest next to a stream and have a glass of green tea. The tranquility of that is something I'm sure I'll remember for some time :-)

And then have the party ruined by the communist party goons who raid the joint because someone logged-on Slashdot...

Sssssshhhh!

[TiMac]

Don't let this get too publicized or all those office morons (the ones of tech support legend: CD Tray==Cupholder, etc) might start pouring their morning tea on the computer after a crash.

This could only prompt me to ask them: One Lump or Two? [WHACK WHACK]

Re:Sssssshhhh!

[drinkypoo]

You have it backwards. Publicize the shit out of this, so people start pouring their morning tea in their computer - and thus my job security is guaranteed.

Not in my opinion.

[Slayk]

And you just thought that green tea was good to drink.

No, not really.

Green Tea Cleaner...

[zaba]

And here I thought green tea was only to clean your...uh... "internal soft drives"...

Re:Green Tea Cleaner...

[DrLZRDMN]

off topic but A friend of mine claims that xbox is a computer and gamecube isn't. He mentioned the hard drive so I told him that a hard drive is not nessecary for somehting to be considered a computer so he says "A computer must have a hard drive and a soft drive" I spat green tea all over laughing.

Bio-active materials LESS polluting?

[ObviousGuy]

Considering that bio-active materials like green tea (yum!) decay and eventually become unusable and must be disposed of properly, doesn't it make more sense to stick with chemicals which, though bad for the environment, do not decay or degrade and can be used in a specific task indefinitely?

Add to this the fact that landfills are full of "biodegradable" waste which because of the lack of oxygen in the area are unable to break down. It makes far more sense to go with a material which can be reused and/or recycled. Bio-degradable sometimes ain't.

Re:Bio-active materials LESS polluting?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, please, before replying.

The conventional slurry has to be disposed also, according to strict environmental guidelines.

Furthermore, the green tea compound is just used to wash off the ceramic particles produced during polishing.

And I'm pretty sure that green tea biodegrades in any suitable environment, oxygen or no.

Re:Bio-active materials LESS polluting?

[THotze]

The problem is that the chemicals involved in any chemical reaction aren't infinately reusable. As one of the posters above noted, green tea works because it's an anti-oxidant, meaning it removes oxygen (oxides) from the hard drives. The industrial chemicals would also undergo reaction, and after so many uses, become unusable (assuming that 'so many uses' doens't mean once). While it's true that some industrial chemicals can undergo a reverse reaction relaviely easily, and therefore be 'regenerated' and reused, many cannot, and many that can are so cheap that they're disposed of anyways.

While it's true that bio-degradABLE doesn't mean that they're bio-degradED, it does open the door. Also, its probably more environmentally friendly to PRODUCE green tea than it is for other industrial chemicals, which may produce waste products that end up in the water supply, require high temperatures and therefore require lots of energy, etc.

So yeah, you're right that there is NEVER a magic-bullet. But if green tea is easier to produce, easier to refine, and can be broken down with a little simple composting, etc., then its a step in the right direction.

Tim

green tea?

[gusmao]

If green tea is all that good, just imagine when they try beer!

So?

[Limecron]

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?!

Oh... umm... Nevermind.

Re:Wikipedia on green tea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia on karma whoring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_whoring

Re:Why not Earl Grey???

[dhanes]

Japanese Green Tea, from the Camillia Sinensis plant , has been steamed, hand-rolled and dried to prevent oxidation .

This process is gentler to the components that make green tea such a wonderful beverage. Earl Grey, Ceylon, Bo Lei, and whatever other brown or black tea have been pan-fried or dry-heated to stop the natural oxidation process.

Steaming preserves the EGCG , which is being studied for it's anti-bacterial and cancer fighting properties, and also L-Theanine , which gives real green tea it's flavour and purportedly induces Alpha waves and tranquility in the brain.

Ounce per ounce, Steamed green tea contains more polyphenols than red wine or grape seed extract.

I have an anxiety problem, and had to swear off coffee a few years ago. No caffeine in any form for me, until I stumbled upon japanese green tea. All tea contains caffeine , but it is about 1/2 the amount in the same serving of coffee. The added benefit of the L-Theanine practically cancels out the effect of caffeine on the body and in the brain.

I start the day with a cup of thin matcha (do two of these and can you say "420"?) , then a cup of Gyokuro and in the evening some nice genmai cha.

Unfortuneatly, green tea is only harvested 4 times per year in Japan. Green tea is very perishiable, and is best when fresh. The bags you can purchase in asian groceries here in the U.S. of A. have been sitting on shelves too long and taste like crap. (Bonus note: all the decaffeinated 'green' teas you can purchase in regular supermarkets will not taste like the real thing, pretty bitter and bland. There is no decaffeinating process that doesn't kill all the good things about green tea. Fresh green tea is naturally sweet and not bitter when prepared correctly.)

Interested? I purchase all my teas from here.

Re:antistrontidant?

[TildaBang]

This is true. If overbrewed, the tea tannins will attatch to the strontium-90, and pass through your system, instead of it being depositied into your bones because of the likeness to calcium.

Jumping to conclusions regarding pollution

[XavierItzmann]

Some here are jumping to the conclusion that this will pollute less.

Until somebody spends another $1 million of our taxes (read: NSF grant) in doing the net impact calculation, consider this:

1. More land dedicated to grow green tea = less uncultivated land, less *nature*, as they say

2. Fertilizer & pesticide for green tea, and all of the petrochemicals that went into it

3. Fuels and other energies used to sow, harvest, clean, store & transport green tea

4. Chemical processes to refine bioactive compounds out of the tea itself

And I have not even mentioned the fuels used to create the wealth that is going to get taxed in order to pay for the agricultural subsidies that (of course!) are eventually going to be given to growers of green tea.