Timeline for Is this ocean-planet stable?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 22, 2023 at 17:02 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | Another issue in an oxygen-rich environment is that surely something would arise that metabolizes the alcohol for energy, preventing it from building up in the first place. The sheer quantity of carbon needed to cover an entire planet with oceans containing enough ethanol to strongly affect their freezing point is another problem. That ethanol is equivalent to a lot of biomass. | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 16:55 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | The fact that you can salt out alcohols does not mean that no quantities of salt and alcohol can coexist in solution, it's a question of concentration (and in reality the two phases are a water-rich and alcohol-rich phase, not brine and pure alcohol). Further, sodium chloride appears to be ineffective for salting out ethanol...apparently potassium carbonate is used instead. | |
| Sep 18, 2023 at 23:06 | comment | added | Perkins | @AlexP Basically when you have something that's more soluble and something that's less soluble, one tends to drive out the other. (Assuming they don't react to form something different anyway.) This is actually quite useful in a lot of chemical production processes for separating the things you want from the things you don't. | |
| Sep 18, 2023 at 8:19 | vote | accept | NimRad | ||
| Sep 18, 2023 at 11:16 | |||||
| Sep 18, 2023 at 5:54 | comment | added | Logan R. Kearsley | Specifically referencing alcohol: scientificamerican.com/article/separate-liquids-with-salt | |
| Sep 18, 2023 at 3:53 | comment | added | Penguino | The 'salting-out' of an organic material from water by adding a salt to the solution is well known. See for example researchgate.net/publication/… | |
| Sep 18, 2023 at 3:32 | comment | added | AlexP | Ethanol is not soluble in sea water? Why wouldn't it be? Citation needed. | |
| Sep 17, 2023 at 23:53 | history | answered | Logan R. Kearsley | CC BY-SA 4.0 |