Looking at the web page is kinda ironic. A yacht builder proclaiming how much better the materials are for the environment. We could just build less yachts, for example. Nobody needs a yacht.
There has to be an interesting commentary here regarding the necessity of productive endeavours that pay taxes and fund local governments and drive investors portfolios into the black, all funded by useless largesse.
So technically, a yacht is any leisure vessel. ie not a working boat. In the UK, a yacht is usually a sailing boat though we also increasingly have motor yachts. In the USA though, a yacht is a large motor powered vessel. So, when an American says 'nobody needs a yacht' they generally mean one of those, rather than a sailboat. Not sure what context CrimsonCape was using.
> The basalt fibers typically have a filament diameter of between 10 and 20 μm which is far enough above the respiratory limit of 5 μm to make basalt fiber a suitable replacement for asbestos.
The source mentioned is a basalt fiber brand website, so not sure if that's enough for confidence.
So does fiberglass. I would dislike working with the aforementioned basalt fiber, I suspect it's like fiberglass or carbon fibers in that you'll end up itchy later, unless you do a really good job with your PPE e.g. taping gloves to your sleeves.
This is the exact way of behaving that facilitate conspiratorial thinking. You could have looked into it. Found sources that covers harmful effects of stone wool. Instead this 'just pointing out' that it might be problematic is lazy, dumb, and potentially destructive.
You want people to be curious and investigate? Then don't snap at them when they ask a question or express confusion. Respond and show your work and they'll learn by example. Snap at them and you'll raise the temperature of the discussion and make it more polarized and reflexive, exactly the opposite of your stated preference.
And they aren't wrong, inhaling basalt fibers is dangerous and long term exposure could injure or kill you. It's just a different mechanism than asbestos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
> (NB: I do not know if or claim that basalt fibers are more dangerous than alternatives.)
For what it's worth, the ex-composite-shop guys I used to work with said that basically everything you can make a composite out of is horribly nasty: carbon fiber, fiberglass, basalt fiber, probably anything period. After repeated exposure you develop contact dermatitis to that type of fiber and the shop moves you on to working with something else, until it happens again. Contact dermatitis is just the first visible sign, it gets worse from there. Eventually you're probably going to want to get out of the shop entirely.
The problem with asbestos is that, due to its structure, it keeps breaking in the longitudinal direction, making thinner and thinner until it is the size of chromosomes. Physical interference with DNA is how it causes cancer.
My understanding is that basalt fibers seem to be glassy, not crystalline, so the breaking does not happen.
The source material is crystalline, but it becomes somewhat glassy during the fiber manufacture, when it is cooled too fast to crystallize completely.
Asbestos is made from some silicates (pyroxenes or amphiboles) which contain long covalent chains of silicon and oxygen atoms, which are more likely to separate than to break transversally.
Basalt also contains pyroxenes and amphiboles, but they are mixed with other kinds of silicates and they also have a different chemical composition than those of asbestos, so as far as it is known for now the probability of breaking into very thin fibers is very low for basalt fibers.
It is plausible that basalt fibers should be safer, because unlike with asbestos, which is made from rather rare minerals, basalt covers a large fraction of the surface of the Earth, so if basalt were dangerous erosion should have made harmful basalt fragments abundant in the environment.
No, the greater tensile strength of basalt fiber versus glass fiber is due to it being partly crystallized, similarly to the greater strength of glass-ceramic vessels (i.e. which are made from a glass for easier formability, but then they are crystallized by a heat treatment) versus glass vessels.
While there are glasses much stronger than ordinary glass, there are a lot of even stronger ceramics, which are (poly-)crystalline.
Glasses have many advantages vs. other materials, e.g. easy processing for making any shapes, including fibers, no porosity, chemical resistance, optical transparency and so on, but strength is not one of them.
The glass content of the basalt fibers is useful for allowing them to be drawn into fibers, by being soft enough for this even at a temperature under the melting point of the basalt.
> Physical interference with DNA is how it causes cancer.
Is there a reference for that, because it's curious. (As in I really hope you have a reference to read.)
I'd thought I had seen that repeated scarring (from being not broken down) upregulates cellular replacement rate, or concomitant inflammation were suspect.
My bartender told me the other night that as long as I have 2 cups of black coffee and some red meat before drinking, it will coat my liver and prevent cirrhosis. I'm wondering if I should have him check out the mole on my arm, just to put my mind at ease. He would probably volunteer to be an experimental subject to prove this glass theory.
I hate so much working with glass/rock wool that I just straight up refuse the work now if the client is not ready to pay a bit extra for hemp or wood insulating wool.
It doesn't hurt that the treatment to make them non-flammable and rot-resistant is quite benine and that the demand much less energy to manufacture.
> First the basalt is melted at a temperature of 1,400 °C (2550 °F). The molten rock is then extruded through small nozzles for the production of filaments of basalt fibers.
One could probably add some other minerals to lower the melting temperature. Like is done for regular glass. I am not a chemist but I would assume most likely still way too high for plastic-like temperatures.
As a ceramicist it'd be difficult to 3d print with because the kinds of temperatures you can reach even with heavily fluxed silica is still extremely high. I fire bisque at cone 04 which is approximately 1060C / 1940F and that's considered low fire, only extremely heavily fluxed glazes (usually pure frit or equivalent) melt at that level.
Putting 3d printing concepts on the table, though, you could definitely see something like a sintered bed printer using a laser to print it, but then you wouldn't get anything close to the standard FDM style print.
Fundamentally, if the nozzle temperatures can't possibly withstand what they are extruding without eroding, we can either:
- balance an exothermic reaction (self-propagating high-temperature synthesis) to occur just after leaving the nozzle
- externally apply the heat with laser or plasma arc etc
The limit of externally applying heating is when the heat flux has to be so high that some material vaporizes and pops. An exothermic reaction within the material overcomes this limitation.
