Using tires for SHTF scenarios

[Xaevian]

Hows that different from shredded tires being used as playground/landscaping mulch? https://www.shreddedmulch.com/the-process-of-making-rubber-mulch/

Have you seen kids these days?

 

[CamoDeafie]

Have you seen kids these days?

I'm looking at my two.

 

[Xaevian]

I'm looking at my two.

When they are in the Lego stage, tread lightly.

 

[Knobgoblin]

When they are in the Lego stage, tread lightly.

OMG
Pun Picasso!

 

[Cavedweller]

You expected different?

Not on this forum.

 

[The Heretic]

I suppose you could use tires as a baffle stack to mitigate noise if building a shooting range... Might not be that useful for actual training, but for sighting / zeroing optics it would probably serve a purpose. That's assuming you have the space / backstop to do it.

Some ranges have used tires and/or barrels to do this.

 

[lucusloc]

Just don't use them to grow anything in. Don't want the tire chemicals to leach into your foods or other plants.

I'm not sure what's in there that is all that objectionable? They are mostly long chain hydrocarbons with sulphur cross-links. Anything that leaches out will quickly become food for bacteria and fungi, and that happens at a glacial pace (which is why they last so long).

 

[doninoregon]

Search for "earth ship tires" on youtube.

I knew a guy who lived in an earth ship house. It was stacked tires + rammed earth + stucco exterior finish and had a hydronic heated floor. Fireproof, bulletproof, very high insulation value. The south end was a greenhouse, so good solar gain.

 

[hongkong2]

I'm not sure what's in there that is all that objectionable? They are mostly long chain hydrocarbons with sulphur cross-links. Anything that leaches out will quickly become food for bacteria and fungi, and that happens at a glacial pace (which is why they last so long).

Isn't this what happens to all the tire rubber left on our roads?

 

[GrayGoose]

Eat my rubber.
Burn some dust...

View: https://youtu.be/ozksR8QLWzM?si=hBLMxwPc24yby9H8

 

[lucusloc]

Isn't this what happens to all the tire rubber left on our roads?

Eventually, if they are not collected by cleanup crews. Most of them get mechanically ground down if they are left on the road. This helps them degrade faster.

Carbon is essential to life, and basically every form of the stuff has some kind of natural consumer that can convert it into bio-available species. The only form I do not think has a natural consumer is Diamond, and I am not 100% sure if anything eats nano-tubes (but I would not be surprised if there was, because there are microbes that eat graphite in the right conditions). Hydrocarbons, even the stabilized ones, have lots of natural consumers. These can be found naturally, as bacterial mats will form on natural petroleum seeps, and our oceans are full of petroleum eating microbes that feed on the natural undersea seeps.

They saw an explosion of these microbe during the Deepwater Horizon spill. The spill initially overwhelmed natural consumers, but after a few years of mixing the only thing left from the disaster were the tarballs, which break down incredibly slowly (just like tires). All the shorter chain hydrocarbons where gone, eaten by the vast army of microbes that rely on various forms of long chain carbon to survive.

Now they are exploring ways to speed this process up, as they are investigating how to get fungi to more rapidly break down rubber so that they can start directly composting the stuff into more bio-available products for use in more traditional product streams. The stuff will eat rubber in almost any environment, but they are trying to sort out what kind of environment it eats the fastest in. So far they have the stuff eating a tire in as little as a few months, but that seems to require expensive nutritional supplementation for the culture, as well as expensive climate control to keep it happy. Drop the expensive pandering and the consumption process climbs to years or decades, which is too long to be commercially viable. The breeding of a less picky strain continues.

But even that is pretty impressive. Grind up a tire, put it in a vat with a live culture and some nutrients, babysit it for a few months and you get a nice mix of high bio-available carbon compost out the other end. Too bad for them dirt is so cheap.

 

[P7M13]

We're treading on some new territory here.

Nah, all "new" ideas are retreads of old, tired ideas.


In the '80's I joined a company as a designer, and they were in the late stages of a .gov project to convert tires using atmospheric furnaces. The thermal process yielded insane amounts of carbon black, a high purity high temperature oil extracted on condensation, and the steel that was in the tire. Though the products of the conversion project far exceeded the expectations of all those involved, the project was a failure because of carbon black deposits on the heat source. Whether it was radiant tube or electric, the elements would get soot deposit and rapidly fail. The tire shredder apparatus was something to behold.

 

[lucusloc]

Nah, all "new" ideas are retreads of old, tired ideas.


In the '80's I joined a company as a designer, and they were in the late stages of a .gov project to convert tires using atmospheric furnaces. The thermal process yielded insane amounts of carbon black, a high purity high temperature oil extracted on condensation, and the steel that was in the tire. Though the products of the conversion project far exceeded the expectations of all those involved, the project was a failure because of carbon black deposits on the heat source. Whether it was radiant tube or electric, the elements would get soot deposit and rapidly fail. The tire shredder apparatus was something to behold.

