DeggestyIn the manufacture of semiconductor devices, many steps are done under extremely low pressure, some on the order of microns of mercury. One evening, I asked one of the techs who maintained such equipment, "How's High Vac?" His response: "It sucks."
When you come upon a loaded grain train derailment - one of the first things you will see as wrecking operations are getting underway is vacuum truck(s) - unloading the derailed loads into other railcars or highway trucks to lighten the weight of the derailed cars. It is much easier to work with a 30 ton empty car than it is a 140 ton loaded one.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Murphy SidingI think Trains Magazine did an article about that. They talked about how the coal people were not happy when they found taconite pellets in their coal
You mean the coal customer's pulverizers were not happy when they found taconite pellets in their coal. Chert is a kind of flint iirc.
With typical luck this would have been hemitic taconite and not magnetic taconite; would the usual sort of tramp-iron separator before the pulverizer work on either one before the fun sounds started?
Murphy Siding Randy Stahl The WC had an operation where the loaded coal cars were unloaded at the power plant then placed into ore service. The taconite went over Minturn and was unloaded at Geneva steel. The cars then went to the powder river basin and were reloaded with coal. They hired a contractor with a vac truck to clean the coal cars before they were sent back for ore loading. It was a good business and improved car cycle times and utilization.
Randy Stahl The WC had an operation where the loaded coal cars were unloaded at the power plant then placed into ore service. The taconite went over Minturn and was unloaded at Geneva steel. The cars then went to the powder river basin and were reloaded with coal. They hired a contractor with a vac truck to clean the coal cars before they were sent back for ore loading. It was a good business and improved car cycle times and utilization.
The WC had an operation where the loaded coal cars were unloaded at the power plant then placed into ore service.
The taconite went over Minturn and was unloaded at Geneva steel. The cars then went to the powder river basin and were reloaded with coal.
They hired a contractor with a vac truck to clean the coal cars before they were sent back for ore loading.
It was a good business and improved car cycle times and utilization.
I wonder (don't know for sure) about imparting static charges to all those particles bouncing down the vacuum pipes. I would hate to see a static discharge amongst all that coal dust.
Not enough energy in the spark discharge to light off the carbon, even with bituminous volatile content. Then you have to look at the dwell time of a particle in the system after it 'lights off', the radiant coupling to other particles to ignite them, and the amount of energy actually released if more than one of the particles catch fire "together" as they are blown through. But you also have to consider the very large volume of moving turbulent air at temperatures far below ignition; you might as well think of it as 'blowing out' any small sparks that might be initiated.
If it were very finely divided, like the result of some SRC processes (resembles copier toner) or the carbon black at Flixborough, THEN you might have some fun. Firelock76 might have some interesting toner 'detonics' stories if he has conducted some of the logical "experiments" his line of work might provide for...
The most practical thing they could do is vacuume coal dust out of the coal on conveyor belts coming from the coal mines and pump the coal dust into pressure-differential covered hoppers.
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