Word: carbon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...impressive new novel begins as a Midwestern idyl set on a leafy, residential street in Rainbow Center, Ohio. A widow er of 78. Realtor Boyd Mason comes home to the wide-lawned Victorian house he shares with his sister Alma, a spinsterish ex-schoolteacher. Each day is an agreeable carbon of the one before. Boyd grumbles contentedly about Alma's bluntness, stinginess and love of gossip. Alma gets comfortably cross at Boyd's deafness, his lack of interest in scandal, his irritating habit of forgetting to flush the toilet...
...heart failure, is now the third biggest killer (behind heart disease and cancer) of men over 45, and British doctors attribute its rapid rise to polluted air. Recent samplings of London smog have revealed dangerous concentrations (300 to 400 parts per million at auto exhaust-pipe level) of poisonous carbon monoxide in the city's air. Normal danger level: 100 parts per million, inhaled over an eight-hour period...
...Dust. Oxygen alone is not enough. As the crew breathes, it contaminates the air with exhaled carbon dioxide. In older subs the way to get rid of it was to absorb most of it in a caustic such as lithium hydroxide. The nuclear subs must have a far more elaborate system: secondhand air is passed through a liquid containing monoethanolamine, which absorbs carbon dioxide at room temperature, is then heated, and releases the gas so that it can be piped...
...more dangerous gas is odorless carbon monoxide, which is produced by tobacco smoking and could kill off the entire crew unless it is removed. Then there is hydrogen, which emanates from batteries, can form an explosive mixture if as little as 4% accumulates anywhere. The smelly organic vapors from garbage and human sources must also be removed. Most of this unwanted stuff is eliminated by a hot catalyst that oxidizes it to CO2 and water. All traces of organic matter that escape the catalyst are mopped up by a bed of activated carbon, and finally an electrostatic precipitator removes...
...magical electrolytic cell containing a sodium sulphate solution. When an electric current passes through it, oxygen bubbles off from one electrode. An acid is formed in the solution at the same electrode, and a caustic accumulates at the other electrode. The caustic can be withdrawn and used to absorb carbon dioxide from the sub's atmosphere. When it is then remixed with the acid from the other electrode, the carbon dioxide separates and can be pumped out of the submarine. What remains is the same sodium sulphate with which the cycle started. When this system is at work cleaning...