Pressure washer 4400 psi

Oil & Gas Industry Acronyms – Reservoir Engineering

2023.06.07 12:01 Seal_Gaskets2474 Oil & Gas Industry Acronyms – Reservoir Engineering

PBU – Pressure Build Up
PDHM – Permanent Down Hole Monitoring
PEBI – Perpendicular Bisector (for simulation grids)
PFO – Pressure Fall-off
PI - Productivity Index
PIF – Production Improvement Factor
PPG – Pounds Per Gallon
Psi – Pounds per square inch
PWRI – Produced Water Re-Injection
RF - Recovery Factor
RFT – Repeat Formation Tester
RMP – Reservoir Monitoring Program
ROS – Remaining Oil Saturation
RRT – Reservoir Rock Type
SAGD – Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage
SD-DK – Sub-Domain Dual Permeability
SDT – Step Draw-down Test
SG – Static Gradient
SIBHP – Shut-In Bottom Hole Pressure
SIWHP – Shut-In Well Head Pressure
SSCSV – Sub Surface Control Safety Valve
SAR – System Available Rate
STR – System Technical Rate
THP – Tubing Head Pressure
URF – Ultimate Recovery Factor
VE – Vertical Equilibrium
VFP – Vertical Flow Performance
VRR – Voidage Replacement Ratio
WA – Well Availability
WAG – Water Alternating Gas
WAR – Well Available Rate
WDL – Well Deliverability Limit
WHFP – Well Head Flowing Pressure
WPR – Well Potential Rate
WTR – Well Technical Rate
ARATS – Automated Reserves Audit Trail System
BCF – Billion Cubic Feet
Bg – Gas Formation Volume Factor
Bo – Oil Formation Volume Factor
EV – Expected Value
FVF – Formation Volume Factor
FWL – Free Water Level
GDT – Gas Down To
GIIP – Gas Initially In Place
GOC – Gas Oil Contact
GUT – Gas Up To
GWC – Gas Water Contact
GRV – Gross Rock Volume
HIIP – Hydrocarbons Initially-In-Place
HPV - Hydrocarbon Pore Volume
LKH – Lowest Known Hydrocarbons
Mstb – Thousand Stock Tank Barrels
MMstb – Million Stock Tank Barrels
MMscf – Million Standard Cubic Feet
N/G – Net to Gross Ratio
NHPV – Net Hydrocarbon Pore Volume
NPV – Net Pore Volume
ODT – Oil Down To
OUP – Oil Up To
OWC – Oil Water Contact
P1 – Proven (for reserves only)
P10 – Proven+Probable+Possible or 3P
P2 – Probable (for reserves only)
P3 - Possible (for reserves only)
P50 – Proven+Probable or 2P
P90 – Proven or 1P
POS – Probability of Success
RB – Reservoir Barrel
RF – Recovery Factor
SEC – Securities Exchange Commission
STB – Stock Tank Barrel
STOIIP – Stock Tank Oil Initially In Place
TCF – Trillion Cubic Feet
ULCC – Ultra Large Crude Carriers
UNFC – United Nations Framework Classification
UR - Ultimate Recovery
URF – Ultimate Recovery Factor
VLCC – Very Large Crude Carriers
submitted by Seal_Gaskets2474 to FluidSeals [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 10:54 deniss_1996 13" Twinkle Star 4000 PSI Pressure Washer Undercarriage Cleaner

submitted by deniss_1996 to amzndeals [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 09:10 -BoardsOfCanada- He only seems half-serious if that's any consolation

He only seems half-serious if that's any consolation submitted by -BoardsOfCanada- to CrackheadCraigslist [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 07:23 mobilepowerwashing Revitalize Your Property with Professional Driveway Cleaning in Dublin

When it comes to maintaining the overall curb appeal of your property, don't overlook the importance of a clean and well-maintained driveway. Over time, driveways can accumulate dirt, oil stains, moss, and grime, which not only diminish the visual appeal but also pose safety hazards. That's where professional driveway cleaning services in Dublin come into play. With their expertise and specialized equipment, they can revitalize your driveway and give it a fresh, like-new appearance.

Unmatched Expertise:

Opting for professional driveway cleaning services in Dublin ensures that your driveway is in the hands of experienced technicians who understand the unique challenges presented by different types of surfaces. Whether you have a concrete, asphalt, block paving, or gravel driveway, they have the knowledge and techniques to restore its original glory.

State-of-the-Art Equipment:

Professional cleaning companies use high-pressure washers, surface cleaners, and eco-friendly cleaning solutions to remove deep-seated stains, algae, moss, and other contaminants. These advanced tools and techniques not only deliver exceptional results but also help preserve the integrity of your driveway surface.

Enhanced Curb Appeal and Safety:

A freshly cleaned driveway not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of your property but also increases its value. By removing slippery moss and oil stains, professional cleaning services can significantly improve safety, reducing the risk of slips and falls.

Convenience and Time-Saving:

Cleaning a driveway can be a time-consuming and laborious task, especially without the right equipment and expertise. Hiring professionals allows you to sit back and relax while they take care of all the hard work. They'll complete the job efficiently, leaving you with a stunningly clean driveway without any hassle.

Conclusion:

Don't let a dirty and worn-out driveway diminish the overall beauty and safety of your property. Take advantage of professional driveway cleaning services in Dublin to restore your driveway's appeal and ensure it remains in pristine condition. With their knowledge, experience, and advanced equipment, these experts will rejuvenate your driveway, leaving you with a clean, safe, and visually appealing entrance to your home.
submitted by mobilepowerwashing to u/mobilepowerwashing [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 07:10 leDankMemes9001 Is there an adapter that lets me plug a 110v appliance into a tesla home charger?

Ok, so I have an electric pressure washer that that plugs into a standard wall outlet, but there are no outlets outside, expect the Tesla home charger. Is there a tesla charger to 110v outlet adapter out there anywhere? I am renting so installing a 110v outlet outside is not an option.
submitted by leDankMemes9001 to TeslaLounge [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 06:42 THEGHOSTWHOPPER Can over pressurizing the system break the lines?

We had a guy blow out the lines last fall who didn’t seem to know what he was doing. He used his compressor to pressurize the entire system to about 140 psi before opening each individual zone.
I just turned on the system today and only 2 out of 8 zones turned on and when they did water only drizzled out of their heads. I have seen a small fountain of water randomly bubbling up in the middle of my yard above where I suspect a pipe to be.
How screwed am I? The yard is about 1 acre so lots of pipe that is possibly broken. Do these systems not have valves that open in excess pressure?
submitted by THEGHOSTWHOPPER to Irrigation [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 05:38 SpeakerNo2926 Tire pressure questions

Tire pressure questions
Hello can someone tell me what the center numbers are on the tpms screen? Thanks
submitted by SpeakerNo2926 to Nissan [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 05:06 turretxrat Washed and waxed a week ago and destroyed by the unforgiving desert.

Washed and waxed a week ago and destroyed by the unforgiving desert.
Driving on the freeway to work this morning and had no choice but to drive through a construction worker pressure washer blasting the soon to be lane. Looks like someone buckshot my whole drivers side. Before this incident, it was covered in dust and pollen. This is just icing on the cake.
submitted by turretxrat to TeslaModelY [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:57 Northern__Pride RV bidet suggestions?

