Food, Fuel and Plastic from pollution

Carbon is used for many things and a lot of that carbon is acquired from oil, it makes a lot of sense to use Carbon obtained from direct air capture to make those products.

Plastics are some of the most common materials over 311 million tonnes are various plastics are produced every year, of that 230 million tonnes is carbon.

It is not a vast  amount as just under 3% of global CO2 output, the equivalent of 33.8 million mature trees. One of the problems is in breaking the CO2 bonds recently a new Technique doubles conversion of CO2 to plastic component.

NASA long had an ambition to turn astronauts CO2  waste into food and a Finnish company has managed the trick see Food from thin air. This flour like product would be a good replacement for soya flour,which is currently decimating the amazon basin. 

There have also been recent improvements in the processes for converting CO2 into long chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet engines and potentially other heavy fuel systems like diesel.

 New Iron-based Catalyst Converts Carbon Dioxide into Jet Fuel

Freedom from AntiVaxers.

I want the right to refuse to have unvaccinated people with no medical reason in my flat and if I had a shop in my shop.
You want the right not to risk a vaccine, I want the right not to be exposed to your potential mutant infection. Having an endemic infection caused by people who choose not to be vaccinated, not only means that people who cannot be vaccinated are at risk, it means increases the number of mutations, mutations that will inevitably lead to a bypassing of the effectiveness of the vaccine.
As usual, a lot of the anti-vax stuff is from the libertarian right, which wants people to be free to do the things that libertarian right-wingers approve of but not the things other more socially-minded people approve of.
If the owner of any establishment bans those who are voluntarily unvaccinated, what legal recourse do they have if those banned enter? Is it trespass or assault? Being unvaccinated for some will be a choice, a choice that has long term consequences for others, they are seeking to impose themselves but will moan continually about their loss of freedom with no consideration of the freedom of others.
In a free society, everyone must make compromises to allow the freedom of others, the Anti-vaxers will entertain no compromise by them.

Liverpool International Railway Station

Requirements

One of the questions that come up every so often is "If Liverpool gets an HS2/NPR connection where will the station be?". It is a difficult question to answer, Steve Rotheram and the LCR have effectively ruled out expanding Lime Street, saying it is simply not possible, and I completely agree. This hasn't stopped some people, who seem more interested in the architecture than the practicality of the solution.

It is important to set out the requirements for a proper connection. For me, this is full length 400m GC gauge trains. The LCR has added close proximity to Lime Street and the existing station to that I'd add it needs to be outside the loop for practical reasons.

The space we need is defined by the with of a GC Gauge carriage,  which is 3.29m, the platforms at a minimum of 12m with an extra meter for wiggle room giving a total of 19.58m per 2 line set. For simplicity let's call it 20m.

The absolute minimum number of platforms is 4 this assumes HS2 & NPR, in reality adding some extra platforms for intentional and classic long-distance makes sense, so a more realistic size is 6 or 8 platforms. this would allow for reasonable expansion or transfer of all long-distance express trains to the new station. Leavening regional and semi-fast for Lime street & local for Central station. This means we are looking for a site 60m or 80m wide.

 Location

I do have a site in mind which fore fills all the requirements with perhaps up to 100m available if a small amount of pavement is taken. That site is currently occupied by the Mount Pleasant Car Park and the 051 nightclub, between Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill.

 

Taking 80m line and extending 450m forward takes the end of the platforms to under the cathedral.

Building

The land climbs from the Lime street and is some 10 meters higher by May Street several meters of headspace would be needed for this interface. Having 2 concourses allows the lower concourse at the platform end to be a reasonable size and to be constructed in a pit providing a cliff-like at May Street for the tunnelling to start, meeting the incoming 2 line tunnel.

Constructing an 80m span underground would be challenging.  Leaving supporting walls or building the walls would make the task easier, 3 walls each of 1m would add only 3m to the overall width and arranged as below they would provide fireproof divides between each platform in the underground section. 

Track layout.

 

 

 

Since the King's Cross fire there have been very strict rules for underground stations design to reduce the risks from fire. One of these is for excellent ventilation, to remove fumes, while the upper booking hall would prevent natural vertical ventilation, it could be provided lateral or vertically at the edge.

This would be unlikely to provide sufficient ventilation for the platforms. To accomplish this providing force extraction/insertion via vertical shafts at the end of the platforms could provide the needed throughput for the platforms with the Lower concourse side vents providing the entrance or exit points.

This would leave the area above the concourses free for use as a significant building.

Connections

Providing access to Liverpool's other main stations via travelators could utilise the existent access to central from the basement of Lewis's.

A station of this size would likely mean that other than an expansion of Liverpool central no new station would be needed for 100 years. Providing support for an international connection via the channel tunnel.

Full Connection

I know that currently HS2 plans barely include Liverpool as anything other than a minor adjunct but here are several plans for a dedicated Liverpool line from 20 Miles More to my own far cheaper plan here at Lymm to Lime Street.

