#NurdRage #video on a US$10 metal aspirator #vacuum pump for the homelab, for example for vacuum distillation boiling water at 39° or even 19°, as an alternative to cheap US$6 nylon diaphragm pumps. He powers his aspirator from a US$20 60W 100psi 12V diaphragm water pump recirculating in a polyethylene tub. He points out that this has the advantage that it “scrubs” the gas extracted by mixing it very well with the water.
on 02025-10-21#video by #NurdRage on the keychain-based radioisotope photovoltaic generator, extracting tritium vials from plastic keychains and using a Soxhlet extractor to remove the plastic encapsulation with dichloromethane, then removing the silicone from the ends with concentrated sulfuric acid. He put 14 of the glass vials side by side, totaling about 100mm with maybe 60mm length, sandwiching them between two amorphous silicon solar panels of that size with clear plastic tape. Open-circuit voltage 1.9 volts per panel, but only on the order of a microamp (per panel) short-circuit current. He put it in series with a 1MΩ current-sense resistor to measure the current more exactly, reduced to 893kΩ by the parallel impedance of his voltmeter, so he could measure the current accurately; short-circuit current was about 900nA, and the maximum power point was about 1.65 volts and 600nA, thus almost 1000nW, 1μW. With the second PV cell this increases to 1.23μW. The more sensitive circuit increased the measured open-circuit voltage to about 2.02V. Results with a monocrystalline cell peaked at 71nW at 70mV (when scaled up to the size of the amorphous panel) due to the cell’s poor suitability for low-light generation. #electronics #hardware #energy
on 02025-05-22#video on #manufacturing SO₃ #materials #bootstrapping by #NurdRage. I didn’t know you could dehydrate H₂SO₄ with H₄P₂O₇! But he’s dehydrating it with Na₂S₂O₇ instead.
on 02024-09-04#video of #NurdRage making chloroplatinic acid #materials #bootstrapping #scouting
on 02024-08-27#NurdRage #video on #bootstrapping H₂SO₄ by blowing SO₂ onto a CuCl₂ solution, which oxidizes it the same way it oxidizes PCB copper, precipitating CuCl and also producing HCl as a waste product. Then you can reoxidize the CuCl with air before switching back to SO₂. He also mentions he made a previous video using H₂O₂ to do the oxidation. #materials #scouting
on 02024-06-26#NurdRage #video on #bootstrapping H₂SO₄ from oxalic acid (dihydrate) and ferrous sulfate (heptahydrate), and the sun, with 46–67% yield. It’s very surprising to me that this precipitates iron oxalate. He boiled down the resulting acid until the remaining sulfate started to crystallize, then distilled it to 70% of nice, colorless acid. Using more oxalic acid he got 57% yield, and by leaving the defecation beaker in the sun for eight hours to reduce ferric ions, releasing CO₂, boosting the yield to 67%. An attempt with MgSO₄ only gave 2% yield. An attempt with blue vitriol generated a precipitate too fine to filter (maybe because he added the oxalic acid too fast). He says it even works for HNO₃. #materials #scouting
on 02024-06-25