I have an RV and want to install a seat bidet. I have a few things that i need it to have... 1. Pressure - the RV water pump is very low pressure. Like 2-3 psi i think. Is this enough to activate the squirter? 2. No electricity 3. No "arm"... because of room. 4. Elongated 5. < $200ish
What suggestions do you have? Thanks in advance.
submitted by Northern__Pride to bidets [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:42 GreenNapster 13" Pressure Washer Undercarriage Cleaner, Under Car Water Broom with Straight Extension Wand and 45 Degree Curved Wand, 4000 PSI $13.99 & FS@+25 [Deal Price: $13.99]

13 submitted by GreenNapster to RedditShoppingDeals [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:32 BroMandi [Amazon] 13" Pressure Washer Undercarriage Cleaner, Under Car Water Broom with Straight Extension Wand and 45 Degree Curved Wand, 4000 PSI $13.99 & FS@+25 [Deal: $13.99, Actual: $39.99]

[Amazon] 13 submitted by BroMandi to ShoppingDealsOnline [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:29 Cheeky-Monkey-Tees Fuel Pump Problems, Fuel Supply Issues

Fuel Pump Problems, Fuel Supply Issues
I have a riding mower that uses a fuel pump like the one pictured, these same pumps are all types of small engines and even some outboards. I'm tired of repeated failures of the pulse hose and the fuel pump diaphragm due to ethanol in modern fuel. I'm thinking about replacing this mechanical pulse activate pump with an electric fuel pump. The lowest pressure electric pump I can find is 2 to 5 psi my question is what is the pressure limit for the needle and seat on a small engine carburetor? In automotive applications, you see fuel pressures anywhere from 2 to 7 psi.
If you find this post interesting and of use please click the UpVote arrow.
https://preview.redd.it/3a81yg9lbi4b1.jpg?width=804&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e9783f9d6397f1b71d7dff193d94aba70c6ab0a
submitted by Cheeky-Monkey-Tees to lawnmowers [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:23 snkde [Amazon] 13" Pressure Washer Undercarriage Cleaner, Under Car Water Broom with Straight Extension Wand and 45 Degree Curved Wand, 4000 PSI $13.99 &

[Amazon] 13 submitted by snkde to Deals_US [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:20 aronkovacs Are there any external heaters available?

I’m looking for something that can heat water for a pressure washer, or a kit for a pressure washer build. Is there something like this available?
submitted by aronkovacs to pressurewashing [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:10 rayzer208 Portable self contained power washer

Portable self contained power washer
I put together a simple, albeit not pressure washer level, solution that works great for mobile detailers/weekend warriors looking to add some wheel washing ability to their rinseless washes. If you were doing full washes you could easily just pack around a couple jugs and swap out the modified lid. Not watertight, but transports fine if careful.
submitted by rayzer208 to AutoDetailing [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:05 G2H3LL No water output

Sorry if this question is redundant. I have a Briggs and Stratton 500 series pressure washer that outputs zero water. I'm assuming the inlet or outlet is clogged, but I can't find any videos or manuals on how to disassemble the vertical pump. I do have a specific question though: If I plug my hose into the inlet, should water come out of the outlet, even if there isn't a high pressure hose connected? I'm asking this because I'm trying to eliminate the nozzle as being the problem.
submitted by G2H3LL to pressurewashing [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 04:02 cnjunjuinflator Portable tire inflator with emergency light

Portable tire inflator with emergency light
FEATURES: Max Pressure 150 PSI, Air Flow 35 L/min, with Weight of 7kg, Hollow Metal Shell and Aluminum Cylinder for Better Heat Dissipation. PROTECTION: Auto-thermal Cut-Off Switch and Safety Valve protect the motor from Damage. Equipped with a Sand-Proof Power Switch, and with four anti-vibrate rubber feet to keep the heavy duty tire inflator stable. APPLICATION: Applicable for Off-Road Vehicles, Bicycles, Motorcycles, RVs, ATVs and Trucks, Balls and other Recreational Equipment like Inflatable Boat. Simple to Use: With the built-in LED Flashlight, this tire pump is a lifesaver if you get stuck at night. INCLUDES: portable tire inflator with emergency light + Nylon Tool Bag + 3m Heavy Power Cord + 1m Rubber Air Hose + 3 Nozzle Adapters + Thumb Lock Adapter. WARRANTY: If you do the toughest Off Road, You need this! ALL this heavy duty tire inflator will provide you with 12-month Hassle-Free Warranty, and Lifetime Customer Support.

https://preview.redd.it/aschuh0z6i4b1.png?width=469&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f943914e3d50049273645c7304c43ab19ac802b
submitted by cnjunjuinflator to u/cnjunjuinflator [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 03:51 UsualButterfly6802 2002 jetta 1.8t no boost no CEL :(

car is tuned with a pcv delete and a forge splitter valve. I've been experiencing dramatic loss of power, can't make boost, but car runs and idles fine, just no power while driving down the street. The needle will flick up to 3-4 psi if I mash the gas but quickly drop.
I have not checked for vacuum leaks, but I did rig up a boost pressure checker and I can hold pressure between the turbo and the intake manifold. I can move the wastegate actuator in and out by hand, and I swapped the n75 valve and the diverter for ones off my dads 03 golf, to no avail. I cleaned the mass airflow sensor as well. the turbo shaft has a little play about 1/8th an inch, maybe less and I found about two or three tablespoons of oil in my intercooler.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
submitted by UsualButterfly6802 to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 02:53 efh1 I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern

I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern
I've been doing online research as well as some tinkering and was planning on building a prototype to demonstrate the first ever vacuum balloon, but I'm running into issues with expenses and time. I believe I've identified 2 approaches using well known materials that should work but one in particular that could be pulled off by a garage tinkerer with extra time and money to spare on the project.
Along the way I also started experimenting with creating foams using a technique I've basically invented as far as I can tell. I can't find any literature on it. I've gotten mixed results with it and am just not sure if it will ever work at least without being done properly in a lab setting. The approach has a lot of promise and I'll explain why.
There's a lot to go into on this subject. I've written about vacuum balloons before so if this is a new concept for you, you should give it a read.
I'm human so some of this work could have errors in it, but I have done experiments to test my theory and gotten interesting results. I have measured weight reduction in some of my designs and I have accurately predicted the results in cases where I could measure properly. That gave me a lot of hope to continue on at first but it's just a lot of work and I went way over budget early on. I can't keep pouring money into the project anymore and it hurts to say that because some of the results are so interesting. Also, life gets's busy and I can only tinker for so long.