The other alternative is like current state of the art 3d printing ceramics - you either replace some high percentage of the filament with clay and fire it as a post processing step and it burns off the plastic, or print a clay/water slurry directly and fire it after drying.
But I don't think we'd end up with the basalt being very filamentous.
If the binder that gives you something printable at low temperature doesn't integrate into the final result through chemical reaction, you are almost assuredly going to get a high porosity mess where the binder had to vaporize out.
If instead the binder and precursor can melt, react, and expand into a solid that precipitates out because of a super high melting point, the expansion will ensure that you get a fully dense part that can be machined back down.
Yes, but I think for 3d printing purposes you'd probably have insufficient fusion even at those temperatures. I print well above the melting point or you get layer separation. It'd definitely be a fun experiment to try though!
"Well above the melting point" usually means 60° or less, which is more significant going from 195° to 245° than going from 650° than to 710°.
These temperatures make it a significantly trickier engineering problem; ideally, your nozzle would retain its shape at those temperatures despite containing a lot of pressure, not be corroded by the lava you're squeezing through it, not be abraded by any zircon grains that snuck into your melt, and not oxidize on the outside from the temperature when it's exposed to air. I'm pretty sure you could make a zirconia nozzle work if it was thick enough, but I don't think ruby, sapphire, or diamond would last very long. Probably something like inconel would also work, but I don't think 304 or 316 would.
It'd be a lot more than 60C - the goal is to keep the material from cooling past the melting point by the time it's been deposited, and thus the important factor is the rate of energy loss, which is dramatically accelerated in a temperature differential of, say, 650C instead of say 145C - so I'd guess you'd want about 150C - 300C difference.
I'd bet inconel and other high temperature alloys would be eroded very quickly, anything that's fluxed enough to melt below 1000C is going to be extremely corrosive. Hot molten sodium hydroxide levels of corrosive. Fun to think about though, a serious materials challenge for sure.
I'd guess that it's a lot easier to maintain the whole build chamber at 500° than to maintain the hotend at 850°, but I haven't tried it.
Felsic lavas (and magmas) which melt at those temperatures do not typically contain a lot of alkali oxides, but they do contain some. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calc-alkaline_magma_series#/me... However, ferrous and quasi-ferrous alloys like inconel are among the best choices for alkali corrosion. For example, table 4 in Birgitte Stofferson's dissertation https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/containment-of-molten-n... gives an inconel corrosion rate of 1.06 mm per year in molten NaOH at 600°, which happens through oxidation from oxygen dissolved in the melt. Monel 500 corroded only 5.06 mm per year at 700°.
If you were trying to keep a 100μm hotend aperture within a ±10% tolerance, you could start with a 95μm aperture and replace the hotend when the aperture had expanded to 110μm. At 1mm/year those 15μm would be 5 days of printing time, which seems like a usable hotend lifetime. Presumably printing in lava rather than 100% NaOH would extend the lifetime further.
I think that if most of the things in the vacuum chamber are at room temperature, while the lava filament is at 700°, that won't substantially reduce the radiative heat loss. If almost everything inside the vacuum chamber that isn't mirror-coated is at something like 500° or 600°, I think it would work. Maybe that could save you from having to keep the walls themselves at 500° or 600°.
I also assume directional solidification is really important for basalt, like for glass fibers and others. That's hard to achieve for bulk objects but easy for fibers.
Yes, you could convert the basalt into glass. But basalt fibers have some real advantages over glass fibers, mentioned in the linked page:
> Basalt Woven Textile has high corrosive and chemical resistance to the influence of a corrosive media: salt solutions, acid solutions and particularly alkali liquids. The specific strength of basalt fiber exceeds the strength of alloyed steel by a factor of 2,5 and the strength of glass fiber by a factor of 1,5. Heat-insulating items made from basalt fiber combined with inorganic binding agents may be used by temperatures up to 700°С. In addition there is a range of compositions consisting of basalt rocks that have a higher thermal stability – up to 800°С.
In-situ produced basalt fiber reinforced butyl rubber is likely to be one of the major building materials on Mars or the asteroids if humans ever get there.
I can understand basalt, as that is abundant on Mars. But butyl rubber, from where do you get that? Synthetize from CO2 in the atmosphere might work on Mars but on an Asteroid? But if you go through the route of synthetizing from CO2, why butyl rubber and not some other hydrocarbon?
I think that silicone rubber or silicone resins would be much better choices than a butyl rubber for such applications.
Not only silicone rubber or resins use much less CO2 and water for fabrication, most of their weight coming from quartz, but they can also be used in a much wider range of temperatures, compatible with that at the surface of Mars (i.e. including very low temperatures and high temperatures).
Silicone resins reinforced with glass fiber are a material commonly used where a wide range of operating temperatures is required, so I am pretty sure that they could also be reinforced with basalt fiber.
That's interesting! I think of butyl rubber as being fairly expensive stuff compared to building materials—here on Earth, construction sand costs maybe 4¢ per kilogram, while polymers typically cost around 200¢ per kilogram. I'm not sure how much to expect that higher cost to transfer to Martian and asteroid ISRU, because I don't really understand where it comes from. Are you thinking that the composite you're describing would have major advantages, even if it's more expensive?
Rocks (of any type" and "wear and tear" don't really go together in my mind. Is this something on the order of jewel bushings in low speed mechanical clockwork?
I can't think of a lot of applications where I'd want any sort of rock as my bearing material but maybe I'm thinking too big.
