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Making Ice Without Electricity
j-beda writes "Time Magazine is running an article telling us how Dave Williams is trying to make ice for third-world applications using the Hilsch-Ranque vortex-tube effect (first developed in 1930 by G.J. Ranque), where swirling air is split into hot and cold components." The method is horribly inefficient but Williams is hoping it could yield helpful results in areas where electricity is really not an option.
How about we try and ensure we give them clean water first. The only use for this is in refrigerators and keeping food fresh.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
According to the article this method doesn't require electricity. Then where does the energy to generate the required volume of compressed air come from? Hand pumps?
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Couldn't read the full article as it is now "premium content" but if you can make compressed air you can make electricity, and use that electricity for more than refrigeration. The comments about the vortex tubes' inefficiency are correct, so even if you figure the inefficiencies of (solar/labor/water power) to electric then operation of either a freon or Peltier cooler, you are better off.
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If someone wants to do something really interesting for the third world, make an adsorbtion freezer using solar concentrators for the heat source. This article discusses some issues: http://me.sjtu.edu.cn/english/scientific_research
Some people actually rely on the government instead of thinking and acting for themselves.
After all, any fool knows that a catagory 4 hurricane, broken levee's, 10 feet of flood water, and the breakdown of social order shouldn't require any pesky government meddling to deal with. Just gutsy individuals with a can-do attitude!
Those dang people should quit whinging and get over their "victim" mentality.
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Local and state governments were thoroughly incompetant, and FEMA was unable to force their way in thanks to that pesky Constitution that gives states power in times of crisis (not that FEMA was all that on-the-ball either). More of this is better?
First of all, the states asked for aid, and Bush signed a state of emergency, BEFORE Katrina hit. There was no question about authority. FEMA and the federal government had all the authority and responsibility in this situation.
Secondly FEMA dropped the ball so badly because we have had five years of a government that thinks just like you do. The Bush adminstration has so little respect for government agencies that they choked them with insufficient budgets and apointed unqualified cronies to run them, forcing out experienced disaster management people. Read the recent columns by Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman in the NYT for lots of details.
Is it any wonder New Orleans got the response it did with the leaders we have?
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