Shapes

The best shape is a sphere because you need to withstand the atmospheric pressure outside the balloon pushing in at about 14 psi. For the same reasons we build bridges with arches, the sphere is the best shape for this because it will spread the forces out evenly. It becomes a matter of having a material that can withstand the compressive forces and in the case of non-uniformity (which to some degree is always going to be present) shear forces. Of course, the material also needs to be lightweight or it will never lift. Many sources will erroneously tell you no such material exists, but this isn't true. In theory, there are multiple materials that would probably work but the issue starts to become the total size of the balloon (and defects.) You could make it out of glass, but the balloon would have to be incredibly large and would be insanely prone to shattering and that's even if it was made defect free so there's really no point in trying normal glass. This is where choosing your materials is key so that you don't waste your time.
The volume of a sphere is V = 4/3πr^3
To calculate the buoyant force of lift at atmosphere you can simply multiply the volume by 1.29 kg/m3 and that will give you the amount it can lift in kg. Simply multiply by 2.2 for conversion to get the number in pounds. This formula was derived from the formula below.

https://preview.redd.it/56czvmdcuh4b1.png?width=516&format=png&auto=webp&s=31538f933c110d46a7d9f66af5fc8fca864bbd14
The 1.29 kg/m3 is the fluid density of atmosphere and I simply removed the acceleration of gravity to show the force in units of pure weight rather than in Newtons. It's a simple calculation and understanding it is key to helping you design the vacuum balloon.
Now that you understand how to calculate the lifting force of vacuum in a sphere you can run a bunch of numbers and see for yourself that the lifting force is very small below radius 1 and grows exponentially above radius 1. This means it will be exceptionally hard to build a working vacuum balloon below radius 1 but unfortunately there are limitations to building large structures as well. Usually you want a prototype to be simple and cheap, not experimental in and of itself. This means the first demonstrated vacuum balloon will likely be about 2 meters in diameter or about 6 feet. It also means a vacuum balloon of very large proportions would potentially have incredible lifting force.
Now that you understand the relations between size and lifting force all you need to do is calculate the volume of the envelope of the spherical balloon. This is done by simply calculating the volume of a sphere of the size of the envelope and then subtracting that by the volume of the inner void. The difference is the volume of your envelope and you can easily calculate the weight of your envelope by multiplying the density by the volume. If you do this while calculating the lifting force and plug different numbers in you can easily see how the ratio of weight to volume works. You can also see how the density influences this and even can compare the volume of different shapes if you really want to just to see how much better a sphere really is than perhaps a square.
It's very important to point out that one of my biggest lessons in building prototypes is that there can't be any defects. I originally was making hemispheres and trying to join them together before pumping down to vacuum and every time there was a failure it was at the meeting of the two hemispheres. One solid piece seems to be necessary. It's conceivable that two hemispheres can be joined and bonded to become one solid piece free of defects, but I unfortunately did not have the materials to do this. I did do some experiments and found that you can reinforce this area with lightweight bamboo if necessary. However, these were small preliminary designs and I'm not confident that would scale well.
It's worth noting that the next best shape is a cylinder with hemispheres on each end. Basically a tic tac shape. It's only worth attempting this shape if you have reasons to from a manufacturing perspective. For example, I played around with the idea of making a foam sheet and then rolling it into a cylinder before it set rather than attempting to cast a foam hemisphere. It only makes sense if you are attempting a volume too large to pull off as a sphere for practical reasons (like it would't fit in garage or won't caste evenly.) Because it still needs hemispheres it's a design best left for after demonstrating a spherical design.

Materials

I dive into the use of aerogels and xerogels in the article referenced above. The purpose of these foam materials is because when engineered properly they retain a lot of their strength but lose a lot of their weight which actually increases their strength to weight ratio and that's exactly what we need to make this work. There is no material in bulk form worth pursuing for this design. You absolutely have to use a foam material. Even if you could pull it off using glass or beryllium, it's just not practical even for demonstration purposes. During my search I found the most attractive material in the bulk to be polycarbonate. It's still not worth trying in bulk form, so I invented a way to make a foam out of it. Polycarbonate is lighter and stronger than glass. Nobody has ever made an aerogel out of it that I'm aware of. I did not image my foam because I'm not doing this work in a sophisticated lab, but I can say fairly confidently that it's about 75% porosity. That's impressive, but I suspect that a lot of the bonding is weak and there's defects, but in my defense I used an insanely primitive and low tech technique.
There are two well known foams we all have access to that in theory should work. Styrofoam and polyurethane.
I understand that may cause you to sigh in disbelief. After all, polyurethane was invented in the 1930's at IG Farben and styrofoam in the 1940's so they are not only old but very ubiquitous. I should also point out that aerogel was invented in the 1930's and was once mass produced by Monsanto. None of these materials are new.
I used the given compressive and shear strengths published by a local styrofoam manufacturer to identify some common commercial grade foams that are very light weight that should work in theory if there's no defects. I tried working with them to have some custom shapes made, but they unfortunately are limited to 4 feet for one of the dimensions of their die blocks. This is very problematic even if we knew how to fuse two styrofoam hemispheres together. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it makes pulling it off more challenging. I did do some experiments with small 1 foot diameter styrofoam hemispheres that are commonly available and managed to measure a weight reduction before it imploded. Anybody can replicate these experiments. I expected it to fail because the thickness was less than 1 inch. I found the best design was to nest two of these styrofoam spheres within each other but with the orientations opposing so that the point of failure for the outer sphere was across the strongest points of the inner sphere. This should create a perpendicular crossing of the hemispheres of the inner and outer shells. This is also where I tried some glues. Gorilla glue works best and sure enough it's a polyurethane. I was so impressed by it that I switched over to attempting polyurethane designs for the sphere.
I found a polyurethane foam used in boating that is only 2lb/ft3 which is very impressive. It also boasts a compressive strength of 38 psi. I figure that means half an inch of this stuff would be able to handle 19 psi theoretically. That's 5 psi above the 14 psi we need for our vacuum balloon. It's not a lot of room for error, but it works in theory.
What I like about polyurethane is that you can fairly easily make custom shapes with it and DIY. I experimented with a few different techniques and can say that you need this foam to be open to the air to set properly, but it does take on conformal shapes fairly well. The best method I found to make a hemisphere out of it was to actually blow up a rubber balloon and fit that snug into a styrofoam sheet for support and then pour the polyurethane foam onto it and let it set. You can then use cutting tools to clean up the extra material. This method works, but the cutting is a pain as I did it by hand. Precision will likely be necessary to properly join the two hemispheres and I learned this the hard way when I tried to join them. A more precise way to form the hemispheres I found was to buy plastic hemispheres and coat them in wax (to make removal of the polyurethane easier.) This is far more expensive than the balloon but gives more precise results. You can find people selling these in sizes up to 6 feet but it will get pricey. It's worth mentioning that I had a hard time removing the set polyurethane from the plastic even with a wax coating (which I also verified experimentally is the least sticky thing to use) so I'm not sure it's even the best approach. I've tried reaching out to polyurethane component manufacturers but so far no response. I'm sure outsourcing this would remove a lot of headaches, but also be very expensive for such a custom piece.
Just to highlight why I think this commonly available polyurethane foam is promising I want to calculate a 1 meter radius sphere of one half inch thickness to show that it should work in theory. Of course, this means no defects including the joining of the two hemispheres which is still a problem to solve but it's possible gorilla glue and precision would solve it. Maybe a DIY'er with their own CNC may want to give it a shot.
Using the volume of sphere formula given above we see that the volume of 1 meter radius is 4.187m3. The volume of a sphere of 1 meter minus 1/2 inch is 4.0295 m3. The buoyant lift of that is 11.44 lbs. The difference in volume (to find the volume of the polyurethane used) is .1575 m3 or 5.56 ft3. At a density of 2 lbs/ft3 that gives a weight of 11 lbs of polyurethane. That's less than the 11.44 lbs of lift.
I know what you're probably thinking. How does it hold vacuum? It's true that polyurethane and styrofoam are not expected to hold vacuum (I actually did find experimentally that styrofoam does hold partial vacuum for a few hours after it's shrunk much like the LANL aerogel) but you can simply wrap the sphere in plastic to hold vacuum. I planned on experimenting with dip coatings, but for experimental purposes I came up with a very clever design that I will explain later. Just know that the plastic doesn't have to be very thick to hold vacuum so it's very much within the range of possibility to coat the sphere in a thin plastic layer at less than .44 lbs. Plastic is very dense, but we are talking about literally a few mils of material. This is also why I roll my eyes at people who mock me for attempting a design with materials that don't hold vacuum. You are not limited to materials that hold vacuum for your design when you can simply add a layer for that later.