They do commercial tire rendering today, but they never did perfect the process. They sill have a fouling issue, and this means they are stuck with limited duration runs. This cuts into their efficiency, but it is still somewhat commercially viable for niche cases (local production of precursor distillates for downstream processes, for example). Bulk rendering, however, still eludes us.

Pure carbon matrices are phenomenal insulators. This is the basis for the mystical Starlight material, it really is just a basic carbon foam. These materials are very delicate, which means they have little commercial applications, but they can be a real pain to deal with if your process continually produces them. For example, there are processes that can build up a carbon foam on the inside of a reaction vessel to such an extent that no heat can escape and the reaction goes into thermal runaway. I forget which process this was, but they have large "gongs" on the outside that periodically ring the reaction vessel to slough off the carbon buildup.

But as noted this can also insulate your heating element, causing it to cook itself. For this specific process I was reading about an attempt to use a tungsten pipe flowing hot gasses as the primary heat source, as the main heat production process would then be outside the reaction vessel and more easily regulatable. Plus as the insulating layer built up you could just blast more heat into it to maintain a decent temperature in the rendering chamber. As far as I remember this all worked, it was just expensive enough to make it not all that economically viable. Other people have looked at mechanical removal during the hot part of the process itself. We do have other industrial analogs to this process, as a lot of foundry work uses hot-end equipment to deal with slag and such. But again, this is not a cheap solution, and it really need to be to make bulk rendering viable. If they can figure out the organic digestion I think that would be a better option, we know how to solve all the heat related problems, but the cost is just too much. Taking a bunch of ground up tires and putting them under a tarp for a few months with the right fungal culture would not be cost prohibitive if you can find something that will tolerate those conditions.

 

[Nosferatu]

Eventually, if they are not collected by cleanup crews. Most of them get mechanically ground down if they are left on the road. This helps them degrade faster.

Carbon is essential to life, and basically every form of the stuff has some kind of natural consumer that can convert it into bio-available species. The only form I do not think has a natural consumer is Diamond, and I am not 100% sure if anything eats nano-tubes (but I would not be surprised if there was, because there are microbes that eat graphite in the right conditions). Hydrocarbons, even the stabilized ones, have lots of natural consumers. These can be found naturally, as bacterial mats will form on natural petroleum seeps, and our oceans are full of petroleum eating microbes that feed on the natural undersea seeps.

They saw an explosion of these microbe during the Deepwater Horizon spill. The spill initially overwhelmed natural consumers, but after a few years of mixing the only thing left from the disaster were the tarballs, which break down incredibly slowly (just like tires). All the shorter chain hydrocarbons where gone, eaten by the vast army of microbes that rely on various forms of long chain carbon to survive.

Now they are exploring ways to speed this process up, as they are investigating how to get fungi to more rapidly break down rubber so that they can start directly composting the stuff into more bio-available products for use in more traditional product streams. The stuff will eat rubber in almost any environment, but they are trying to sort out what kind of environment it eats the fastest in. So far they have the stuff eating a tire in as little as a few months, but that seems to require expensive nutritional supplementation for the culture, as well as expensive climate control to keep it happy. Drop the expensive pandering and the consumption process climbs to years or decades, which is too long to be commercially viable. The breeding of a less picky strain continues.

But even that is pretty impressive. Grind up a tire, put it in a vat with a live culture and some nutrients, babysit it for a few months and you get a nice mix of high bio-available carbon compost out the other end. Too bad for them dirt is so cheap.

They do commercial tire rendering today, but they never did perfect the process. They sill have a fouling issue, and this means they are stuck with limited duration runs. This cuts into their efficiency, but it is still somewhat commercially viable for niche cases (local production of precursor distillates for downstream processes, for example). Bulk rendering, however, still eludes us.

Pure carbon matrices are phenomenal insulators. This is the basis for the mystical Starlight material, it really is just a basic carbon foam. These materials are very delicate, which means they have little commercial applications, but they can be a real pain to deal with if your process continually produces them. For example, there are processes that can build up a carbon foam on the inside of a reaction vessel to such an extent that no heat can escape and the reaction goes into thermal runaway. I forget which process this was, but they have large "gongs" on the outside that periodically ring the reaction vessel to slough off the carbon buildup.