Yeah, stainless steel pipes are used to carry ash slurry away from thermal power plants (especially in China and India). Cast basalt lining increases the lifetime of the pipes by reducing abrasion.
In the original article, "wear and tear" refers to chemical/corrosion resistance.
Considering the reactivity of most textiles compared to something like glass, I would imagine this has tons of utility anywhere you might need a textile in a chemical application.
Which is basically HDPE (plastic) foil with limestone filler. And a whole website full of marketing that somehow never mentions that 20% of the material is non-renewable (made from petroleum products) and not biodegradable.
Yes, they say its HDPE, but then conveniently in all their talk about sustainability, they somehow forget to talk about where HDPE actually comes from. Just that it being composed of carbon and hydrogen somehow makes it "clean". Which, I guess, is something you could also say about things like gasoline. Plastic shopping bags are also made of polyethylene. So are they sustainable as well?
Sure it is. But it's also nowhere near cost competitive and so no one does. They also don't even claim they're using anything else than "normal" HDPE made from ethylene distilled from crude oil.
They don't use "normal" HDPE, they use recycled HDPE which means they don't know what's inside their feedstock and it definitively means you can't get rid of the paper by burning it, because you're also burning whatever mystery chemicals remain inside.
The premise is nice, but downsides noted in another comment, usability is also a problem.
It's much heavier than a normal notebook, and the surface is basically an extremely fine grit sandpaper. It works great with pencils and ballpoints, but wetter pens (gel, rollerball) do not dry as quick. Also, forget fountain pens. You'll be eating away your nib as I write on that paper.
I have a couple of these notebooks, but they sit unused for now.
Limestone itself is not hard enough to wear down metal pen nibs, but "stone paper" does slightly polish them, presumably due to impurities in the limestone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbqxasFZwsI
The amount of polish is dependent on the tipping alloy of the particular nib.
For example Lamy’s tipping alloy is softer than others, so that polishing becomes excessive to the point of changing nib size. I have an old safari which writes broad after ten years of use (the nib is marked medium).
Pilot and Sailor uses harder tipping alloys. Schmidt is also harder than Lamy, but softer than Japanese counterparts.
(Yes, I have a lot of pens for quite some time :) )
Are you saying you've been using "stone paper" for ten years? Or are you getting this polishing from the sizing agents and random contamination on real paper?
No, I get the polishing from normal, yet high quality paper. Think Rhodia or similar class, not Tomoe River or similar.
I deliberately polished a nib once, on rough brown paper. Not Lamy, but a Pilot Metropolitan.
You can polish a Lamy by regularly using it. It becomes evident in a couple of months, and becomes buttery smooth in a year. No special treatment is necessary.
While paper feels very smooth to human skin, in fact it's not. If it was perfectly smooth, no pen or pencil could write on the surface (e.g.: pencil on a whiteboard).
Since the point of a pen nib is extremely small, even a small weight concentrates to that point and the nib tipping is under a lot of pressure even when you don't press while writing. As a result, when combined with the paper surface, the nib is polished slowly.
Again, this is very depending on the tipping alloy used by the manufacturer, and the result is different between manufacturers.
>Basalt fibers also have high electric-insulating characteristics and transparency for electromagnetic radiation.
The killer application most probably UAV drone since it's more affordable than carbon fiber.
For drone you want lightweight, robust against weather elements and strong material, and at the same has electromagnetic (EM) transparency so not to disturb its wireless control and communication signal. Carbon fiber however, is not EM transparent material.
Stuff like this gets used in welding blankets or clothing for people working around hot stuff or insulation on hot bits of machinery. It's supposed to be heat resistant, not strong.
<insert meme about bullet proof vests not being fireproof here>
rock wool, and other names are used for basalt fibre insulation, which is quite brittle, and turns to dust with very little manipulation must be produced useing a different chemistry and process, but the same bulk feed stock, which I believe is just a certain type of foundry slag that is dumped in the millions of tons per anum range, while still molten, which is where the incentive comes from to utilise it then and there
More likely we will just remember what our ancestors knew: the crotch of trousers is a wear item and you should plan on maintaining and eventually replacing it.
Basalt is stronger than glass fibers (made from silica / quartz / sand), but not as strong as carbon fiber. Also, its more expensive than glass, but less expensive than carbon. Generally considered eco friendly.
Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.
Overall though its still not mass produced, uncertain if it will ever reach scale.
If interested in fibers and composites, the YouTube channel Easy Composites is really interesting / educational. For example you can use flax fiber.
It also has one very interesting property that carbon fiber doesn't: it's not conductive. This means, for example, that you can put it in an MRI machine and get signal back. You can't do that with carbon fiber, which shields the return RF signals and gives you a dark image, but doesn't damage anything. Basalt weave composites are basically completely transparent on an MRI.
(For the same reasons, it also can be microwaved successfully. Carbon fiber can not be microwaved. Do not microwave real carbon fiber or carbon fiber composites.)
> Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.
So, should we use it to make a submarine to visit the Titanic?
Price performance. If the failure mode is slow, then my sport (rowing) could love this for cheaper boat construction which is stronger than fibreglass but cheaper than carbon fibre. I imagine surfboards and kayaks could work too.
Exactly this. I make kayaks and basalt would be the perfect middle ground between FG and carbon where the boat will get dinged up in rivers. Unfortunately its nearly impossible to obtain in small quantities for a hobbyist.
In addition to what sibling posts say, basalt is certainly abundant. Per Wikipedia, 90% of volcanic rock on earth is basalt. We're not going to run out of it.