 

Thetford to Norwich in 200 years.

In a fit of boredom, I plotted out a Thetford Norwich canal to bring Norwich into the 18th century and Thetford the 17th. If for some reason you want the KMZ Thetford-Norwich Canal.kmz. 

The high point is just south-east of Wymondham College north-west of London Road. Great Britain topographic map, elevation, relief

If I could find a decent overlay for google earth with contour lines I might be able to find a slightly better route or at least align it better with the rivers. The bits either side of the peak should be smooth as they follow water courses and there are, as far as I know no rapids or wiers on the route.

It is the Thet canalised from Thetford to the north side of the A11 near Besthorpe then a link across for further canalisation to Dyke Beck->To the River Tiffey which feeds into the Yare near Great Melton. In a Kayak your portage might be as little at 1.5 miles.

The Little Ouse Waveney route would look like

In the past there where plans to link Thetford with Bishop Stortford via the Little Ouse or Stor but the railways killed them off.  That would have linked Thetford to London. Another less detailed plan would have linked Thetford to the Waveney, via the little Ouse, this would have brought a connection to Lowestoft.

 

 

This is the Waveney route, it follows the Little Ouse then the Waveney The lack of a central summit means this has far less rise and if your desire was to connect to the ports this would be the way to go. it also connects to Beccles. The route is 99% the Norfolk Suffolk border.

Today though I think you would go for the Norwich route for a better broads connection it would be more tourist-friendly and would also be a better connection if the inland waterways are brought back to life by robotic traffic by even the standards of the 18th Century the summit at Attleborough is rather low and would require no more than 20 locks over the length of the canal.

If you want the google earth file it is LittleOuse-Waveney.kmz

 

If Thetford was connected to the canal network, though recently the last few miles is not supposed to be navigable, it may well be for small boats. This link would give access from east to west Liverpool & Wales to the Broads.

State of The Synthetic Hydrocarbon Art

Some of the first steps in the replacement of fossil hydrocarbons with synthetics and the journey has started in am oil rich country, Norway. From January, jet fuel in Norway must contain 0.5% of biofuel, at the moment the cost is four times the cost of fossil fuel.This fuel must be made of waste fats and vegetable oil, but not palm oil. SAS have a stated aim of powering all it domestic flights by biofuel. Norway plans to increase the required proportion to 30% by 2030.

This is obviously unsustainable for the entire aviation industry. Which means Europe’s first power-to-liquid demo plant in Norway plans renewable aviation fuel production in 2023. makes sense.

This uses the techniques outline in my blog Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake but chemistry doesn't stand still. In February, Waseda University  in Japan announced.

Scientists developed a new method to convert carbon dioxide to methane with an electric field at low temperatures. In comparison to previous methods, this new method can produce any amount of methane whenever necessary. Because methane is a valuable gas which can be used to generate heat and electricity, this method could be exploited to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent global warming.

The process drops the temperature of the conversion from 300-400°C to 100°C, not only does this use a different catalyst but also adds an electric field. Reducing the temperature required gives a large reduction in the energy required. The conversion to methane is only half of the 2 energy intense processes involves in making methane.

The other energy intense process is the production of hydrogen from water and that is currently an area of intense research as not only does it have bearing on the production of synthetic hydrocarbons but hydrogen is a potential energy in its own right. Only its low density and difficulty in storage make it a less than ideal fuel. The Royal Society gave 4 options given in "Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale".
They are Thermochemical Routes to Hydrogen, Electrolytic Routes to Hydrogen, Biological Routes to Hydrogen and Solar to Fuels Routes to Hydrogen all of which have their niche usage. The ball has begun to move.

There is also artificial photosynthesis a process which looks to perform the complete production in a single device a synthetic leaf.

Sickesair https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Zilog on.

While it may surprise some of you not only do Zilog still exists but they still make the Z80 as well as a host of other chips variously based on it. I recently pulled to buts a broken soldering iron only to find a Zilog microcontroller in there. Likely your TV has one. I put tother a few symbols for KiCad for the Z80, Z180, Z380, eZ80 and a few others and stored them as Z80-CPU-for-KiCADon GitHub.
I've done some Z8 but the collection of them is massive so it will be a long time before they are done. If at all, some of the ones I have done are below.

• Z80
• Z180 
• Z280
• Z380
• eZ80
• Z8
• CIO
• KIO
• DART
• SIO
• Z16c32
• Z16c35
• Z53c80
• Z8536
• Z8l382
• Z85c30
• Z08530
• Z08536
• Z16c30
• Z80230
• Z80380

The Z380, an 8-bit chip with 4 gigabytes of memory space, is the best.

L2R Z8, Z80, Z180, Z380 & eZ80

That 16g was an unthinkably large amount of memory about 16,000 times bigger than you average PC at the time(1994), now a single SRAM chip does it all for £110.