Gage's next debate

[Christopher7]

There is no president or scientific data to support the claim that organic materials can mix with molten aluminum.

Liquid aluminium readily absorbs atmospheric gases especially hydrogen which can cause problems in casting.

Al4C3 forms during the Hall–Héroult process due to liquid aluminium reacting with graphite electrodes. Just the high temperature will be enough to melt plastics. Liquid Al would be reacting with the concrete and steel in the building too.

Silliness. These things are not the "furniture, carpets, partitions and computers" NIST was talking about.

If you really want to prove that organic materials can't mix with liquid aluminium

Dude, It's not up to me or anyone else to prove they can't mix, It's up to NIST to prove they can.

Fly ash is traditionally analyzed using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). Most XRF instruments do not measure oxygen directly, but they make the simplyfing assumption that all inorganic compounds found in the samples are oxidized to their most common oxidation states. Thus, if iron is found, it is assumed to be stoichiometric Fe2O3.

More silliness. Instruments don't make assumptions. An EDS spectrograph shows what the instrument detects.

A horse is not a cow and iron oxide is not iron - they are two different things.

Justin,
We both missed a source of aluminum. Escalator treads. I have already conceded the point but some people here are a bit slow on the uptake.
I'm responding to you because you are the only one who came up with reasonable possibilities.

ETA:
The RJ Lee Group report clearly says that iron was melted during the WTC event and lead was vaporized during the collapse. Denial by anonymous posters notwithstanding.

 

[triforcharity]

ETA:
The RJ Lee Group report clearly says that iron was melted during the WTC event and lead was vaporized during the collapse. Denial by anonymous posters notwithstanding.

ETA: The RJ Lee report STILL says that what they found was EXPECTED.

Carry on in your sea of ignorance.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Silliness.

I would display the irony meter, but this single word, coming from you, caused it to vaporize.

 

[Scott Jurgenson]

Scott, I am bored too, so here some quick guiding answers from the top of my head:

...

Thank you for this response. Something like that was so much easier for me to read vs trying to read 10+ pages of the big threads on these topics.

Much Thanks.

EDIT: To avoid another double post I figured an edit would suffice, but can you direct me to that blog you were talking about? More specifically the article about the red/grey chips.

 

[Sunstealer]

More silliness. Instruments don't make assumptions. An EDS spectrograph shows what the instrument detects.

A horse is not a cow and iron oxide is not iron - they are two different things.

You don't understand EDS. Do you realise that several elemental peaks overlap using EDS? Nope thought not. The software is written so that it does make a "judgement", however, it's often upto the judgement, skill and experience of the operator to make the call in those cases. Judgement skill and experience that you don't possess and never will.

Secondly any O₂ in a sample where iron is the other major element present will indicate an iron oxide - can't be anything else. Even Jones and his friends don't make the monumental cock up you just have (see page 19 of the Harrit paper) If you know otherwise show the world - you'll win a nobel prize.

You don't understand how EDS is qualitative and not quantitative (unless you use a software conversion). You have zero experience with any characterisation of materials. You've never sat in the operator's chair. You wouldn't know how to identify any of these machines let alone find the on button and operate them. The Almond and I do. We know what we are talking about. You don't and that's plainly obvious to any lurker/reader.


In materials science you are taught to associate O2 in analysis with oxides because that is correct. That is why software is written with this in mind for these machines.

It's also plain to see that you don't know what XRF is because you've mixed the two up. Try reading for a change and then looking up the bit's you don't understand. The Almond has written a brief, simple, scientific piece from considerable experience and you talk about cows and horses. Bravo!

Your "horse is not a cow" nonsense is laughable and shows you to be the ignoramus that you are because you can't debate on anywhere near the same level. Unless you can comment properly and scientifically with regard to these instruments and their readouts I suggest you keep quiet because you are adding nothing to the debate in this regard.

P.S. Cast Irons will melt @ 1150°C so you don't need 1550°C to get iron "rich"spheres. Why does this happen C7? Also re-read this.

Obviously, since we're dealing with iron oxides, iron hydroxides, and iron eutectics (which themselves may have extra hydrogen and oxygen), the assumption that "iron rich" spheres must come from fire temperatures capable of melting pure iron is preposterous.