I can imagine (I have no clue about this, I just watch manufacturing videos) that this is easier to mass produce. A less refined version of this is used to make Rockwool, an insulation material similar to fiber glass. Melt the stuff, extrude it, ????, profit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6FWPTZjwLo
See uses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber
I am no material scientist, so cannot comment on actual facts why it might be better in specific cases than Kevlar, Dyneema or Carbon. But from experience there's a lot I don't know and especially in engineering there's a lot to consider when putting materials under stressful conditions that might put this in in a specific spot superior to those mentioned above.
Each material has its own issues. Kevlar is very difficult to work with (need special scissors to cut and you can't sand the finished product), Dyneema is sensitive to UV degradation. Carbon is $$$. Basalt sounds like the sweet spot for some of my applications but afaict it can't be purchased by the yard like most materials so is essentially unobtainium to a hobbyist who can't afford a $1k or so roll of material.
"I don't see why" has never been the bar for scientific advancement, fortunately. "Someone is curious" is sufficient, and "Someone involved sees potential" provides funding.
Seriously, how much else of the world's technology would you summarily do away with, because you simply don't see the point?
just thinking about this makes me itch. A lot of heat wrap for exhaust pipes is made of this stuff. Works pretty well though, just not a ton of fun to work with.
I had wrap from my exhaust system start to unravel at one point during a long journey far from home. I had to unwrap it by hand on the roadside sans-gloves to prevent it from ending up under a wheel and tearing components apart.
The end result was that I had to find a local retailer selling duct-tape; Not for the car, but so I could apply segments of it to my skin to pull those tiny irritating fragments free from my inner forearm. Yeah, that itch is evil!
One use that fascinates me is with foamed concrete (literally mixing concrete with a foaming agent) can be used to create cheap lightweight, insulating blocks, slabs or pours. While it shouldn’t be considered “structural” (low compressive strength), it can be quite durable and withstand and dissipate very energetic impacts when blended with chopped fibers (like basalt). The exact use will effect the ultimate blend and resulting density.
Not a typical material for sure, but I do see it come up in some countries when someone is having to DIY a lasting shelter. For a lot of situations it’s quite a sensible choice, and much healthier than spray foams. Depending on how open/closed the cells end up and freeze thaw cycles, protection from water saturation may be needed.
This combination of materials is also sold as prefabricated bullet stops for training, meant for retaining lead in an alkaline environment: https://www.terrancorp.com/sacon
Basalt Fibre (bonded with recycled PET) is also being used in yacht construction inplace of glass fibre
https://www.windelo-catamaran.com/en/recycled-and-biosourced...
So there are basalt boats floating on the not so salty Baltic.
It's the Basaltic, see?
Looking at the web page is kinda ironic. A yacht builder proclaiming how much better the materials are for the environment. We could just build less yachts, for example. Nobody needs a yacht.
There has to be an interesting commentary here regarding the necessity of productive endeavours that pay taxes and fund local governments and drive investors portfolios into the black, all funded by useless largesse.
Yachts are not just rich-kid toys. They're useful in supporting ocean research, tourism, transfer vessels, security, etc.
It's super cool to find an alternative to fiberglass.
Maybe they could be used in wind turbines as well.
Well, 'research vessels' don't need to have gold-plated luxuries, etc.
Many people live on sail yachts. They are a very economical way to live.
So technically, a yacht is any leisure vessel. ie not a working boat. In the UK, a yacht is usually a sailing boat though we also increasingly have motor yachts. In the USA though, a yacht is a large motor powered vessel. So, when an American says 'nobody needs a yacht' they generally mean one of those, rather than a sailboat. Not sure what context CrimsonCape was using.
Nobody needs Netflix either. Think of all the electricity we could save if we shut it down.
Is this any safer than asbestos if it gets broken up?
Wikipedia says yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber
> The basalt fibers typically have a filament diameter of between 10 and 20 μm which is far enough above the respiratory limit of 5 μm to make basalt fiber a suitable replacement for asbestos.
The source mentioned is a basalt fiber brand website, so not sure if that's enough for confidence.
but still it breaks and gets airborne...
So does fiberglass. I would dislike working with the aforementioned basalt fiber, I suspect it's like fiberglass or carbon fibers in that you'll end up itchy later, unless you do a really good job with your PPE e.g. taping gloves to your sleeves.
Hmm I have fiberglass mittens for oven... Should I be scared?
Are you itchy after you use them? If not then you're good. If they're reeeeally old then you should make sure they aren't asbestos.
This still seems iffy, but... broken fibers usually become shorter, not thinner.
This is the exact way of behaving that facilitate conspiratorial thinking. You could have looked into it. Found sources that covers harmful effects of stone wool. Instead this 'just pointing out' that it might be problematic is lazy, dumb, and potentially destructive.
You want people to be curious and investigate? Then don't snap at them when they ask a question or express confusion. Respond and show your work and they'll learn by example. Snap at them and you'll raise the temperature of the discussion and make it more polarized and reflexive, exactly the opposite of your stated preference.
And they aren't wrong, inhaling basalt fibers is dangerous and long term exposure could injure or kill you. It's just a different mechanism than asbestos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
See for example this MSDS for basalt. https://mcdn.martinmarietta.com/assets/safety-data-sheets/ba...
> The major concern is silicosis (lung disease), caused by the inhalation and retention of respirable crystalline silica dust.
(NB: I do not know if or claim that basalt fibers are more dangerous than alternatives.)
> (NB: I do not know if or claim that basalt fibers are more dangerous than alternatives.)
For what it's worth, the ex-composite-shop guys I used to work with said that basically everything you can make a composite out of is horribly nasty: carbon fiber, fiberglass, basalt fiber, probably anything period. After repeated exposure you develop contact dermatitis to that type of fiber and the shop moves you on to working with something else, until it happens again. Contact dermatitis is just the first visible sign, it gets worse from there. Eventually you're probably going to want to get out of the shop entirely.
