Merged "Iron-rich spheres" - scienctific explanation?

On behalf of Ron Wieck, who contacted NIST for some clarification.

Guys,

Mike Newman responded to my question regarding the fly ash. Would one of you post his comments?

Ron
From: Newman, Michael E.
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 1:03 PM
To: Ronald Wieck
Subject: RE: Fly Ash

Ron,

The concrete mix used in the Twin Towers probably did not include fly ash but as the section below (4.2.6) from NIST NCSTAR 1-6B states, no one is absolutely sure because no records of the actual concrete mix were found. We created a concrete mixture for our fire tests of a typical WTC tower floor truss that we believed approximated that used in the Towers. As you can see, that mixture did not include fly ash.

wieck01.gif


As for iron microspheres, we stated in our WTC 7 FAQs that “There has not been any conclusive evidence presented to indicate that highly reactive pyrotechnic material was present in the debris of WTC 7. The studies that have been conducted to document trace metals, organic compounds, and other materials in the dust and air from the vicinity of the WTC disaster have all suggested common sources for these items. For example, in a published report from the USGS on an analysis of WTC dust, the authors state that "... the trace metal compositions of the dust and girder coatings likely reflect contributions of material from a wide variety of sources. Possibilities include metals that might be found as pigments in paints (such as titanium, molybdenum, lead, and iron), or metals that occur as traces in, or as major components of, wallboard, concrete, aggregate, copper piping, electrical wiring, and computer equipment.”

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Mike

**********************************************

Michael E. Newman

Senior Communications Officer

Public Affairs Office

National Institute of Standards and Technology

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 1070

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-1070
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http://www.light-science.com/wtcairhealth.html

"The samples were analyzed for very fine particles of silicon, sulfur (sulfate), vanadium, nickel and lead"

"We knew that large amounts of very fine particles, which can get deep into a person's lungs and cause serious health problems, were released from the super-hot trade center debris piles,"

So lead particles not created solely from the collapse then? the study I have linked also points out the higher than normal level of particles from diesel emissions in Manhattan, although they didn't test for Iron.

ETA http://delta.ucdavis.edu/WTC.htm

"The fuming World Trade Center debris pile was a chemical factory that exhaled pollutants in particularly dangerous forms that could penetrate deep into the lungs of workers at Ground Zero, says a new study by UC Davis air-quality experts.



The new work helps explain the very fine particles and extraordinarily high concentrations found by an earlier UC Davis study, the first to identify very fine metallic aerosols in unprecedented amounts from Ground Zero. It will be essential to understanding the growing record of health problems."
 
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Fly Poster said:
Agreed, I had a small electrical fire in one room of my house, and the insurance company wrote off three rooms full of stuff, there was soot on everything.
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One of my customers had a fire in the corner of their main warehouse. They do packing (shipping) supplies. A welder (who didn't clear the area he was working in of product) sent a spark into a 50 lb bag of packing peanuts (that's a giant bag fyi!). The one bag lit the 100 others it was piled with (large hydrocarbon fire). They lit up about 20 racks out of a few hundred (mostly tightly packed skids of new broken down cardboard boxes). FD cut a hole in the roof and put it out. There was limited fire and water damage but the entire warehouse and office was destroyed by soot. The office was on the complete opposite side of a 50K square foot building. Cost several million in repairs, cleaning, and product replacement. 10 months later, they were able to move back in.

Also interesting. The bags were under a steel mezzanine and staircase (brand new, hence the welding). Both had to be replaced due to major structural damage from the fire....

Thermite peanuts? :boxedin:
 
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DaveThomasNMSR said:
On behalf of Ron Wieck, who contacted NIST for some clarification.
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Not surprisingly, when referring to the iron spheres, NIST sidesteps the iron spheres and says that there is "no conclusive evidence to indicate that highly reactive pyrotechnic material was present in the debris of WTC 7" but they do not say that there is no evidence and make no attempt to explain the iron spheres.
 
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Fly Poster said:
So lead particles not created solely from the collapse then? the study I have linked also points out the higher than normal level of particles from diesel emissions in Manhattan, although they didn't test for Iron.

ETA http://delta.ucdavis.edu/WTC.htm
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There is, for example, no way on earth that WTC 6 burned without releasing astounding amounts of lead into the environment.
 
Christopher7 said:
Not surprisingly, when referring to the iron spheres, NIST sidesteps the iron spheres and says that there is "no conclusive evidence to indicate that highly reactive pyrotechnic material was present in the debris of WTC 7" but they do not say that there is no evidence and make no attempt to explain the iron spheres.
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The only thing that even suggests it is that some of the phenomena, such as the Swiss cheese steel had never before been recorded in an office building fire.

