Plasma Waste Converters ( repost ) [ Mining an asteroid, Part VI ]

Reposted for at least the second time:

3.2.19:

What is the concept here?  The concept is that no material can withstand temperatures that get sufficiently hot.  Got that?  The material is not obliterated, though.  The thing that happens is that the chemical bonds are broken.  The atoms making up the material continue to exist, and as they cool, they reunite with the electrons to form the elements from which the material is composed.

What makes chemical bonds possible are the electrons.  Once matter gets hot enough, it becomes plasma, which means that the electrons have been driven off by the heat.

Of course, this requires a tremendous amount of energy.  This amount of energy could be supplied by nuclear power.  Nuclear power is a million times more powerful than chemical energy.  Once you grasp that concept, you should easily be able to understand that any chemical can be reconstituted into its constituent elements, and then recombined into useful forms.  In other words, there is no waste.

That is why I come down hard on the notion that there can be a depletion of resources.  How can you deplete a resource that can be renewed an infinite number of times?  People who push this are of two types, in my opinion.  They either understand this basic fact, or they don't.  If they do, and they push the idea of depletion, then that makes them liars.  The others are dupes.  It takes two to lie.  The liar and the dupe who believes the lie.

That is why I come down hard on the movie Avatar.  This movie pushes the idea of depletion of resources, which is a damnable lie.

last repost .. 10.6.13:

Note:

This is a proposed method of mining an asteroid.  Therefore, I'll make this repost number 6 in the series.  The plasma device will rip apart the materials where they can separated out.  You can also use this technique to recycle everything while you are in space.  Particularly waste.

Update: This site says that 2000 tons of waste can be processed per day.   It would be very handy if you could go at that rate with the asteroid, but it will probably go much slower than this.

Energy for mining operations can be discussed next in the series.

Part 5 was here.


This concept may be even better than this gal thinks.

I'm thinking that with enough energy, you could recycle everything.  Think nuclear energy here that is cheaper than coal.

You don't have to restrict yourself to materials that would be used in making energy.  Perhaps in theory, you can make a plasma out of anything and just about everything.

Every substance will have a boiling point, in which it will be turned into a gas.  As it cools, it will condense according to its chemical properties.  You could set up a collection point as is done in oil refineries, that will pick off each product as it condenses.  The final result should be various pure elements which constituted the chemical makeup of the waste stream.  That's the general idea, anyway.

Here's the video.