Also, it's important to remember that fires don't need to efficiently create iron rich microspheres. Rather, they need only to concentrate those iron rich microspheres in the dust. As these spheres presumably have a low amount of combustable material, it's reasonable to assume that they're going to survive a fire unchanged, whereas the parent material (paper, wood, carpet, organic paint binders, etc) will not survive in tact. Ash is not a random sampling of all the materials in a fire, it is a random sampling of materials that do not readily combust, of which iron bearing compounds are going to be a significant part.

My bold.

During waste incineration in the EU the temperature must reach 1100°C for a minimum of 2 seconds. Any operator will keep his temps as low as possible because heat costs money. How can we get iron microspheres in the fly-ash if the melting point of iron was not reached? Are we burning thermite? Do we find thermite mixed in with household waste?

It's fairly obvious that you don't need temps at the melting point of pure iron to get microspheres.

Just drop the nonsense C7.

 

[NoahFence]

Dude, It's not up to me or anyone else to prove they can't mix, It's up to NIST to prove they can.

No it's not. They're done. Why do they need to prove anything beyond what they already did?

 

[Oystein]

Thank you for this response. Something like that was so much easier for me to read vs trying to read 10+ pages of the big threads on these topics.

Much Thanks.

EDIT: To avoid another double post I figured an edit would suffice, but can you direct me to that blog you were talking about? More specifically the article about the red/grey chips.

Oops, I merely forgot to link it:
http://oystein-debate.blogspot.com/
The four most recents posts are all about the Harrit/Jones paper.
Again, I am not pretending to have created a good reference there - quite unstructured (except for the newest). I mainly keep this as a notepad for my own purposes.

 

[Christopher7]

You don't understand EDS. Do you realise that several elemental peaks overlap using EDS? Nope thought not. The software is written so that it does make a "judgement", however, it's often upto the judgement, skill and experience of the operator to make the call in those cases. Judgement skill and experience that you don't possess and never will.

Utter nonsense. Do you have a source for that drivel? If not, please return your nonsense and insults to that dark recess from whence they came.

Here are the spectrums side by side:

P.S. Cast Irons will melt @ 1150°C so you don't need 1550°C to get iron "rich"spheres.

Straw grasping. There was very little if any white or gray cast iron in the TT. None was used in the building itself.

During waste incineration in the EU the temperature must reach 1100°C for a minimum of 2 seconds.

Source?

Any operator will keep his temps as low as possible because heat costs money. How can we get iron microspheres in the fly-ash if the melting point of iron was not reached?

Incinerators produce iron oxide microspheres, NOT iron microspheres.

 

[Oystein]

Utter nonsense. Do you have a source for that drivel? If not, please return your nonsense and insults to that dark recess from whence they came.

Here are the spectrums side by side:

Let's see .... we have a Fe, and we have O, and little bits of others.... Hm what could that mean? Oh yes! The spheres contain elemental (gaseous) oxigene, and metallic iron!
...
Nuh, just kidding. You just showed proof of iron oxides.

...
Incinerators produce iron oxide microspheres, NOT iron microspheres.

Aight.
Just what the RJ Lee Group found.

 

[DGM]

Utter nonsense. Do you have a source for that drivel? If not, please return your nonsense and insults to that dark recess from whence they came.

Here are the spectrums side by side:

[qimg]http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/548/flyashvironspectrum.jpg[/qimg]



Straw grasping. There was very little if any white or gray cast iron in the TT. None was used in the building itself.

Source?

Incinerators produce iron oxide microspheres, NOT iron microspheres.

Chris:
It's been a while since I read the report. Did they specify the make-up of the inert (oxygen free) environment that was 130 Liberty St (or where these spheres were formed)?

 

[The Almond]

More silliness. Instruments don't make assumptions. An EDS spectrograph shows what the instrument detects.

This is the silliest thing I've ever read. And I've been reading this forum for 5 years. Spectral peaks in EDS spectra do, in fact, overlap. Misinterpretations and misrepresentations occur all the time, and what I wrote there is entirely accurate.

Perhaps you would consider something: I've been doing XRF work professionally for about 7 years. You have never seen an XRF, never worked on one, never published a paper on an analysis completed with XRF, you don't have an advanced degree in chemistry, materials science or engineering, and you couldn't describe any of the physics required to interpret an XRF spectrum.

How about you let me and Sunstealer take the lead on this one?

