Tag Archives for chemistry

Making Tires out of Dandelions

Really!

Thanks to an under-appreciated species of dandelion called the “Kazakh dandelion,” Mitas hopes to test the first agriculture tire made from agricultural cultivated crops. The company says it plans to have a prototype of the dandelion tire by 2015.

Rubber extracted from the Taraxacum koksaghyz species will complement rubber tree latex in the compound of this tire, explains Andrew Mabin, Mitas sales and marketing director.

“We are examining different ways to use natural and renewable materials to produce our tires,” he says. “Our research and development department is actively seeking new ways of improving our manufacturing process, which includes researching new raw materials or substitutes.”

Mitas is one of several tire manufacturers researching the benefits of the Kazakh dandelion in producing a more sustainable rubber for their tires. There have been past attempts at producing rubber from the plant, although not for agricultural tires. It was cultivated on a large scale in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1950. During WWII, several other countries, including the U.S., experimented with the plant as an emergency source of rubber when traditional supplies in Southeast Asia were threatened.

Researchers at The Ohio State University say they can produce as much as 1,500 kg of rubber per acre (just over 3,300 lbs), in small-scale trials. That production is on par with the best Asian tree plantations, but has not been repeatable yet on large-acre trials.

Mitas’ effort is a part of the Drive4EU consortium, which consists of eight industrial partners and five research organizations from six EU countries and Kazakhstan to tap into this dandelion species’ ability to produce both rubber and insulin.

Insulin, too? It’s like a miracle plant! 🙂

It’s okay to pee in the ocean, says the American Chemical Society

Good to know. 🙂

When you’re enjoying the water on a hot summer day and realize you have to go, do you need to swim all the way back to the bathroom? Or can you just pee in the ocean?

Go ahead and pee, says a new video from the American Chemical Society, an association of professional chemists and chemical engineers. The video points out that urine is almost entirely made of water, sodium and chloride, which are already found in large quantities in the ocean. Pee does contain a tiny bit of the waste product urea, but the amount is minuscule compared to the 350 quintillion litres of water in the Atlantic Ocean alone.

Besides, the video suggests, the urea may be good for the environment: “Urea contains a lot of nitrogen. Nitrogen combines with water to produce ammonium which feeds ocean plant life.”

The Chemistry Joke That Got a Student Suspended

Will S.' Anarcho-Tyranny Blog

“Administrators were not pleased once they figured it out.” (Those who can’t teach, administrate.)

Paris Gray, upstanding vice president of her about-to-graduate high-school class in Jonesboro, Georgia, was suspended last Friday when administrators figured out what her yearbook quote meant. It read:

When the going gets tough, just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfur, Uranium, Phosphorus.

So, when the going gets tough, just remember to [Ba][C][K] [Th][At] [As][S] [U][P].

“Basically, it was me just saying start all over again,” Gray told Carl Willis of the local news station WSB-TV last night. Gray was a toddler when Juvenile’s song “Back That Azz Up” spent a summer dominating the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart and capsizing a lexicon. Whatever wisdom might be drawn from that song is at odds with Gray’s sunny interpretation of the phrase: “You have to go back and start all over.”

Administrators…

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