Well, I took the question of whether water resides in steel to my friendy
local physicist at Cal Tech, who thought, as I did, that the water was in
the micro pores of the steel. But he went on to consult a chemist, who had
a contrary opinion. My friend's message is set forth below.
Regards,
Grant S.
Hi Grant,
I just talked to a chemist who works in my lab, and he totally
disagrees with me. He claims it's all condensation. We then did the
calculation I proposed in my last email, and found the following.
Assuming a flow rate of 10 cc's per second (total guess) of 2.5 parts O2
and 1 part acetylene (stoichiametric ratio) at 1 atmosphere, this would
produce about 2 microliters of water per second, which is probably enough
to observe condensation.
Final answer, the chemist is right. It's probably condensation.
Keith
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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