Experimental Set Up

I initially bought one of those vacuum chambers made out of a large steel pan and thick acrylic. Mechanical pumps are easy to find and relatively cheap. Mine came with the chamber. However, I quickly found it wasn't big enough and attempting to build a larger one looked costly. This is where I got clever and shocked myself with a very cheap set up that actually works. I simply bought regular large sized vacuum bags designed for storing cloths because they have a clever little self sealing mechanism that traps the vacuum. These bags are not meant for actual vacuum with a mechanical pump so I wasn't sure how it would work. I also had to find a way to rig it all up. As funny as it sounds my solution was to take the nozzle of an empty plastic bottle that happened to fit onto the hose and then I cut a piece of EDPM rubber to cover the end meant for the bottle and put a small slit in the center for air to move through. I then pushed this into the self sealing part of the vacuum bag and it actually creates a seal and pumps down! And when you remove the pump it self seals!
I found I sometimes had issues with pumping down properly and solved this by using a metal straw that I placed inside the bag near the seal and directed towards the sphere to act as a channel. Once again, to my surprise this works very well.
So, I then disassembled my original steel pot vacuum chamber and used the parts along with some parts I had to buy online to rig the pressure gauge into the system so that I could verify how much vacuum I was achieving. I'm a bit proud of this DIY set up because it works so well.
In order to properly record your results you must weight the vacuum bag and the metal straw as well as your experimental sphere before vacuuming. Then vacuum it down and pay attention to the gauge. If your design is not very good it may implode before achieving full vacuum. That's okay. You can actually measure a weight reduction without reaching the full vacuum. "Full" vacuum in this case is actually what is known as low vacuum. Low vacuum is all you need for a vacuum balloon to work as you have effectively removed most of the air and it's not necessary to reach medium or high vacuum.
This set up was for spheres of only 1 foot diameter and I don't think there are bags large enough for 6 foot spheres. However, my plan was to use a heat gun to stitch a bunch of the bags together to make it work. It's dirty but once again it should work theoretically. I was also planning on using a heat gun to section off portions of the bag to seal it around the sphere and cut off excess material but that part is really only necessary if you are about to achieve lift. I imagine it's possible once you've proven you can make a structure strong enough and light enough for lift that a better technique would be to incorporate a valve and find a way to dip coat the sphere to seal it. I never got this far.

A Potential New Approach To Foam

I mentioned experimenting with making foams and identifying polycarbonate as good material to turn into a nano foam. I use the term nano foam because aerogel wouldn't be technically correct. They are both nano foams. The aerogel is made using gel. This approach doesn't. It's very low tech and dirty. I theorized I could use the fact that polycarbonate is a thermoplastic to my advantage and mix it as a powder with another material that can withstand it's glass transition temperature but is also easily soluble in water. So, I found some polycarbonate powder (first American apparently to buy it) and mixed it with some ordinary table salt then put it in the oven. I know this sounds ridiculous. Then I washed the sample after it cooled in the sink and dried it with paper towels. Then I soaked it in rubbing alcohol and dried that with paper towels. Then I let it sit overnight to fully evaporate if it's a big sample. Then I weighed it. When I mix the powder in a 1:1 ratio by weight the sample after washing it weights exactly half of when I started without losing any volume. So I washed out all of the salt. But, that's not all. Because this method is basically sintering the particles together, it already had lots of air pockets in it to begin with. I attempted to make a one cubic inch sample to measure the density and it's not the most precise but the density is roughly 4.7 g/in3 which is about a quarter of the density of bulk polycarbonate. This means it's porosity is about 75%. It's not he 90-99.99% of commercial aerogel, but I personally find the initial results surprising. There's a lot of ideas I have to tweak this including playing with the mix ratio, grain size, uniformity of the particles, and aerating the powder. What I find very interesting about this technique in general is that it actually would work with anything that can be sintered including other thermoplastics, ceramics, glasses and metals. This means this approach could be used to make porous metals or even metal nano foams.

The 2009 analysis of the metal sphere UFO

I've recently been made aware of the 1994 spherical UFO that Steve Colbern published a report on in 2009. A few things stand out to me as someone who has been actively working on vacuum balloons and ways to make porous metals. First, it looks like two hemispheres nested inside each other exactly as I describe was my best approach to making a vacuum balloon based off of experimental results. Second, the sphere is presumably hollow. Third, the report clearly states that the sample analyzed was a porous metal with nanostructures present. A hollow porous shell with nested hemispheres of opposing orientation is exactly what I would expect a vacuum balloon to look like. There are ways to use my technique on titanium to make it porous although I haven't done so experimentally because it's melting point is very high. Materials other than salt could be used but even if salt was used it would be interesting because it would vaporize at the glass transition temp of titanium which actually might help make it more porous. I do believe Na and Cl impurities were present in the sample according to the report. Perhaps one could experimentally recreate this sample using this method (minus the isotopes.)

Crowdsourcing

If anybody wants to crowdsource the work on this with me I'm open to it. Also, if people are open to crowdfunding the research I'm open to that as well. Either way, it's up on the internet now. Maybe 10 years from now somebody as crazy as me will pick up where I left off. I might return to this at a later date, but without help I think I need to take a break.
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2023.06.07 02:50 efh1 I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern

I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern
I've been doing online research as well as some tinkering and was planning on building a prototype to demonstrate the first ever vacuum balloon, but I'm running into issues with expenses and time. I believe I've identified 2 approaches using well known materials that should work but one in particular that could be pulled off by a garage tinkerer with extra time and money to spare on the project.
Along the way I also started experimenting with creating foams using a technique I've basically invented as far as I can tell. I can't find any literature on it. I've gotten mixed results with it and am just not sure if it will ever work at least without being done properly in a lab setting. The approach has a lot of promise and I'll explain why.
There's a lot to go into on this subject. I've written about vacuum balloons before so if this is a new concept for you, you should give it a read.
I'm human so some of this work could have errors in it, but I have done experiments to test my theory and gotten interesting results. I have measured weight reduction in some of my designs and I have accurately predicted the results in cases where I could measure properly. That gave me a lot of hope to continue on at first but it's just a lot of work and I went way over budget early on. I can't keep pouring money into the project anymore and it hurts to say that because some of the results are so interesting. Also, life gets's busy and I can only tinker for so long.

