In working on improving TEEF powder technology (teefpowder.com) I want to not only be able to produce the tetracalcium phosphate peroxide (special ingredient) faster but also grind it more finely so that it can effect and build teeth enamel better. Just to be transparent I gain no financial benefit from the sale of TEEF powder, I help produce the special ingedient because I believe it can help change the world. I have been looking at grinders like ball mills and especially planetary ball mills because the planetary version can grind down to 100 nanometers which is 10x finer than a regular jar style ball mill. Why this extra fineness? An increase of the grinding force. So there are a few factors which determine how fine you can grind something: Dryness of the material, brittleness of the material, temperature of the material (basically effects the brittleness), the hardness of the grinding media, the smallness of the grinding media (basically the sharpness) for a given weight, the force of contact or weight of the grinding media or RPM for planetary mill, and I am going to introduce one more factor; the charge of the grinding media (or charge of any factor in the environment including gasses).
Why does the charge of the grinding media matter? well this goes back to my battery experiments that when ions are dissolved off of an anode electrons are liberated and flow through the circuit. So to disintegrate something, you have to be able to liberate electrons or phonons or something else depending on the type of material. I talked about this effect in water in past posts; in order to evaporate water some sort of energy has to be liberated, the hydrogen bond energy must be liberated. Energy cannot be lost and in order to break a bond you must free that energy. in the case of metals in a battery that bond is an electron bond (ionic?) and so an electron is freed when you create ionic copper. I'm not exactly sure what form the hydrogen bond takes when it is broken but I suspect that plants gain the majority of their energy from these hydrogen bonds as water is allowed to evaporate out the plants stoma. I believe there must be structures in the stoma or near them that capture these broken hydrogen bonds' energy and store them in the plant in some way.
But anyway breaking apart rocks also must break certain types of bonds. Probably van der waals or something like that predominantly. So the reason we can't surpass the 100nm limit in a planetary ball mill is we can't provide enough force (actually torque) to break these bonds at this level. the smaller your particles the less leverage you have. if you have a 1 Newton force and a very long stick you can move a boulder because you multiply the force times the distance to get torque. when the distance is small (small particles) your force is less effective at creating the torque needed to break the particle further. Also the smaller the balls the more torque applied. Why? because you are trying to force your particle to bend around the grinding ball. If the ball is small and so it forces the particle you are impacting to bend more to conform to the shape of the ball producing more distance and more torque.
But it's not just torque that breaks bonds, charge can also help break bonds. Even though we may not be bound by electrons specifically, we are bound by some sort of "negatively charged energy". This is illustrated by the "molecular light" experiments that got photons to stop repelling and stick together by removing some of their "negativeness" by using a highly positively charged rubidium gas. What we are doing here pulverizing rock is a little different, photons repel because of their negativeness but things like minerals stick together because of their sharing some "negativeness". So if we positively charge the grinding media, this can help siphon away some negativeness and allow the bonds to be more easily broken. I could envision a positively charged beam that can act as a disintegrating ray for virtually any element or mineral.
So how do we do this in a planetary ball mill? You plate an agate grinding jar in metal, gold leaf may be good. Or aluminum foil for a poor mans version. The metal needs to contact very tightly with the agate. Then you positively charge the metal. Quartz crystal (agate) is actually good at moving charges and even holding a high charge. So you could even charge up the agate jar and/or grinding balls and then disconnect them and they should still carry the charge. this is important because it would be a little challenging to keep the jars electrically connected to a positive charge while spinning.
So thats it, get agate grinding jars and charge them up with positive charge before grinding. I will update this when i figure out a good way to generate a positive charge.
Why does the charge of the grinding media matter? well this goes back to my battery experiments that when ions are dissolved off of an anode electrons are liberated and flow through the circuit. So to disintegrate something, you have to be able to liberate electrons or phonons or something else depending on the type of material. I talked about this effect in water in past posts; in order to evaporate water some sort of energy has to be liberated, the hydrogen bond energy must be liberated. Energy cannot be lost and in order to break a bond you must free that energy. in the case of metals in a battery that bond is an electron bond (ionic?) and so an electron is freed when you create ionic copper. I'm not exactly sure what form the hydrogen bond takes when it is broken but I suspect that plants gain the majority of their energy from these hydrogen bonds as water is allowed to evaporate out the plants stoma. I believe there must be structures in the stoma or near them that capture these broken hydrogen bonds' energy and store them in the plant in some way.
But anyway breaking apart rocks also must break certain types of bonds. Probably van der waals or something like that predominantly. So the reason we can't surpass the 100nm limit in a planetary ball mill is we can't provide enough force (actually torque) to break these bonds at this level. the smaller your particles the less leverage you have. if you have a 1 Newton force and a very long stick you can move a boulder because you multiply the force times the distance to get torque. when the distance is small (small particles) your force is less effective at creating the torque needed to break the particle further. Also the smaller the balls the more torque applied. Why? because you are trying to force your particle to bend around the grinding ball. If the ball is small and so it forces the particle you are impacting to bend more to conform to the shape of the ball producing more distance and more torque.
But it's not just torque that breaks bonds, charge can also help break bonds. Even though we may not be bound by electrons specifically, we are bound by some sort of "negatively charged energy". This is illustrated by the "molecular light" experiments that got photons to stop repelling and stick together by removing some of their "negativeness" by using a highly positively charged rubidium gas. What we are doing here pulverizing rock is a little different, photons repel because of their negativeness but things like minerals stick together because of their sharing some "negativeness". So if we positively charge the grinding media, this can help siphon away some negativeness and allow the bonds to be more easily broken. I could envision a positively charged beam that can act as a disintegrating ray for virtually any element or mineral.
So how do we do this in a planetary ball mill? You plate an agate grinding jar in metal, gold leaf may be good. Or aluminum foil for a poor mans version. The metal needs to contact very tightly with the agate. Then you positively charge the metal. Quartz crystal (agate) is actually good at moving charges and even holding a high charge. So you could even charge up the agate jar and/or grinding balls and then disconnect them and they should still carry the charge. this is important because it would be a little challenging to keep the jars electrically connected to a positive charge while spinning.
So thats it, get agate grinding jars and charge them up with positive charge before grinding. I will update this when i figure out a good way to generate a positive charge.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your feedback! Sharing your experience and thoughts not only helps fellow readers but also helps me to improve what I do!