It doesn't seem outlandish to wonder. Pele's Hair is a volcanic glass, and you certainly wouldn't want to inhale it.
Ad hominems are not necessary.
The behavior was lazy and dumb, not the person.
The problem with asbestos is that, due to its structure, it keeps breaking in the longitudinal direction, making thinner and thinner until it is the size of chromosomes. Physical interference with DNA is how it causes cancer.
My understanding is that basalt fibers seem to be glassy, not crystalline, so the breaking does not happen.
The source material is crystalline, but it becomes somewhat glassy during the fiber manufacture, when it is cooled too fast to crystallize completely.
Asbestos is made from some silicates (pyroxenes or amphiboles) which contain long covalent chains of silicon and oxygen atoms, which are more likely to separate than to break transversally.
Basalt also contains pyroxenes and amphiboles, but they are mixed with other kinds of silicates and they also have a different chemical composition than those of asbestos, so as far as it is known for now the probability of breaking into very thin fibers is very low for basalt fibers.
It is plausible that basalt fibers should be safer, because unlike with asbestos, which is made from rather rare minerals, basalt covers a large fraction of the surface of the Earth, so if basalt were dangerous erosion should have made harmful basalt fragments abundant in the environment.
Is it correct so think that the least crystalline it ends up being, the more tensile strength it has ?
No, the greater tensile strength of basalt fiber versus glass fiber is due to it being partly crystallized, similarly to the greater strength of glass-ceramic vessels (i.e. which are made from a glass for easier formability, but then they are crystallized by a heat treatment) versus glass vessels.
While there are glasses much stronger than ordinary glass, there are a lot of even stronger ceramics, which are (poly-)crystalline.
Glasses have many advantages vs. other materials, e.g. easy processing for making any shapes, including fibers, no porosity, chemical resistance, optical transparency and so on, but strength is not one of them.
The glass content of the basalt fibers is useful for allowing them to be drawn into fibers, by being soft enough for this even at a temperature under the melting point of the basalt.
> Physical interference with DNA is how it causes cancer.
Is there a reference for that, because it's curious. (As in I really hope you have a reference to read.)
I'd thought I had seen that repeated scarring (from being not broken down) upregulates cellular replacement rate, or concomitant inflammation were suspect.
"Long asbestos fibers have been shown to interfere physically with the mitotic spindle and cause chromosomal damage"
[1] https://archive.cdc.gov/www_atsdr_cdc_gov/csem/asbestos/how_...
super interesting. thanks for following up, because i'll read it!
Basalt also interacts with DNA, hence some origin of life theories try to feature it
My bartender told me the other night that as long as I have 2 cups of black coffee and some red meat before drinking, it will coat my liver and prevent cirrhosis. I'm wondering if I should have him check out the mole on my arm, just to put my mind at ease. He would probably volunteer to be an experimental subject to prove this glass theory.
This one <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1567289/> seems to show that it is at least _safer_. But inhaling large amounts any form of particulate is ultimately dangerous.
If I become a king, my tablecloth will be basalt instead of asbestos and the flames from acetylene for brightest blue color.
I sure hope so, as it's one of the go-to insulation materials in NL at the moment next to glass fiber wool.
All over the world really, AFAIU. And why not, it's non-flammable, rot-resistant, affordable and made from abundant raw materials.
And yes, you should probably use gloves and a mask when working with it, but it's not carcinogenic like asbestos.
I hate so much working with glass/rock wool that I just straight up refuse the work now if the client is not ready to pay a bit extra for hemp or wood insulating wool.
It doesn't hurt that the treatment to make them non-flammable and rot-resistant is quite benine and that the demand much less energy to manufacture.
What do you use, borax? That's been banned in the EU for superstitious reasons.
I think ? You can only buy when it has already been cured I believe
> First the basalt is melted at a temperature of 1,400 °C (2550 °F). The molten rock is then extruded through small nozzles for the production of filaments of basalt fibers.
As a 3D-printer user, I flinched.
One could probably add some other minerals to lower the melting temperature. Like is done for regular glass. I am not a chemist but I would assume most likely still way too high for plastic-like temperatures.
As a ceramicist it'd be difficult to 3d print with because the kinds of temperatures you can reach even with heavily fluxed silica is still extremely high. I fire bisque at cone 04 which is approximately 1060C / 1940F and that's considered low fire, only extremely heavily fluxed glazes (usually pure frit or equivalent) melt at that level.
Putting 3d printing concepts on the table, though, you could definitely see something like a sintered bed printer using a laser to print it, but then you wouldn't get anything close to the standard FDM style print.
Fundamentally, if the nozzle temperatures can't possibly withstand what they are extruding without eroding, we can either:
- balance an exothermic reaction (self-propagating high-temperature synthesis) to occur just after leaving the nozzle
- externally apply the heat with laser or plasma arc etc
The limit of externally applying heating is when the heat flux has to be so high that some material vaporizes and pops. An exothermic reaction within the material overcomes this limitation.
The other alternative is like current state of the art 3d printing ceramics - you either replace some high percentage of the filament with clay and fire it as a post processing step and it burns off the plastic, or print a clay/water slurry directly and fire it after drying.
But I don't think we'd end up with the basalt being very filamentous.
If the binder that gives you something printable at low temperature doesn't integrate into the final result through chemical reaction, you are almost assuredly going to get a high porosity mess where the binder had to vaporize out.
If instead the binder and precursor can melt, react, and expand into a solid that precipitates out because of a super high melting point, the expansion will ensure that you get a fully dense part that can be machined back down.
Felsic lavas can melt at 750° and even below, and prehistoric terra cotta ceramic is often fired at such low temperatures.