But as noted this can also insulate your heating element, causing it to cook itself. For this specific process I was reading about an attempt to use a tungsten pipe flowing hot gasses as the primary heat source, as the main heat production process would then be outside the reaction vessel and more easily regulatable. Plus as the insulating layer built up you could just blast more heat into it to maintain a decent temperature in the rendering chamber. As far as I remember this all worked, it was just expensive enough to make it not all that economically viable. Other people have looked at mechanical removal during the hot part of the process itself. We do have other industrial analogs to this process, as a lot of foundry work uses hot-end equipment to deal with slag and such. But again, this is not a cheap solution, and it really need to be to make bulk rendering viable. If they can figure out the organic digestion I think that would be a better option, we know how to solve all the heat related problems, but the cost is just too much. Taking a bunch of ground up tires and putting them under a tarp for a few months with the right fungal culture would not be cost prohibitive if you can find something that will tolerate those conditions.

You lucupediad the sh!t outta this thread!

 

[CamoDeafie]

For example, there are processes that can build up a carbon foam on the inside of a reaction vessel to such an extent that no heat can escape and the reaction goes into thermal runaway. I forget which process this was, but they have large "gongs" on the outside that periodically ring the reaction vessel to slough off the carbon buildup.

of carbon black deposits on the heat source. Whether it was radiant tube or electric, the elements would get soot deposit and rapidly fail.

So, the part where Like says "you've got a lot of carbon scoring, were you on a starship?". Or some such (no available captions here), may actually have some basis in fact?

View: https://youtu.be/FmUSsSx5w5A?si=wTUk7KQpjYkZz-O4

 

[bradsteen]

You lucupediad the sh!t outta this thread!

You know you've made it on NWFA when your handle becomes a verb.

 

[lucusloc]

You lucupediad the sh!t outta this thread!

You just wait until I get exited enough about a topic to go back and add references instead of just going off of old fuzzy memories. Suddenly "I don't remember which process exactly" becomes it's own multi-paragraph tangent with half a dozen links as citations. I find industrial process almost exciting as guns. I would probably find them even more fascinating if it was as easy to own them.

 

[lucusloc]

So, the part where Like says "you've got a lot of carbon scoring, were you on a starship?". Or some such (no available captions here), may actually have some basis in fact?

View: https://youtu.be/FmUSsSx5w5A?si=wTUk7KQpjYkZz-O4

Sure? I am not sure what a droid would be doing with high carbon compounds, or why they would have parts that were susceptible to buildup, but if they did it would probably be a problem.

Of course in the clip he was scraping the outside of the case, which indicates external carbon buildup from a high temperature -uh- third party source. Considering the weaponry they have in that universe Luke was probably scraping off the deposits of some random crew member. Those are the only obvious high carbon sources we can see on ships in those films. That deck plating does not look like it is made from carbon fiber after all.

 

[CamoDeafie]

Sure? I am not sure what a droid would be doing with high carbon compounds, or why they would have parts that were susceptible to buildup, but if they did it would probably be a problem.

Of course in the clip he was scraping the outside of the case, which indicates external carbon buildup from a high temperature -uh- third party source. Considering the weaponry they have in that universe Luke was probably scraping off the deposits of some random crew member. Those are the only obvious high carbon sources we can see on ships in those films. That deck plating does not look like it is made from carbon fiber after all.

Does make one wonder the specific droid being cleaned, is known as an astromech.. generally the ones working on their ships mechanicals and apparently in that universe, welding/torching/brazing/soldering is "fixing" but they are often on the exterior of a starfighter, and in the prequels, we see a bunch on the outside of a Royal starship fixing things. (Though we've never seen him go outside in the Falcon or anything else except in Luke's starfighter...) It's quite possible that there are carbon things somewhere and also getting carbon deposits from something in the outside.

 

[lucusloc]

Does make one wonder the specific droid being cleaned, is known as an astromech.. generally the ones working on their ships mechanicals and apparently in that universe, welding/torching/brazing/soldering is "fixing" but they are often on the exterior of a starfighter, and in the prequels, we see a bunch on the outside of a Royal starship fixing things. (Though we've never seen him go outside in the Falcon or anything else except in Luke's starfighter...) It's quite possible that there are carbon things somewhere and also getting carbon deposits from something in the outside.

Elemental depositing is a thing in a vacuum, not just for carbon. But that usual manifests as an even coating on the exposed side, not a scorch mark. I don't know what kind of fuel they use in that universe, but if it is carbon based most external surfaces will probably get a pretty decent dusting any time multiple ships congregate in the same area.

But if we are talking scorch marks, that is from a localized high energy event. It could possible be from welding with carbon containing materials, or in a carbon rich environment, but I do not see a lot of that kind of material on screen, unless there is a lot of plastic on those ships. My guess is still that those are the leftovers of some carbon based life form that had a high energy event happen to it. Hell, R2 has some of his own high energy equipment, I wonder if that may have been from him trying to weld his way out of a confrontation with someone.