[MacGyver] would be proud of [Hyperspace Pirate]’s rough and ready method of producing acetylene gas from seashells and driftwood.
Acetylene, made by decomposing calcium carbide with water, is a vitally important industrial gas. Not only as a precursor in many chemical processes, but also as the fuel for the famous “blue wrench,” a tool without which auto mechanics working in the Rust Belt would be reduced to tears. To avoid this, [Hyperspace Pirate] started by beachcombing for the raw materials: shells to make calcium oxide and wood to make charcoal. Charcoal is pretty easy; you just cook chunks of wood in a reducing environment to drive off everything but the carbon. Making calcium oxide from the calcium carbonate in the shells isn’t much harder, with ground seashells heated in a propane-fired furnace to release carbon dioxide.
With the raw ingredients in hand, things get a little tricky. Making calcium carbide requires a lot of heat, far more than a simple propane burner can provide. [Hyperspace Pirate] decided to go with an electric arc furnace, to which end he cannibalized a 120 V to 240 V step-up converter for its toroidal transformer, which with a few extra windings provided the needed current to run an arc through carbon electrodes. This generated the needed heat, and then some, as the ceramic firebrick he was using to contain the inferno melted. After rewinding the melted secondary windings on his makeshift transformer and switching to a stainless steel crucible, he was able to make enough calcium carbide to generate an impressive amount of acetylene. The video below documents the process and the sooty results, as well as details a little of the excitement that metal acetylides offer.
For more about acetylene and its many uses, [This Old Tony] has you covered.
this is kind of like part of a civilisation hard reboot program,
and shows that even, worse case ontario, things would bounce back for anthropocene 2.0
I really want a series of books that is literally civilization/science from the ground up.
Everything from identifying minerals to making computer chips. Progressing all the way to the modern age.
Ideally it would work in such a way that new volumes could be added to the end as new thing get made.
I have been lucky. I worked around and knew so many librarians that when they cleared the books out on making glass and sawmills and steel (and society) from nothing, I got them all. Most are pre-1920 and ou of copyright. My plan is to scan and release them all via the Internet Archive. You may check there now, as hundreds of volumes and series are already available.
You would have to invent the internet to read them though.
I call dibs on inventing DRM.
What’s your IA handle, if you ever do post the collection? I’m curious
Not quite there, but How To Invent Everything is a great start. It works from the conceit that you’re a time traveler stuck at some unknown but habitable point in Earth’s past, and how the most important inventions work.
I thought the insight was interesting when it commented that we had the requirements for hot-air balloon flight literal thousands of years before anyone was did it and made records that survived to modern times.
There’s the youtube channel How To Make Everything that’s been doing a multi-year civilization reboot from stone age forward one major advancement at a time. Less useful for an apocalypse (youtube and all), but a fun ride for sure
Yeah, but the book is much funnier.
Hah, I missed your comment at first, and used almost the exact same wording when introducing the book.
There’s an anime and a manga that’s exactly like that, it’s called Dr. Stone.
“Everything from identifying minerals to making computer chips.” Perhaps we should skip the computers the second time around.
Probably have to stick with Comfortable Agrarian Cult that sacrifices anyone who tries to advance.
Going further leaves too many loop-holes for people to invent their way out of whatever soft/hard limitations you impose.
Chemistry and electricity snowball way too fast.
There is maybe an argument for a steam powered Victorian state, but I’d argue that the kind of fascism required to keep a lid on more progress would be less interesting/pleasant to live in even with the extra convenience of machine labor.
One of such great books is The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.
The Kirk Othmer encyclopedia of chemical technology is the closest I know of.
Find a copy of “How to Invent Everything”. The conceit is that it’s a manual for the stranded time traveler, to help them cope with the lack of existing technologies at various points in history.
check out the foxfire series of books
Here is a start :
Survivor Library
https://www.survivorlibrary.com/index.php/main-library-index/
-Gar
I agree, and comments on how well equipped that beach was aside, it’s neat to see how important resources can be made from dirty, crufty stuff lying around. I think I’m so used to the idea of “everything starts with nice, mostly pure resources in an easy-to-use format” that I forget that most things started out really crudely until someone figured out what was needed for a better process. It’s like the retrotechtacular articles, but for alternative sources of basic materials.
For a “nice, mostly pure resource in an easy-to-use format” I present exhibit A: urine.
i think worse case toronto might be too hard to bounce back from though
Try this without propane and electricity.
I wonder if it would be possible to use a parabolic reflector to get hot enough so that there’d be no need for electricity?
There are solar furnaces that reach those sorts of temperatures, but it’s an immense engineering feat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeillo_solar_furnace
That’s a pretty well equipped desert island.
Propane torch, 120VAC, transformers, ceramic and stainless steel crucibles.
It was the arc furnace that got me chuckling. Gillian himself would be proud.
The Professor made the arc furnace out of the transformer (and extra wire) and the crucibles.
Gilligan worked his butt off, pedaling the gourd generator to provide the electrical power.
You really don’t want to know where they got the methane for the torch (the propane tank was empty.)
Amazonian tribes would make calcium from shells the same way to mix with the seeds of anadenanthera to make Cebil.
Do you mean CeBIL – Center for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law?
Heh heh obviously not
Grab yourself a copy of The Engineers’ Illustrated Thesaurus by Herbert Herkimer
Had high hopes until I needed to find an arc furnace. Maybe I’ll get it from a creature drop.
“Deserted island”, comb the beach for shells, “electric arc furnace” – not so deserted island in the end…
I do not like how the promise of the headline is betrayed in the text.
Hackaday is usually less click-baity, please keept it that way.
Yes the arc furnace requirement made this article suck. Too bad, not my fault.
Why not go full Ironman and posit an arc reactor?
Yes the arc furnace requirement made this article suck. Too bad, not my fault.
Why not go full Ironman and posit an arc reactor?
I wonder if a cheap welder could be used for the arc part – these days they are very cheap and used stick welders can be picked up for almost nothing.