That's still quite a bit cozier than nylon or PET, of course.
Yes, but I think for 3d printing purposes you'd probably have insufficient fusion even at those temperatures. I print well above the melting point or you get layer separation. It'd definitely be a fun experiment to try though!
"Well above the melting point" usually means 60° or less, which is more significant going from 195° to 245° than going from 650° than to 710°.
These temperatures make it a significantly trickier engineering problem; ideally, your nozzle would retain its shape at those temperatures despite containing a lot of pressure, not be corroded by the lava you're squeezing through it, not be abraded by any zircon grains that snuck into your melt, and not oxidize on the outside from the temperature when it's exposed to air. I'm pretty sure you could make a zirconia nozzle work if it was thick enough, but I don't think ruby, sapphire, or diamond would last very long. Probably something like inconel would also work, but I don't think 304 or 316 would.
It'd be a lot more than 60C - the goal is to keep the material from cooling past the melting point by the time it's been deposited, and thus the important factor is the rate of energy loss, which is dramatically accelerated in a temperature differential of, say, 650C instead of say 145C - so I'd guess you'd want about 150C - 300C difference.
I'd bet inconel and other high temperature alloys would be eroded very quickly, anything that's fluxed enough to melt below 1000C is going to be extremely corrosive. Hot molten sodium hydroxide levels of corrosive. Fun to think about though, a serious materials challenge for sure.
I'd guess that it's a lot easier to maintain the whole build chamber at 500° than to maintain the hotend at 850°, but I haven't tried it.
Felsic lavas (and magmas) which melt at those temperatures do not typically contain a lot of alkali oxides, but they do contain some. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calc-alkaline_magma_series#/me... However, ferrous and quasi-ferrous alloys like inconel are among the best choices for alkali corrosion. For example, table 4 in Birgitte Stofferson's dissertation https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/containment-of-molten-n... gives an inconel corrosion rate of 1.06 mm per year in molten NaOH at 600°, which happens through oxidation from oxygen dissolved in the melt. Monel 500 corroded only 5.06 mm per year at 700°.
If you were trying to keep a 100μm hotend aperture within a ±10% tolerance, you could start with a 95μm aperture and replace the hotend when the aperture had expanded to 110μm. At 1mm/year those 15μm would be 5 days of printing time, which seems like a usable hotend lifetime. Presumably printing in lava rather than 100% NaOH would extend the lifetime further.
It sounds like printing in a vacuum chamber with reflective walls for IR might work?
I think that if most of the things in the vacuum chamber are at room temperature, while the lava filament is at 700°, that won't substantially reduce the radiative heat loss. If almost everything inside the vacuum chamber that isn't mirror-coated is at something like 500° or 600°, I think it would work. Maybe that could save you from having to keep the walls themselves at 500° or 600°.
I also assume directional solidification is really important for basalt, like for glass fibers and others. That's hard to achieve for bulk objects but easy for fibers.
Yes, you could convert the basalt into glass. But basalt fibers have some real advantages over glass fibers, mentioned in the linked page:
> Basalt Woven Textile has high corrosive and chemical resistance to the influence of a corrosive media: salt solutions, acid solutions and particularly alkali liquids. The specific strength of basalt fiber exceeds the strength of alloyed steel by a factor of 2,5 and the strength of glass fiber by a factor of 1,5. Heat-insulating items made from basalt fiber combined with inorganic binding agents may be used by temperatures up to 700°С. In addition there is a range of compositions consisting of basalt rocks that have a higher thermal stability – up to 800°С.
couldn't imagine what the spaghetti looks like
Hot, bright, and hot
extra spicy
In-situ produced basalt fiber reinforced butyl rubber is likely to be one of the major building materials on Mars or the asteroids if humans ever get there.
I can understand basalt, as that is abundant on Mars. But butyl rubber, from where do you get that? Synthetize from CO2 in the atmosphere might work on Mars but on an Asteroid? But if you go through the route of synthetizing from CO2, why butyl rubber and not some other hydrocarbon?
I think that silicone rubber or silicone resins would be much better choices than a butyl rubber for such applications.
Not only silicone rubber or resins use much less CO2 and water for fabrication, most of their weight coming from quartz, but they can also be used in a much wider range of temperatures, compatible with that at the surface of Mars (i.e. including very low temperatures and high temperatures).
Silicone resins reinforced with glass fiber are a material commonly used where a wide range of operating temperatures is required, so I am pretty sure that they could also be reinforced with basalt fiber.
I found a brief from a research project that studied blends of silicone and butyl rubber for Mars applications at https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/r.anyszk...
Also a more detailed version https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/459340626/Rubbe...
But this seems to be rubber for gaskets, hoses, tires etc. and not fiber reinforced stuff for construction applications.
That's interesting! I think of butyl rubber as being fairly expensive stuff compared to building materials—here on Earth, construction sand costs maybe 4¢ per kilogram, while polymers typically cost around 200¢ per kilogram. I'm not sure how much to expect that higher cost to transfer to Martian and asteroid ISRU, because I don't really understand where it comes from. Are you thinking that the composite you're describing would have major advantages, even if it's more expensive?
We manufacture cast basalt that's used in applications that have a lot of wear and tear. This is pretty cool to see another application of basalt!
Rocks (of any type" and "wear and tear" don't really go together in my mind. Is this something on the order of jewel bushings in low speed mechanical clockwork?
I can't think of a lot of applications where I'd want any sort of rock as my bearing material but maybe I'm thinking too big.
Not bearings, this is "wear and tear" as in abrasion resistance. Cast basalt is used to create abrasion resistant pipes and flooring.
Yeah, stainless steel pipes are used to carry ash slurry away from thermal power plants (especially in China and India). Cast basalt lining increases the lifetime of the pipes by reducing abrasion.