Shapes

The best shape is a sphere because you need to withstand the atmospheric pressure outside the balloon pushing in at about 14 psi. For the same reasons we build bridges with arches, the sphere is the best shape for this because it will spread the forces out evenly. It becomes a matter of having a material that can withstand the compressive forces and in the case of non-uniformity (which to some degree is always going to be present) shear forces. Of course, the material also needs to be lightweight or it will never lift. Many sources will erroneously tell you no such material exists, but this isn't true. In theory, there are multiple materials that would probably work but the issue starts to become the total size of the balloon (and defects.) You could make it out of glass, but the balloon would have to be incredibly large and would be insanely prone to shattering and that's even if it was made defect free so there's really no point in trying normal glass. This is where choosing your materials is key so that you don't waste your time.
The volume of a sphere is V = 4/3πr^3
To calculate the buoyant force of lift at atmosphere you can simply multiply the volume by 1.29 kg/m3 and that will give you the amount it can lift in kg. Simply multiply by 2.2 for conversion to get the number in pounds. This formula was derived from the formula below.
https://preview.redd.it/su8ya13m0h4b1.png?width=516&format=png&auto=webp&s=d7db2ab0b6678d6abc010f1a0a2cf6020633b344
The 1.29 kg/m3 is the fluid density of atmosphere and I simply removed the acceleration of gravity to show the force in units of pure weight rather than in Newtons. It's a simple calculation and understanding it is key to helping you design the vacuum balloon.
Now that you understand how to calculate the lifting force of vacuum in a sphere you can run a bunch of numbers and see for yourself that the lifting force is very small below radius 1 and grows exponentially above radius 1. This means it will be exceptionally hard to build a working vacuum balloon below radius 1 but unfortunately there are limitations to building large structures as well. Usually you want a prototype to be simple and cheap, not experimental in and of itself. This means the first demonstrated vacuum balloon will likely be about 2 meters in diameter or about 6 feet. It also means a vacuum balloon of very large proportions would potentially have incredible lifting force.
Now that you understand the relations between size and lifting force all you need to do is calculate the volume of the envelope of the spherical balloon. This is done by simply calculating the volume of a sphere of the size of the envelope and then subtracting that by the volume of the inner void. The difference is the volume of your envelope and you can easily calculate the weight of your envelope by multiplying the density by the volume. If you do this while calculating the lifting force and plug different numbers in you can easily see how the ratio of weight to volume works. You can also see how the density influences this and even can compare the volume of different shapes if you really want to just to see how much better a sphere really is than perhaps a square.
It's very important to point out that one of my biggest lessons in building prototypes is that there can't be any defects. I originally was making hemispheres and trying to join them together before pumping down to vacuum and every time there was a failure it was at the meeting of the two hemispheres. One solid piece seems to be necessary. It's conceivable that two hemispheres can be joined and bonded to become one solid piece free of defects, but I unfortunately did not have the materials to do this. I did do some experiments and found that you can reinforce this area with lightweight bamboo if necessary. However, these were small preliminary designs and I'm not confident that would scale well.
It's worth noting that the next best shape is a cylinder with hemispheres on each end. Basically a tic tac shape. It's only worth attempting this shape if you have reasons to from a manufacturing perspective. For example, I played around with the idea of making a foam sheet and then rolling it into a cylinder before it set rather than attempting to cast a foam hemisphere. It only makes sense if you are attempting a volume too large to pull off as a sphere for practical reasons (like it would't fit in garage or won't caste evenly.) Because it still needs hemispheres it's a design best left for after demonstrating a spherical design.

Materials

I dive into the use of aerogels and xerogels in the article referenced above. The purpose of these foam materials is because when engineered properly they retain a lot of their strength but lose a lot of their weight which actually increases their strength to weight ratio and that's exactly what we need to make this work. There is no material in bulk form worth pursuing for this design. You absolutely have to use a foam material. Even if you could pull it off using glass or beryllium, it's just not practical even for demonstration purposes. During my search I found the most attractive material in the bulk to be polycarbonate. It's still not worth trying in bulk form, so I invented a way to make a foam out of it. Polycarbonate is lighter and stronger than glass. Nobody has ever made an aerogel out of it that I'm aware of. I did not image my foam because I'm not doing this work in a sophisticated lab, but I can say fairly confidently that it's about 75% porosity. That's impressive, but I suspect that a lot of the bonding is weak and there's defects, but in my defense I used an insanely primitive and low tech technique.
There are two well known foams we all have access to that in theory should work. Styrofoam and polyurethane.
I understand that may cause you to sigh in disbelief. After all, polyurethane was invented in the 1930's at IG Farben and styrofoam in the 1940's so they are not only old but very ubiquitous. I should also point out that aerogel was invented in the 1930's and was once mass produced by Monsanto. None of these materials are new.
I used the given compressive and shear strengths published by a local styrofoam manufacturer to identify some common commercial grade foams that are very light weight that should work in theory if there's no defects. I tried working with them to have some custom shapes made, but they unfortunately are limited to 4 feet for one of the dimensions of their die blocks. This is very problematic even if we knew how to fuse two styrofoam hemispheres together. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it makes pulling it off more challenging. I did do some experiments with small 1 foot diameter styrofoam hemispheres that are commonly available and managed to measure a weight reduction before it imploded. Anybody can replicate these experiments. I expected it to fail because the thickness was less than 1 inch. I found the best design was to nest two of these styrofoam spheres within each other but with the orientations opposing so that the point of failure for the outer sphere was across the strongest points of the inner sphere. This should create a perpendicular crossing of the hemispheres of the inner and outer shells. This is also where I tried some glues. Gorilla glue works best and sure enough it's a polyurethane. I was so impressed by it that I switched over to attempting polyurethane designs for the sphere.
I found a polyurethane foam used in boating that is only 2lb/ft3 which is very impressive. It also boasts a compressive strength of 38 psi. I figure that means half an inch of this stuff would be able to handle 19 psi theoretically. That's 5 psi above the 14 psi we need for our vacuum balloon. It's not a lot of room for error, but it works in theory.
What I like about polyurethane is that you can fairly easily make custom shapes with it and DIY. I experimented with a few different techniques and can say that you need this foam to be open to the air to set properly, but it does take on conformal shapes fairly well. The best method I found to make a hemisphere out of it was to actually blow up a rubber balloon and fit that snug into a styrofoam sheet for support and then pour the polyurethane foam onto it and let it set. You can then use cutting tools to clean up the extra material. This method works, but the cutting is a pain as I did it by hand. Precision will likely be necessary to properly join the two hemispheres and I learned this the hard way when I tried to join them. A more precise way to form the hemispheres I found was to buy plastic hemispheres and coat them in wax (to make removal of the polyurethane easier.) This is far more expensive than the balloon but gives more precise results. You can find people selling these in sizes up to 6 feet but it will get pricey. It's worth mentioning that I had a hard time removing the set polyurethane from the plastic even with a wax coating (which I also verified experimentally is the least sticky thing to use) so I'm not sure it's even the best approach. I've tried reaching out to polyurethane component manufacturers but so far no response. I'm sure outsourcing this would remove a lot of headaches, but also be very expensive for such a custom piece.
Just to highlight why I think this commonly available polyurethane foam is promising I want to calculate a 1 meter radius sphere of one half inch thickness to show that it should work in theory. Of course, this means no defects including the joining of the two hemispheres which is still a problem to solve but it's possible gorilla glue and precision would solve it. Maybe a DIY'er with their own CNC may want to give it a shot.
Using the volume of sphere formula given above we see that the volume of 1 meter radius is 4.187m3. The volume of a sphere of 1 meter minus 1/2 inch is 4.0295 m3. The buoyant lift of that is 11.44 lbs. The difference in volume (to find the volume of the polyurethane used) is .1575 m3 or 5.56 ft3. At a density of 2 lbs/ft3 that gives a weight of 11 lbs of polyurethane. That's less than the 11.44 lbs of lift.
I know what you're probably thinking. How does it hold vacuum? It's true that polyurethane and styrofoam are not expected to hold vacuum (I actually did find experimentally that styrofoam does hold partial vacuum for a few hours after it's shrunk much like the LANL aerogel) but you can simply wrap the sphere in plastic to hold vacuum. I planned on experimenting with dip coatings, but for experimental purposes I came up with a very clever design that I will explain later. Just know that the plastic doesn't have to be very thick to hold vacuum so it's very much within the range of possibility to coat the sphere in a thin plastic layer at less than .44 lbs. Plastic is very dense, but we are talking about literally a few mils of material. This is also why I roll my eyes at people who mock me for attempting a design with materials that don't hold vacuum. You are not limited to materials that hold vacuum for your design when you can simply add a layer for that later.