 

[The Almond]

Here are the spectrums side by side:

Chris, look on the left side of the RJ Lee spectrum. The oxygen peak is clearly labeled. That's iron oxide. The spectrum they're showing has about 1/3rd the total counts of my spectrum, so their detection limits for Si, Ca, etc, are much higher than mine. If those contaminants are there, RJ Lee won't necessarily see them.

Incinerators produce iron oxide microspheres, NOT iron microspheres.

Sigh.

 

[Christopher7]

ETA: The RJ Lee report STILL says that what they found was EXPECTED.

"Considering the high temperatures reached during the destruction of the WTC, the following three types of combustion products would be expected to be present in WTC Dust.
• Iron-rich spheres from iron-bearing building components or contents

Those "high temperatures" melted iron during the WTC event so they were in excess of 2800^oF.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

ETA: The RJ Lee report STILL says that what they found was EXPECTED.

Carry on in your sea of ignorance.

Furthermore, Chris chooses to ignore what we told him in the past: That the RJ Lee report was written before the NIST one, and during a time when FEMA and many others held the initial opinion that the fires did indeed get hot enough to have molten some of the steel.

What he chooses not to mention is that RJ Lee wasn't speaking definitively towards the genesis of those spheres; they were simply citing what the popular hypothesis was at that time, and they did no work towards actually establishing that those spheres creation occurred during the fires. After the NIST report, everyone knew better.

This has been covered before. Chris is being dishonest in repeating the claim without that context. I suggest people simply put him on ignore as I have, due to his continual practice of subtracting context and representing information dishonestly.

 

[Christopher7]

Chris, look on the left side of the RJ Lee spectrum. The oxygen peak is clearly labeled. That's iron oxide.

Please learn how to read. The caption says "iron particle" not "iron oxide particle". There is a small amount of oxygen, perhaps from the iron sphere rusting a little.

 

[DGM]

Never mind

 

[The Almond]

Please learn how to read. The caption says "iron particle" not "iron oxide particle". There is a small amount of oxygen, perhaps from the iron sphere rusting a little.

I know how to read an X-ray spectrum. See that peak at 523 eV? That's oxygen. See that big peak at 6.36 keV? That's iron. Iron oxide.

And as for the "small amount of oxygen", how did you determine this? Please don't tell me you looked at the ratio of the Fe to the O peak and decided that was all you needed. That would be downright silly.

 

[Christopher7]

That the RJ Lee report was written before the NIST one, and during a time when FEMA and many others held the initial opinion that the fires did indeed get hot enough to have molten some of the steel.

Correct. The RJ Lee Group was under the impression that the fires were hot enough to melt iron so that was why they were not surprised to find the iron microspheres.

RJ Lee wasn't speaking definitively towards the genesis of those spheres

They most certainly were. The "genesis" was - iron was melted during the WTC event.

they were simply citing what the popular hypothesis was at that time, and they did no work towards actually establishing that those spheres creation occurred during the fires.

They determined that the spheres were created during the event because they determined that the dust forced into places where other dust does not go was the same as the dust found throughout the building. RJ Lee is a THE expert in his field and did not make unsubstantiated statements.

 

[Oystein]

"Considering the high temperatures reached during the destruction of the WTC, the following three types of combustion products would be expected to be present in WTC Dust.
• Iron-rich spheres from iron-bearing building components or contents

Those "high temperatures" melted iron during the WTC event so they were in excess of 2800^oF.

Are you interpreting "iron-bearing building components" as "solid elemental iron"? If so, what leads you to this interpretation?

 

[Oystein]

Please learn how to read. The caption says "iron particle" not "iron oxide particle". There is a small amount of oxygen, perhaps from the iron sphere rusting a little.

Chris, the spectrum proves the caption wrong.

Do you acknowledge that there is significant OXYGENE in these spheres?
If the iron is elemental, would this not imply that the oxygine is also elemental? How do you explain the presence of significant amounts of gaseous O₂ in a solid ball of iron?

After you have contemplated these questions, you will of course conclude, like we do, that the O is bound with Fe.

ETA:

...There is a small amount of oxygen, perhaps from the iron sphere rusting a little.

Oh noes, didn't register that part. Gee, ignorance is bliss! The less you know about something, the more you can claim without realizing it's nonesense.