In the original article, "wear and tear" refers to chemical/corrosion resistance.
Considering the reactivity of most textiles compared to something like glass, I would imagine this has tons of utility anywhere you might need a textile in a chemical application.
Related, there's also stone paper: https://stone-paper.nl/en/
Which is basically HDPE (plastic) foil with limestone filler. And a whole website full of marketing that somehow never mentions that 20% of the material is non-renewable (made from petroleum products) and not biodegradable.
We know how to turn air into HDPE. It's just energetically stupid as long as we feed the electricity grid with fossil (hydro) carbon.
It does mention it pretty clearly in the "what is stone paper" page: https://stone-paper.nl/en/wat-is-stone-paper/
Yes, they say its HDPE, but then conveniently in all their talk about sustainability, they somehow forget to talk about where HDPE actually comes from. Just that it being composed of carbon and hydrogen somehow makes it "clean". Which, I guess, is something you could also say about things like gasoline. Plastic shopping bags are also made of polyethylene. So are they sustainable as well?
It's perfectly possible to make polythene from renewable feedstock.
Sure it is. But it's also nowhere near cost competitive and so no one does. They also don't even claim they're using anything else than "normal" HDPE made from ethylene distilled from crude oil.
They don't use "normal" HDPE, they use recycled HDPE which means they don't know what's inside their feedstock and it definitively means you can't get rid of the paper by burning it, because you're also burning whatever mystery chemicals remain inside.
It says what it is in terms like:
> mixed with 20% HDPE, a clean plastic composed of carbon and hydrogen
The premise is nice, but downsides noted in another comment, usability is also a problem.
It's much heavier than a normal notebook, and the surface is basically an extremely fine grit sandpaper. It works great with pencils and ballpoints, but wetter pens (gel, rollerball) do not dry as quick. Also, forget fountain pens. You'll be eating away your nib as I write on that paper.
I have a couple of these notebooks, but they sit unused for now.
Limestone itself is not hard enough to wear down metal pen nibs, but "stone paper" does slightly polish them, presumably due to impurities in the limestone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbqxasFZwsI
The amount of polish is dependent on the tipping alloy of the particular nib.
For example Lamy’s tipping alloy is softer than others, so that polishing becomes excessive to the point of changing nib size. I have an old safari which writes broad after ten years of use (the nib is marked medium).
Pilot and Sailor uses harder tipping alloys. Schmidt is also harder than Lamy, but softer than Japanese counterparts.
(Yes, I have a lot of pens for quite some time :) )
Are you saying you've been using "stone paper" for ten years? Or are you getting this polishing from the sizing agents and random contamination on real paper?
No, I get the polishing from normal, yet high quality paper. Think Rhodia or similar class, not Tomoe River or similar.
I deliberately polished a nib once, on rough brown paper. Not Lamy, but a Pilot Metropolitan.
You can polish a Lamy by regularly using it. It becomes evident in a couple of months, and becomes buttery smooth in a year. No special treatment is necessary.
I see, thanks! I wonder what the polishing mechanism is.
You're welcome.
While paper feels very smooth to human skin, in fact it's not. If it was perfectly smooth, no pen or pencil could write on the surface (e.g.: pencil on a whiteboard).
Since the point of a pen nib is extremely small, even a small weight concentrates to that point and the nib tipping is under a lot of pressure even when you don't press while writing. As a result, when combined with the paper surface, the nib is polished slowly.
Again, this is very depending on the tipping alloy used by the manufacturer, and the result is different between manufacturers.
We've come around full circle, I suppose
This newfangled "rockpaper" really complicates the rules of my favourite game.
That is completely unrelated.
Scissors has entered the chat
This makes me think about Vinylon[1] and this article from Reuters[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinylon [2] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/northkor...
Vinalon is an organic polymer, like many other synthetic fibers we wear, but derived from coal instead of oil because North Korea has no oil.
The basalt fiber OP describes is not organic at all. It sounds more like asbestos actually.
The Reuters article title is "Fabric made of Stone" (as it is made of coal and limestone), that is why it came to mind.
Yeah, but the vibes are the same as basalt textiles
Next sewing project: rock pants.
Maybe new dress code for rock concerts
Not rock, but silver-plated and EM-shielding: https://vollebak.com/products/shielding-pants
>Basalt fibers also have high electric-insulating characteristics and transparency for electromagnetic radiation.
The killer application most probably UAV drone since it's more affordable than carbon fiber.
For drone you want lightweight, robust against weather elements and strong material, and at the same has electromagnetic (EM) transparency so not to disturb its wireless control and communication signal. Carbon fiber however, is not EM transparent material.
Just answering my own question: Is this be used for bullet proof vests?
Heavier than carbon fiber and kevlar with lower tensile strength than both.
So, no, not unless it's much cheaper.
Stuff like this gets used in welding blankets or clothing for people working around hot stuff or insulation on hot bits of machinery. It's supposed to be heat resistant, not strong.
<insert meme about bullet proof vests not being fireproof here>
So you’re saying dress in layers?
The article fails to mention how it feels on the skin.
I have in mind other uses: how is the stiffness per mass compared to glass and carbon fibre, and mass manufacturability for small parts?
rock wool, and other names are used for basalt fibre insulation, which is quite brittle, and turns to dust with very little manipulation must be produced useing a different chemistry and process, but the same bulk feed stock, which I believe is just a certain type of foundry slag that is dumped in the millions of tons per anum range, while still molten, which is where the incentive comes from to utilise it then and there
I'd guess within a couple of centuries, someone will figure out a material for jeans that doesn't tear between the legs.