Experimental Set Up

I initially bought one of those vacuum chambers made out of a large steel pan and thick acrylic. Mechanical pumps are easy to find and relatively cheap. Mine came with the chamber. However, I quickly found it wasn't big enough and attempting to build a larger one looked costly. This is where I got clever and shocked myself with a very cheap set up that actually works. I simply bought regular large sized vacuum bags designed for storing cloths because they have a clever little self sealing mechanism that traps the vacuum. These bags are not meant for actual vacuum with a mechanical pump so I wasn't sure how it would work. I also had to find a way to rig it all up. As funny as it sounds my solution was to take the nozzle of an empty plastic bottle that happened to fit onto the hose and then I cut a piece of EDPM rubber to cover the end meant for the bottle and put a small slit in the center for air to move through. I then pushed this into the self sealing part of the vacuum bag and it actually creates a seal and pumps down! And when you remove the pump it self seals!
I found I sometimes had issues with pumping down properly and solved this by using a metal straw that I placed inside the bag near the seal and directed towards the sphere to act as a channel. Once again, to my surprise this works very well.
So, I then disassembled my original steel pot vacuum chamber and used the parts along with some parts I had to buy online to rig the pressure gauge into the system so that I could verify how much vacuum I was achieving. I'm a bit proud of this DIY set up because it works so well.
In order to properly record your results you must weight the vacuum bag and the metal straw as well as your experimental sphere before vacuuming. Then vacuum it down and pay attention to the gauge. If your design is not very good it may implode before achieving full vacuum. That's okay. You can actually measure a weight reduction without reaching the full vacuum. "Full" vacuum in this case is actually what is known as low vacuum. Low vacuum is all you need for a vacuum balloon to work as you have effectively removed most of the air and it's not necessary to reach medium or high vacuum.
This set up was for spheres of only 1 foot diameter and I don't think there are bags large enough for 6 foot spheres. However, my plan was to use a heat gun to stitch a bunch of the bags together to make it work. It's dirty but once again it should work theoretically. I was also planning on using a heat gun to section off portions of the bag to seal it around the sphere and cut off excess material but that part is really only necessary if you are about to achieve lift. I imagine it's possible once you've proven you can make a structure strong enough and light enough for lift that a better technique would be to incorporate a valve and find a way to dip coat the sphere to seal it. I never got this far.

A Potential New Approach To Foam

I mentioned experimenting with making foams and identifying polycarbonate as good material to turn into a nano foam. I use the term nano foam because aerogel wouldn't be technically correct. They are both nano foams. The aerogel is made using gel. This approach doesn't. It's very low tech and dirty. I theorized I could use the fact that polycarbonate is a thermoplastic to my advantage and mix it as a powder with another material that can withstand it's glass transition temperature but is also easily soluble in water. So, I found some polycarbonate powder (first American apparently to buy it) and mixed it with some ordinary table salt then put it in the oven. I know this sounds ridiculous. Then I washed the sample after it cooled in the sink and dried it with paper towels. Then I soaked it in rubbing alcohol and dried that with paper towels. Then I let it sit overnight to fully evaporate if it's a big sample. Then I weighed it. When I mix the powder in a 1:1 ratio by weight the sample after washing it weights exactly half of when I started without losing any volume. So I washed out all of the salt. But, that's not all. Because this method is basically sintering the particles together, it already had lots of air pockets in it to begin with. I attempted to make a one cubic inch sample to measure the density and it's not the most precise but the density is roughly 4.7 g/in3 which is about a quarter of the density of bulk polycarbonate. This means it's porosity is about 75%. It's not he 90-99.99% of commercial aerogel, but I personally find the initial results surprising. There's a lot of ideas I have to tweak this including playing with the mix ratio, grain size, uniformity of the particles, and aerating the powder. What I find very interesting about this technique in general is that it actually would work with anything that can be sintered including other thermoplastics, ceramics, glasses and metals. This means this approach could be used to make porous metals or even metal nano foams.

The 2009 analysis of the metal sphere UFO

I've recently been made aware of the 1994 spherical UFO that Steve Colbern published a report on in 2009. A few things stand out to me as someone who has been actively working on vacuum balloons and ways to make porous metals. First, it looks like two hemispheres nested inside each other exactly as I describe was my best approach to making a vacuum balloon based off of experimental results. Second, the sphere is presumably hollow. Third, the report clearly states that the sample analyzed was a porous metal with nanostructures present. A hollow porous shell with nested hemispheres of opposing orientation is exactly what I would expect a vacuum balloon to look like. There are ways to use my technique on titanium to make it porous although I haven't done so experimentally because it's melting point is very high. Materials other than salt could be used but even if salt was used it would be interesting because it would vaporize at the glass transition temp of titanium which actually might help make it more porous. I do believe Na and Cl impurities were present in the sample according to the report. Perhaps one could experimentally recreate this sample using this method (minus the isotopes.)

Crowdsourcing

If anybody wants to crowdsource the work on this with me I'm open to it. Also, if people are open to crowdfunding the research I'm open to that as well. Either way, it's up on the internet now. Maybe 10 years from now somebody as crazy as me will pick up where I left off. I might return to this at a later date, but without help I think I need to take a break.
submitted by efh1 to observingtheanomaly [link] [comments]


2023.06.07 02:50 efh1 I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern

I've decided to open source my research into vacuum balloons and a potentially new approach to nano foams. This information is very interesting when compared to the UFO metal sphere analysis published by Steve Colbern
I've been doing online research as well as some tinkering and was planning on building a prototype to demonstrate the first ever vacuum balloon, but I'm running into issues with expenses and time. I believe I've identified 2 approaches using well known materials that should work but one in particular that could be pulled off by a garage tinkerer with extra time and money to spare on the project.
Along the way I also started experimenting with creating foams using a technique I've basically invented as far as I can tell. I can't find any literature on it. I've gotten mixed results with it and am just not sure if it will ever work at least without being done properly in a lab setting. The approach has a lot of promise and I'll explain why.
There's a lot to go into on this subject. I've written about vacuum balloons before so if this is a new concept for you, you should give it a read.
I'm human so some of this work could have errors in it, but I have done experiments to test my theory and gotten interesting results. I have measured weight reduction in some of my designs and I have accurately predicted the results in cases where I could measure properly. That gave me a lot of hope to continue on at first but it's just a lot of work and I went way over budget early on. I can't keep pouring money into the project anymore and it hurts to say that because some of the results are so interesting. Also, life gets's busy and I can only tinker for so long.

