Research Project in Cooperation with CERN

Dear Community!

Let me briefly introduce myself: I am a student at Vienna University of Economics and Business and currently working on a research project to identify application fields for technologies and processes developed by CERN. Throughout the searching process, many ideas came up during interview sessions with actual users. One of the ideas arisen was to use a heat treatment installment of CERN to recycle metals.
Now I am writing to this community to ask some details regarding scrap metal recycling. In our opinion, the technology could work and help in this field, but as a business student, we do not have the required knowledge to understand this technical process entirely.

So my questions are:
Which metals are possible to split through heat treatment into different stages?
What temperatures need to be reached and for how long is required to hold them?



Thank you very much for your help and willingness to help to support our project. If you have any questions or need further information regarding the technology feel free to contact me, I am happy and ready to answer every question arising.
Yours,
Daniel

Originally Posted by DanielSchreiber

Dear Community!

Let me briefly introduce myself: I am a student at Vienna University of Economics and Business and currently working on a research project to identify application fields for technologies and processes developed by CERN. Throughout the searching process, many ideas came up during interview sessions with actual users. One of the ideas arisen was to use a heat treatment installment of CERN to recycle metals.
Now I am writing to this community to ask some details regarding scrap metal recycling. In our opinion, the technology could work and help in this field, but as a business student, we do not have the required knowledge to understand this technical process entirely.

So my questions are:
Which metals are possible to split through heat treatment into different stages?
What temperatures need to be reached and for how long is required to hold them?

Thank you very much for your help and willingness to help to support our project. If you have any questions or need further information regarding the technology feel free to contact me, I am happy and ready to answer every question arising.
Yours,
Daniel

Separating lead and aluminum from steel come to mind as potential applications. I would look at conventional furnaces currently employed to do this. I take it you're simply looking at using an alternate source of heat energy to accomplish the separation.

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has talked about a project that would cost billions and would allow toilet waste to be recycled into drinkable water and fertilizer. But what about the toilet paper? Stay tuned...

For many many years people have talked about alchemy, trying to convert lead into gold. Since lead is 90 cents a pound and gold is over $1,200 per OUNCE, this process could lead to vast riches for someone who discovers it early on and keeps their mouth shut while selling their newfound gold holdings. The problem is that once the word got out about what happened, the price of gold would absolutely plummet.

It would be a very complicated situation fraught with all kinds of dangers. For someone who discovered it, they could potentially be murdered. Why? There would be lots of very wealthy people who would lose lots of money.

And, of course, there is always the bluffing game. Someone with enough money and the stones to do such a thing (perhaps a George Soros or wealthy Prince type) could tell the world that they have discovered it. They could go on TV amidst lots of fanfare to do such a thing. This could be the case, even though they haven't actually figured out anything. So they would be totally lying. Why would they do this? They could have a short position in gold, in other words betting it will go down.

When it did plummet they could not only cover their short position with a tidy profit but also buy additional gold at the artificially cheap price. Of course, this strategy of going long gold could backfire in a big way if someone else really did figure out how to convert lead into gold.

I predict that some day there will be a movie made about this subject.

Thank you very much for the warm welcome

also a big thank you for your input, it helped me a lot for further purposes!

One further question which arises: Would it make sense to use the heat treatment oven for recycling purposes?
As a big advantage, I would also mention here that in this oven are special heating zones which can be controlled separately and the temperate can be held for a long time with high accuracy (+/- 3 degree Celsius)

Do you also know some companies which are currently dealing with such things, such as scrap metal recycling, browsing the web appeared not sufficient to me?

Originally Posted by recyclersteve

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has talked about a project that would cost billions and would allow toilet waste to be recycled into drinkable water and fertilizer. But what about the toilet paper? Stay tuned...

*** Sorry for the derail. ***

This one's old tech. I've got it here at home via the septic system.

1: Our wastewater leaves the home and enters the septic tank. The septic tank catches about 95 % of the solids and bio-degrades them.

2: The effluent, AKA greywater, leaves the tank and goes into a leaching field where it's leached into the soil.

3: The leachate gradually filters down through about 100' of granite bedrock into the underground aquifer.

4: Our drilled well , about 100' deep taps into the aquifer and our submersible pump sends the water back to the house.

A little freaky when you think about it ... but that's water cycle !

Municipal wastewater systems work in a similar way. The solids are separated and then used to generate methane gas. The liquids are often dumped into the ocean. The sun hits the ocean, evaporates the water, and it's returned as rain & snow.

Alternatively, the wastewater could be filtered, treated, and reused using something like the Millipore system.

It might be better to filter seawater in places like the middle east where water is scarce. That's what they're currently doing.

Originally Posted by recyclersteve

For many many years people have talked about alchemy, trying to convert lead into gold.

*** sorry another derail ***

Ancient Alchemy was really more of a spiritual metaphor. ( You have to read between the lines sometimes.)

It was more about the process of conversion of the base human spirit (lead) into something worthy of entry into the kingdom of heaven (gold).

Modern day Alchemy would be something far different. It would be about the mastery of manipulating matter and energy at will. See ... matter and energy are basically the same thing. ( E=Mc squared ) We already do that somewhat ... it's just that we haven't got it completely figured out just yet.

And yeah ... it really would upset the apple cart. The wealth wouldn't be in precious metals but rather in the knowledge of how to manipulate matter at will .

Now if someone could truly figure out water desalination without great expense, that would be a nice discovery that could really help mankind.

Just an opinion: I think you have to look around your environment and see where your energy sources are.

Take the middle east for instance: They have crude oil, natural gas from their oil wells, plenty of sunshine, and wind.

In places like Venezuela & Iran ... there's an abundance of LNG & LPG. They're oil producing nations but don't have refining capacity but do have these different flammable gasses coming off the wellheads. A lot of their vehicles are built to run on LNG & LPG.

Desalinization plants and power generating plants utilize the oil resource in some way.

They could build a big solar still to purify their water. You know ... use solar energy to evaporate the seawater and then condense it back to liquid form. They could build a dual purpose solar furnace that produces electricity and purified water.

Iran also has the basic materials to run a nuclear energy plant. They have to mine the radioactive material and then refine it ... but it's a doable plan. ( This one is controversial.)

Point being: It can go all different kinds of ways. It all depends on what you have on hand to work with. It's a wide open field of opportunities.

collider

Isn't that what you drain noodles with?



Sirscrapalot - That's a joke.

I just can't help buy feel that we might not be the best source of information for the OP. Most of us are scrappers and not refiners. There's always been a generally agreed upon prohibition of discussions that have to deal with refining because of the dangers involved.

If we did set up a furnace to purify our metals into ingots ... our scrapyard probably wouldn't accept them.

What he's asking about is generally outside the range of our direct experience unless we've worked in an industrial foundry before ?

All this talk is well over my pay grade.

I just break **** for a living.

I'm simple like that.

Sirscrapalot - Turkey it's what's for dinner for the next week..