Anti Helium

[TransformX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LZ7vystdkA

[az]

Great!

[DukeP]

Sadly, the gas used is pretty expensive; more so than helium.

(Sulfur Hexafluoride, if my English-chemistry vocabulary treats me right).

~~DukeP~~

[Nowhere]

And I guess there's no place where it is considered waste?... :/ (my highschool physics teacher used to organise trips to uni research facility...which is located in backyard of low temperature natural gas refinery = free liquid nitrogen and helium (bring yout thermos! :> Or play with bucket filled with liquid nitrogen :> ))

[Brian Ellis]

Using SF6 for stupid things like this is TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE This gas is not only one of the most stable chemical compounds that exists with an atmospheric residence time of about 20,000 years, it has THE highest Global Warming Potential of any other known compound, of the order of 24,000 times worse than CO2. Multiply that by its residence time and you can see that even 1 kg lost during these stupid games would have a significant effect, not only for us, but for future tens of generations.

SF6 is a very useful gas dielectric and is also used for plasma etching silicon. The IPCC/Kyoto guys have requested users to minimise emissions and here we use the stuff in emissive amusement of the public. I would guestimate that the tank in the video contains about 1 kg of the gas, equivalent to 24 tonnes of CO2 emitted every century for the next 200 centuries or so. An average mid-sized car will emit 2 or 3 tonnes of CO2/year, as a comparison. Great fun - NOT!

Edit: If a kid got hold of the gas, he could easily suffocate if he took in a good lungful: it is >6 times heavier than air and his diaphragm muscles may not have the strength to expel sufficient gas that he can take in oxygen at the next breath.

Edit: Corrected 20 to 200 centuries

[TransformX]

So, 1kg of SF6 = 240kg CO2 / year for a 2 thousand years?
Sounds like a scooter to me.

[Brian Ellis]

24 tonnes over 200 centuries = 4,800 tonnes = 1,600 - 2,400 mid-sized car-years: not bad for making Jay Leno look like a hoarse fool for a few seconds, is it? As I say, irresponsible.

Sorry for the missing zero.

[DukeP]

Dont worry about the zero, Brian.

THose are only REALLy important, if you work with thermonuclear processes.



~~DukeP~~

[TransformX]

In other words, if AQ went ahead and produced two metric tons of this gas, releasing it to the atmosphere, what damage would is cause?

According to your calculation, that'll be ~4,000,000 mid sized cars. Equivalent to another small country. Not that big..
So let's move on and say they manage to produce 40 metric tons, that's more impressive at ~80M cars. Given 10 years, what are we going to see?

If you're right and it's all that bad, any group/cult/whatever that believes in martyrdom or the end of the world would love to produce a hundred ton or more of this stuff and wait 5 years for a massive effect.

[DukeP]

Its not that easy to produce...

~~DukeP~~

[Brian Ellis]

Let's discount the paranoia of AQ. Just look at US production alone of SF6, about 1,100 tonnes/year. As a guess, world production is probably >3,000 tonnes.

[Evildead666]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KLNYlYGdYs&NR=1

It seems to be quite popular...

edit : not too many tho

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sulfur+Hexafluoride&search=Search

could be a lot more with Leno and the publicity.

[Tjalfe]

if it is such a heavy gas, how does it make it to the atmosphere to cause global warming?

[lowlifecat]

[rylan]

if it is such a heavy gas, how does it make it to the atmosphere to cause global warming?

Yeah I was going to ask the same thing... it appears to be substantially heavier than air and sinks to the ground. Even if it gets stirred up and dispersed in a room or outside, wouldn't it just sink anyway?