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Re: Freezing Indian pumps

kay:  all this is fascinating -- but what is an Indian pump?     geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Kay Lancaster <kay@fern.com>
To: prairie@mallorn.com <prairie@mallorn.com>
Date: Thursday, January 07, 1999 9:59 PM
Subject: Re: Freezing Indian pumps


>Freezing point depression is one of the colligative properties... which
>means it's dependent only on the number of particles in the solution, and
>not the type of particle -- which means you can get by with the lowest
>concentrations of something that ionizes when it dissolves (like salt),
>and you'll need more of a big molecule than a small one.
>
>The cheapie things I could think of for this problem would be
>salt (NaCl-- slightly toxic at some levels on some plants)
>potassium nitrate (fertilizer component; you may not want to alter 
>         nutrient cycles)
>ethanol and methanol (hard to come by cheaply; methanol is more toxic
>         than ethanol)
>sucrose (table sugar) non-toxic, may char, probably will stink a bit
>
>Propylene and etheylene glycols have also been suggested, as they're in
>commercial antifreezes.  Both are fairly toxic, though propylene glycol
>is less toxic to most mammals; they're about equally toxic in aquatic
>systems, as I understand it.
>
>I'd suggest using hard water, since you've got free ions in there already,
>and supplementing with a little sugar if you need to.
>
>Kay Lancaster  kay@fern.com
>
>
>
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