Work Query

[den]

Customer: Can you design a wash that uses acid instead of detergent to clean the trucks?
Me: sure! What sort of acid is it?
Customer: Hydrofluoric acid
Me: ...

Comments

[damienps.livejournal.com]

Fun . . . .

[azhdragon.livejournal.com]

short answer: "No"
long answer: "Absolutely NO."

[stoda.livejournal.com]

Wow. Uhm. That's... one way to get 'em really very clean.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's the only way to clean lime and cement off cement trucks. Hydrochloric acid works, too, but you have to use 5 times as much.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Somebody Else's Problem.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Mythbusters blew one up. That seemed to work too!

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

Maybe the customer was thinking about dissolving the truck instead of cleaning it.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

He plans to clean the truck from existence!

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Now THAT's clean.

[kreggan.livejournal.com]

Hm, I remember having a bottle of that in the cellar for a while..

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

The trouble is, it's sort of lethal.

Sure you could do it.

[chriswheeler.livejournal.com]

It'd just have to be the biggest Hazmat fume hood ever, controled from a hermaticly sealed bunker with an independant air supply. Trucks would be prepped (Bagging the engine and cabin and blocking all intake and exhausts)and driven onto a huge conveyer belt, which would deliver the truck to the wash cell, which would be then sealed and then the operator would operate the wash from the remote station in the previously mentioned bunker. The truck would then be rinsed with neutraliser and then once more with water. The effluent and gasses would be captured and processed by treatment plants that would make a uranium processing plant jealous and probably need a nuke plant of its own to drive it(not included in the price)

Sure you could probably knock up a prototype under 100 Mil no worries.

Or he could just buy new trucks.

Re: Sure you could do it.

[marmoe.livejournal.com]

Colleagues of mine left a teflon beaker with Hydrofluoric acid in a fume hood. A week later, the acid was properly disposed off - and all the glass panes of the hood had gone blind and needed to be replaced.

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

How many bodies did this truck contain?

[marmoe.livejournal.com]

Luckily I never had to deal with hydrofluoric acid. I have only seen the precautions others would take who had to use it. That stuff is NASTY all caps. Get it onto your skin and it can eat to the bone. Get a bit more and you don't even have to worry about that anymore. YIKES.

What was that guy thinking???

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Thinking?

[tiado-ab.livejournal.com]

That's some pretty strong stuff, there wouldn't be a truck left after using Hydrofluoric Acid.

[ursuscal.livejournal.com]

Jesus! Hydrofluoric acid is probably the strongest acid around -- it even eats glass. Who would want to put that on a vehicle???

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Apparently the vehicles are cement trucks coated with lime and cement powder. Dilute Hydrofluoric acid works a lot better than the same concentration HCl.

Still.... Hydrofluoric acid. Fuckinell.

[jim-lane.livejournal.com]

Just like using a thermonuclear bomb can sterilize a patch of ground a bit better than simply using weedkiller and a fungicide, but---

YEOW!!!!

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

"Sure, if you don't mind not having a truck afterwards. Or a truck wash. Or possibly your life."