The Oil Drum

106 comments on The Fort Collins Dilemma

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pondlife on December 3, 2007 - 9:39am

Then why stop at Cadmium? Electronics is stuffed full of nasty things [at the manufacturing + assembly stage] I dont think you would want Arsenic, Berylium, Gallium, Telurium, Germanium, Phosphorus, Mercury, Americurium, Tantalum, Phosgene, Thorium, CFCs, nastystuffium etc in your Coffee. This issue needed resolving 80 years ago.

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Gilgamesh on December 3, 2007 - 12:46pm

ya im an engg too, to purify the waste water stream we need gov costs for different pollutions and the toxicologists to tell us what purification method to use (chemical precipitation, RO, UF, MF, centrifugation, electrodepositation, ion exchange) these processess all require energy, and it is probable that the specific efficiency of solar panels would allow for said filtering.

This is where toxicology comes in to play, we need to know the LOEL and NOEL's for the chemicals to determine economic responses.

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Tom Womack on December 4, 2007 - 10:28am

I'd happily stir my coffee with a tantalum spoon; the metal is unreactive enough that it's used in medical implants. Also hard enough and refractory enough that making a spoon out of it would be an interesting and quite expensive exercise.

Oliver Sacks has been known to offer guests a gallium spoon for their coffee - gallium melts at about 37C, so the spoon ends up as a little pool at the bottom of the mug - which suggests gallium is not horribly toxic.

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slinky on December 6, 2007 - 7:54am

I'll spell it out for you...these panels are not just CdTe...they're a combo of Cad Tel, Cad sulfide, and Cad Chloride, lick away my friend, you owe me 1000.00

Jeff