Shapes

The best shape is a sphere because you need to withstand the atmospheric pressure outside the balloon pushing in at about 14 psi. For the same reasons we build bridges with arches, the sphere is the best shape for this because it will spread the forces out evenly. It becomes a matter of having a material that can withstand the compressive forces and in the case of non-uniformity (which to some degree is always going to be present) shear forces. Of course, the material also needs to be lightweight or it will never lift. Many sources will erroneously tell you no such material exists, but this isn't true. In theory, there are multiple materials that would probably work but the issue starts to become the total size of the balloon (and defects.) You could make it out of glass, but the balloon would have to be incredibly large and would be insanely prone to shattering and that's even if it was made defect free so there's really no point in trying normal glass. This is where choosing your materials is key so that you don't waste your time.
The volume of a sphere is V = 4/3πr^3
To calculate the buoyant force of lift at atmosphere you can simply multiply the volume by 1.29 kg/m3 and that will give you the amount it can lift in kg. Simply multiply by 2.2 for conversion to get the number in pounds. This formula was derived from the formula below.
https://preview.redd.it/6yf88k6uth4b1.png?width=516&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b5903bc3d27d74cc56765bcbe624c562d10cbab
The 1.29 kg/m3 is the fluid density of atmosphere and I simply removed the acceleration of gravity to show the force in units of pure weight rather than in Newtons. It's a simple calculation and understanding it is key to helping you design the vacuum balloon.
Now that you understand how to calculate the lifting force of vacuum in a sphere you can run a bunch of numbers and see for yourself that the lifting force is very small below radius 1 and grows exponentially above radius 1. This means it will be exceptionally hard to build a working vacuum balloon below radius 1 but unfortunately there are limitations to building large structures as well. Usually you want a prototype to be simple and cheap, not experimental in and of itself. This means the first demonstrated vacuum balloon will likely be about 2 meters in diameter or about 6 feet. It also means a vacuum balloon of very large proportions would potentially have incredible lifting force.
Now that you understand the relations between size and lifting force all you need to do is calculate the volume of the envelope of the spherical balloon. This is done by simply calculating the volume of a sphere of the size of the envelope and then subtracting that by the volume of the inner void. The difference is the volume of your envelope and you can easily calculate the weight of your envelope by multiplying the density by the volume. If you do this while calculating the lifting force and plug different numbers in you can easily see how the ratio of weight to volume works. You can also see how the density influences this and even can compare the volume of different shapes if you really want to just to see how much better a sphere really is than perhaps a square.
It's very important to point out that one of my biggest lessons in building prototypes is that there can't be any defects. I originally was making hemispheres and trying to join them together before pumping down to vacuum and every time there was a failure it was at the meeting of the two hemispheres. One solid piece seems to be necessary. It's conceivable that two hemispheres can be joined and bonded to become one solid piece free of defects, but I unfortunately did not have the materials to do this. I did do some experiments and found that you can reinforce this area with lightweight bamboo if necessary. However, these were small preliminary designs and I'm not confident that would scale well.
It's worth noting that the next best shape is a cylinder with hemispheres on each end. Basically a tic tac shape. It's only worth attempting this shape if you have reasons to from a manufacturing perspective. For example, I played around with the idea of making a foam sheet and then rolling it into a cylinder before it set rather than attempting to cast a foam hemisphere. It only makes sense if you are attempting a volume too large to pull off as a sphere for practical reasons (like it would't fit in garage or won't caste evenly.) Because it still needs hemispheres it's a design best left for after demonstrating a spherical design.

Materials

I dive into the use of aerogels and xerogels in the article referenced above. The purpose of these foam materials is because when engineered properly they retain a lot of their strength but lose a lot of their weight which actually increases their strength to weight ratio and that's exactly what we need to make this work. There is no material in bulk form worth pursuing for this design. You absolutely have to use a foam material. Even if you could pull it off using glass or beryllium, it's just not practical even for demonstration purposes. During my search I found the most attractive material in the bulk to be polycarbonate. It's still not worth trying in bulk form, so I invented a way to make a foam out of it. Polycarbonate is lighter and stronger than glass. Nobody has ever made an aerogel out of it that I'm aware of. I did not image my foam because I'm not doing this work in a sophisticated lab, but I can say fairly confidently that it's about 75% porosity. That's impressive, but I suspect that a lot of the bonding is weak and there's defects, but in my defense I used an insanely primitive and low tech technique.
There are two well known foams we all have access to that in theory should work. Styrofoam and polyurethane.
I understand that may cause you to sigh in disbelief. After all, polyurethane was invented in the 1930's at IG Farben and styrofoam in the 1940's so they are not only old but very ubiquitous. I should also point out that aerogel was invented in the 1930's and was once mass produced by Monsanto. None of these materials are new.
I used the given compressive and shear strengths published by a local styrofoam manufacturer to identify some common commercial grade foams that are very light weight that should work in theory if there's no defects. I tried working with them to have some custom shapes made, but they unfortunately are limited to 4 feet for one of the dimensions of their die blocks. This is very problematic even if we knew how to fuse two styrofoam hemispheres together. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it makes pulling it off more challenging. I did do some experiments with small 1 foot diameter styrofoam hemispheres that are commonly available and managed to measure a weight reduction before it imploded. Anybody can replicate these experiments. I expected it to fail because the thickness was less than 1 inch. I found the best design was to nest two of these styrofoam spheres within each other but with the orientations opposing so that the point of failure for the outer sphere was across the strongest points of the inner sphere. This should create a perpendicular crossing of the hemispheres of the inner and outer shells. This is also where I tried some glues. Gorilla glue works best and sure enough it's a polyurethane. I was so impressed by it that I switched over to attempting polyurethane designs for the sphere.
I found a polyurethane foam used in boating that is only 2lb/ft3 which is very impressive. It also boasts a compressive strength of 38 psi. I figure that means half an inch of this stuff would be able to handle 19 psi theoretically. That's 5 psi above the 14 psi we need for our vacuum balloon. It's not a lot of room for error, but it works in theory.
What I like about polyurethane is that you can fairly easily make custom shapes with it and DIY. I experimented with a few different techniques and can say that you need this foam to be open to the air to set properly, but it does take on conformal shapes fairly well. The best method I found to make a hemisphere out of it was to actually blow up a rubber balloon and fit that snug into a styrofoam sheet for support and then pour the polyurethane foam onto it and let it set. You can then use cutting tools to clean up the extra material. This method works, but the cutting is a pain as I did it by hand. Precision will likely be necessary to properly join the two hemispheres and I learned this the hard way when I tried to join them. A more precise way to form the hemispheres I found was to buy plastic hemispheres and coat them in wax (to make removal of the polyurethane easier.) This is far more expensive than the balloon but gives more precise results. You can find people selling these in sizes up to 6 feet but it will get pricey. It's worth mentioning that I had a hard time removing the set polyurethane from the plastic even with a wax coating (which I also verified experimentally is the least sticky thing to use) so I'm not sure it's even the best approach. I've tried reaching out to polyurethane component manufacturers but so far no response. I'm sure outsourcing this would remove a lot of headaches, but also be very expensive for such a custom piece.
Just to highlight why I think this commonly available polyurethane foam is promising I want to calculate a 1 meter radius sphere of one half inch thickness to show that it should work in theory. Of course, this means no defects including the joining of the two hemispheres which is still a problem to solve but it's possible gorilla glue and precision would solve it. Maybe a DIY'er with their own CNC may want to give it a shot.
Using the volume of sphere formula given above we see that the volume of 1 meter radius is 4.187m3. The volume of a sphere of 1 meter minus 1/2 inch is 4.0295 m3. The buoyant lift of that is 11.44 lbs. The difference in volume (to find the volume of the polyurethane used) is .1575 m3 or 5.56 ft3. At a density of 2 lbs/ft3 that gives a weight of 11 lbs of polyurethane. That's less than the 11.44 lbs of lift.
I know what you're probably thinking. How does it hold vacuum? It's true that polyurethane and styrofoam are not expected to hold vacuum (I actually did find experimentally that styrofoam does hold partial vacuum for a few hours after it's shrunk much like the LANL aerogel) but you can simply wrap the sphere in plastic to hold vacuum. I planned on experimenting with dip coatings, but for experimental purposes I came up with a very clever design that I will explain later. Just know that the plastic doesn't have to be very thick to hold vacuum so it's very much within the range of possibility to coat the sphere in a thin plastic layer at less than .44 lbs. Plastic is very dense, but we are talking about literally a few mils of material. This is also why I roll my eyes at people who mock me for attempting a design with materials that don't hold vacuum. You are not limited to materials that hold vacuum for your design when you can simply add a layer for that later.