In other words, you got a truck load of guano.
 
Christopher7 said:
Not surprisingly, when referring to the iron spheres, NIST sidesteps the iron spheres and says that there is "no conclusive evidence to indicate that highly reactive pyrotechnic material was present in the debris of WTC 7" but they do not say that there is no evidence and make no attempt to explain the iron spheres.
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Not surprising at all, I mean, neither you nor anyone else has been able to create a significant statistical correlation or a convincing model to link the spheres to only pyrotechnic material as a cause, so why should NIST give it any credence?
 
LSSBB said:
Not surprising at all, I mean, neither you nor anyone else has been able to create a significant statistical correlation or a convincing model to link the spheres to only pyrotechnic material as a cause, so why should NIST give it any credence?
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Yeah NIST meant to answer that "in a different thread" dedicated to the feasibility of loading two 110 story skyscrapers and one 47 story building with enough "thermitic material" sufficient to create dust with a 6% "iron microsphere" content. But there weren't enough delusional conspiracy jackasses basking in ignorance to warrant such a study.
 
LSSBB said:
Not surprising at all, I mean, neither you nor anyone else has been able to create a significant statistical correlation or a convincing model to link the spheres to only pyrotechnic material as a cause, so why should NIST give it any credence?
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Not so. The extreme temperatures that melted iron and vaporized lead have only one explanation. Y'all have speculated but have yet to produce any evidence to explain why "iron melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles." or "The presence of lead oxide on the surface of mineral wool indicate the existence of extremely high temperatures during the collapse[FONT=&quot]"[/FONT]
 
Christopher7 said:
Not so. The extreme temperatures that melted iron and vaporized lead have only one explanation. Y'all have speculated but have yet to produce any evidence to explain why "iron melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles." or "The presence of lead oxide on the surface of mineral wool indicate the existence of extremely high temperatures during the collapse[FONT=&quot]"[/FONT]
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Au contraire, you just hand waived away alternative explanations with unproven allegations such as "the smoke took them away", etc. In any case, the burdon of proof is still on you.
 
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LSSBB said:
Au contraire, you just hand waived away alternative explanations with unproven allegations such as "the smoke took them away", etc. In any case, the burdon of proof is still on you.
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So your position is:
As the office contents burned the trace amounts of iron in them formed into microspheres and fell to the floor, despite the air turbulence and updraft that carried other particulates away as smoke?

I offer the iron microspheres in the stack of the solid waste incinerator as evidence that they would be carried away in the smoke.

What evidence do you have that these iron microspheres fell to the floor while air was rapidly rising and smoke was pouring out of the building?

And how do you justify that with the argument that the breeze carried iron microspheres to the bank building?
 
Christopher7 said:
That's good enough to see that the elements have been mislabeled. The elements are, from left to right - Carbon, Oxygen and Iron - not Aluminum, Silicone and Sulfur.
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Ergh... I have to admit, Chris7, that you were careful enough in this case and Al, Si and S peaks were very probably mislabeled in this Chinese paper (!?). Strange, since the presence of these elements in the ashes was one of the conclusions of that paper:boggled: (And I was rather "lightheaded" in this case). Anyway, quite unusual, such basic errors in the scientific paper, I think.

Looking for some better "substitute": There are many other papers dealing with SEM-XEDS analyses of the fly ash from electric plants, incinerators etc., but most of them are not freely available for me.
Here is an American paper Fly ash characterization by SEM–EDS I can read.

I have made again some attempts to copy pages from this paper with SEM and XEDS spectra of some spheres and they are stored here: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/flyash5.png/ and here http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/flyash6.png/

Anyway, I see this paper clearly and I can say/cite:
From the abstract: "All of the fly ash samples were comprised mainly of amorphous alumino-silicate spheres and a smaller amount of iron-rich spheres. The majority of the iron-rich spheres had two components: iron oxide and amorphous alumino-silicate. Both materials were apparent on the particle surface, and cross-sections clearly showed that the iron oxide and alumino-silicate were mixed throughout the fly ash particles."

Some of spheres contained mostly Si and Al (Fig. 3), some others ("mixed", Fig. 4 and 5) Si, Al and Fe. Here, Si and Al peaks are on their "proper" positions between 1.4 and 2 KeV in XEDS spectra, if it is not readable.

Generally, I still think that a wide range of spheres with highly variable composition can be found in any such ash.

One more remark: many of those microspheres, including ferrospheres, have very interesting look: almost like some viruses or other microrganisms:cool:
 
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