Jeans never tear in the crotch; they just upgrade to awkwardly constructed kilts.
yet another reason I wear kilts to begin with...
More likely we will just remember what our ancestors knew: the crotch of trousers is a wear item and you should plan on maintaining and eventually replacing it.
I wish, but that is not the trend in manufacturing. The LLRU for clothing is the garment itself, these days.
(Can sew; choose not to replace buttons generally, because: lazy)
Isn’t Rockwool the unwoven version of this?
Had to google it to be sure, but yes, rockwool / mineral wool the insulation material is also made of basalt.
Isn't this basically fiberglass?
Basalt is stronger than glass fibers (made from silica / quartz / sand), but not as strong as carbon fiber. Also, its more expensive than glass, but less expensive than carbon. Generally considered eco friendly.
Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.
Overall though its still not mass produced, uncertain if it will ever reach scale.
If interested in fibers and composites, the YouTube channel Easy Composites is really interesting / educational. For example you can use flax fiber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD98L9XlCTU
It's a very good alternative to carbon fiber.
It also has one very interesting property that carbon fiber doesn't: it's not conductive. This means, for example, that you can put it in an MRI machine and get signal back. You can't do that with carbon fiber, which shields the return RF signals and gives you a dark image, but doesn't damage anything. Basalt weave composites are basically completely transparent on an MRI.
(For the same reasons, it also can be microwaved successfully. Carbon fiber can not be microwaved. Do not microwave real carbon fiber or carbon fiber composites.)
And it's kinda pretty!
> Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.
So, should we use it to make a submarine to visit the Titanic?
It looks visually similar to woven Kevlar, which is a bit stronger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlar
Quite. I don't see why we need this in a world that already has Kevlar, Dyneema and Carbon.
Price performance. If the failure mode is slow, then my sport (rowing) could love this for cheaper boat construction which is stronger than fibreglass but cheaper than carbon fibre. I imagine surfboards and kayaks could work too.
Being flexible and non conducting is useful.
Exactly this. I make kayaks and basalt would be the perfect middle ground between FG and carbon where the boat will get dinged up in rivers. Unfortunately its nearly impossible to obtain in small quantities for a hobbyist.
In addition to what sibling posts say, basalt is certainly abundant. Per Wikipedia, 90% of volcanic rock on earth is basalt. We're not going to run out of it.
I can imagine (I have no clue about this, I just watch manufacturing videos) that this is easier to mass produce. A less refined version of this is used to make Rockwool, an insulation material similar to fiber glass. Melt the stuff, extrude it, ????, profit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6FWPTZjwLo
See uses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber I am no material scientist, so cannot comment on actual facts why it might be better in specific cases than Kevlar, Dyneema or Carbon. But from experience there's a lot I don't know and especially in engineering there's a lot to consider when putting materials under stressful conditions that might put this in in a specific spot superior to those mentioned above.
Each material has its own issues. Kevlar is very difficult to work with (need special scissors to cut and you can't sand the finished product), Dyneema is sensitive to UV degradation. Carbon is $$$. Basalt sounds like the sweet spot for some of my applications but afaict it can't be purchased by the yard like most materials so is essentially unobtainium to a hobbyist who can't afford a $1k or so roll of material.
All those burn.
Basalt does not burn, so its main competition is glass fiber, not organic fibers.
Also, those 3 mentioned by you are currently quite expensive in comparison with other fibers.
I suppose because basalt cannot be patented. Or at least cannot be patented outside the US.
Say, is Carbon in your statement a trademark?
It seems to be more heat resistant?
"I don't see why" has never been the bar for scientific advancement, fortunately. "Someone is curious" is sufficient, and "Someone involved sees potential" provides funding.
Seriously, how much else of the world's technology would you summarily do away with, because you simply don't see the point?
just thinking about this makes me itch. A lot of heat wrap for exhaust pipes is made of this stuff. Works pretty well though, just not a ton of fun to work with.
I had wrap from my exhaust system start to unravel at one point during a long journey far from home. I had to unwrap it by hand on the roadside sans-gloves to prevent it from ending up under a wheel and tearing components apart. The end result was that I had to find a local retailer selling duct-tape; Not for the car, but so I could apply segments of it to my skin to pull those tiny irritating fragments free from my inner forearm. Yeah, that itch is evil!
This is used in some skateboards and snowboards. Lighter weight, stronger, flexier than wood and doesn't splinter like carbon fiber
I wonder how long it takes for the basalt glass to begin to crystalize?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devitrification#Devitrificatio...
What could regular people do with it?
Oven gloves? Anti-stab vests? Gloves for working with strong chemicals?
A reinforcing fiber to mix with concrete is one.
One use that fascinates me is with foamed concrete (literally mixing concrete with a foaming agent) can be used to create cheap lightweight, insulating blocks, slabs or pours. While it shouldn’t be considered “structural” (low compressive strength), it can be quite durable and withstand and dissipate very energetic impacts when blended with chopped fibers (like basalt). The exact use will effect the ultimate blend and resulting density.
Not a typical material for sure, but I do see it come up in some countries when someone is having to DIY a lasting shelter. For a lot of situations it’s quite a sensible choice, and much healthier than spray foams. Depending on how open/closed the cells end up and freeze thaw cycles, protection from water saturation may be needed.
This combination of materials is also sold as prefabricated bullet stops for training, meant for retaining lead in an alkaline environment: https://www.terrancorp.com/sacon
It will be used for shopping bags.
Bullet-proof living room curtains.
Rockwool is molten basalt /slag spun into wool-like fibers and then bound with resin
I think I have seen it being used in Snowboards
So, I can sew a battle west made of rock?!
Finally \../
Asbestos 2.0?
I imagine this is bad news to breath in?
True of all particulates.
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