Experimental Set Up

I initially bought one of those vacuum chambers made out of a large steel pan and thick acrylic. Mechanical pumps are easy to find and relatively cheap. Mine came with the chamber. However, I quickly found it wasn't big enough and attempting to build a larger one looked costly. This is where I got clever and shocked myself with a very cheap set up that actually works. I simply bought regular large sized vacuum bags designed for storing cloths because they have a clever little self sealing mechanism that traps the vacuum. These bags are not meant for actual vacuum with a mechanical pump so I wasn't sure how it would work. I also had to find a way to rig it all up. As funny as it sounds my solution was to take the nozzle of an empty plastic bottle that happened to fit onto the hose and then I cut a piece of EDPM rubber to cover the end meant for the bottle and put a small slit in the center for air to move through. I then pushed this into the self sealing part of the vacuum bag and it actually creates a seal and pumps down! And when you remove the pump it self seals!
I found I sometimes had issues with pumping down properly and solved this by using a metal straw that I placed inside the bag near the seal and directed towards the sphere to act as a channel. Once again, to my surprise this works very well.
So, I then disassembled my original steel pot vacuum chamber and used the parts along with some parts I had to buy online to rig the pressure gauge into the system so that I could verify how much vacuum I was achieving. I'm a bit proud of this DIY set up because it works so well.
In order to properly record your results you must weight the vacuum bag and the metal straw as well as your experimental sphere before vacuuming. Then vacuum it down and pay attention to the gauge. If your design is not very good it may implode before achieving full vacuum. That's okay. You can actually measure a weight reduction without reaching the full vacuum. "Full" vacuum in this case is actually what is known as low vacuum. Low vacuum is all you need for a vacuum balloon to work as you have effectively removed most of the air and it's not necessary to reach medium or high vacuum.
This set up was for spheres of only 1 foot diameter and I don't think there are bags large enough for 6 foot spheres. However, my plan was to use a heat gun to stitch a bunch of the bags together to make it work. It's dirty but once again it should work theoretically. I was also planning on using a heat gun to section off portions of the bag to seal it around the sphere and cut off excess material but that part is really only necessary if you are about to achieve lift. I imagine it's possible once you've proven you can make a structure strong enough and light enough for lift that a better technique would be to incorporate a valve and find a way to dip coat the sphere to seal it. I never got this far.

A Potential New Approach To Foam

I mentioned experimenting with making foams and identifying polycarbonate as good material to turn into a nano foam. I use the term nano foam because aerogel wouldn't be technically correct. They are both nano foams. The aerogel is made using gel. This approach doesn't. It's very low tech and dirty. I theorized I could use the fact that polycarbonate is a thermoplastic to my advantage and mix it as a powder with another material that can withstand it's glass transition temperature but is also easily soluble in water. So, I found some polycarbonate powder (first American apparently to buy it) and mixed it with some ordinary table salt then put it in the oven. I know this sounds ridiculous. Then I washed the sample after it cooled in the sink and dried it with paper towels. Then I soaked it in rubbing alcohol and dried that with paper towels. Then I let it sit overnight to fully evaporate if it's a big sample. Then I weighed it. When I mix the powder in a 1:1 ratio by weight the sample after washing it weights exactly half of when I started without losing any volume. So I washed out all of the salt. But, that's not all. Because this method is basically sintering the particles together, it already had lots of air pockets in it to begin with. I attempted to make a one cubic inch sample to measure the density and it's not the most precise but the density is roughly 4.7 g/in3 which is about a quarter of the density of bulk polycarbonate. This means it's porosity is about 75%. It's not he 90-99.99% of commercial aerogel, but I personally find the initial results surprising. There's a lot of ideas I have to tweak this including playing with the mix ratio, grain size, uniformity of the particles, and aerating the powder. What I find very interesting about this technique in general is that it actually would work with anything that can be sintered including other thermoplastics, ceramics, glasses and metals. This means this approach could be used to make porous metals or even metal nano foams.

The 2009 analysis of the metal sphere UFO

I've recently been made aware of the 1994 spherical UFO that Steve Colbern published a report on in 2009. A few things stand out to me as someone who has been actively working on vacuum balloons and ways to make porous metals. First, it looks like two hemispheres nested inside each other exactly as I describe was my best approach to making a vacuum balloon based off of experimental results. Second, the sphere is presumably hollow. Third, the report clearly states that the sample analyzed was a porous metal with nanostructures present. A hollow porous shell with nested hemispheres of opposing orientation is exactly what I would expect a vacuum balloon to look like. There are ways to use my technique on titanium to make it porous although I haven't done so experimentally because it's melting point is very high. Materials other than salt could be used but even if salt was used it would be interesting because it would vaporize at the glass transition temp of titanium which actually might help make it more porous. I do believe Na and Cl impurities were present in the sample according to the report. Perhaps one could experimentally recreate this sample using this method (minus the isotopes.)

Crowdsourcing

If anybody wants to crowdsource the work on this with me I'm open to it. Also, if people are open to crowdfunding the research I'm open to that as well. Either way, it's up on the internet now. Maybe 10 years from now somebody as crazy as me will pick up where I left off. I might return to this at a later date, but without help I think I need to take a break.
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2023.06.07 02:48 futurethirteen Starter pressure washer

I used the search and couldn't find any good ones, but what would you all recommend for a pressure washer under $800 for a business, also a decent starter surface cleaner?
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