I saw this podcast link in ’Nature’ magazine today. Nature is a science journal that reports on various issues relative and important to scientific research.

I have subscribed to various science journals during my life. I prefer to read about scientific research than the trivia of day to day politics and its meaningless point scoring.

It reminded me of a research project that I did at the National Art School, way back in the 1970’s. 

I was contacted by a guy from an aluminium mining company, who explained that new environmental laws were going to cost the company a lot of mullah to comply with.

He explained that the main by-product of aluminium processing is red mud. The red mud is essentially red iron oxide and some other clay-like minerals that are extracted from the bauxite to gain the aluminium oxide. Bauxite ore is an almost equal mixture of iron and aluminium with some aluminosilicates related to clay.

It occurs widely as little red spheres. It is deadly to walk on, as it rolls around freely like ball bearings. I have found loads of small deposits of bauxite all around my shire here while I have been doing my own ceramic material research. The parent mineral is everyday clayey soil, which when exposed to tropical weathering conditions of very wet weather and high temperatures, can have almost everything leached out of it. Every mineral and element that can be dissolved in water, gets leached out over time and is evaporated up wards through the soil profile, and washed away, so all the alkalis, alkali earths and silica are removed, leaving largely iron and alumina. 

The process of extracting the alumina leaves the iron deposited as a slurry it in huge lakes or dams. These never fully dry out properly to become solid and stable. The company wanted to know if I could find a productive use for this semi dried slurry cake?

I couldn’t. It was too high in iron to make any sort of useful glaze and had absolutely no plasticity, to make it into any kind of interesting form. The best solution I could find was to mix it with a little bit of clay and silica, then fire it in a heavy reduction atmosphere to turn the refractory iron oxide into an active flux that would bind all of the other impurities with the clay and silica to form a solid black block.

I suggested that the company might build a brickworks on the site and start producing black bricks. The guy scoffed at my idea, asked if I was joking and I never heard from them again. No payment was even forthcoming. Thus ended my early flirtation with big business.

Now 40 years on there might just be a solution in the pipeline? Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but every little bit of progress counts towards a better, cleaner future. Only the first 10 minutes of the podcast is about green steel production.

There were two other interesting science based items that have stuck in my mind from the last year of Royal Society meetings. Just in case you are unsure about ‘The Royal Society’, it’s not a monarchist support group, or Charlie’s cheer squad. In fact it is a society to promote science.

Wikipedia tells us;

 “The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world.^[2] 

I have been honoured to be invited to give two lectures to the Southern Highlands branch of the Society in the last decade.

At one meeting last year, we had a lecture from the redoubtable Ken McKracken, about long term climate effects caused by sun spots and other celestial effects. The essence of the talk that I took away was this. There are very powerful long term effects on the earths climate that have various cycles, from one year to decades, to centuries, up to 20,000 years. One in particular runs over approximately 30 years, and evidence was presented from earth core samples that showed pollen and other markers that there is a general oscillation from above average to below average rain fall, alternating over this 30 year cycle. The upshot being, we have just finished a 30 year dryer cycle and are entering the next 30 year wetter cycle. I was a touch sceptical, but as this year was meant to be the return of El Nino and a hotter dryer period according to the BOM. It certainly started off that way. Hot and dry, so much so that i stopped work on other projects and spent time finishing off the bush fire protection system o nthe barn and pottery. However, since then all we have had is wet, wet, wet. Maybe I’m inclined to take more interest and will follow this thread of thought over the next few years.

Of course, I am fully aware of Aristotle’s warning that one swallow does not a summer make.

Then, just this morning I see this article in The Guardian, discussing the possible breakdown of the current El Nino before the end of the year and the return of yet another La Nina event next year.

Watch this space, as they say.

Another interesting talk at the Royal Society came from a scientist involved in nuclear fusion research. We have been told that a break-through in nuclear fusion is just 20 years away, and we have been told this repeatedly for the past 60 years. In this lecture we learnt that it might be up to 100 years away, so that was refreshingly new. He explained that when the break-through comes it will very likely involve the development of hundreds of small fusion reactors, rather than one big one, largely because the reactors will only run for a few days or weeks, and then need to be shut down to be rebuilt over years. So a lot of reactors will be needed to keep a steady supply. Most interestingly to me, was his statement that because the fusion process releases such unimaginably large amounts of energy so quickly. It won’t all be able to be used in real time, so there will need to be a lot of research put in to develop very large scale batteries to store it and release it steadily over time. 

Keeping in mind that fusion research has already cost, and will cost multi billions, trillions and gazillions of dollars more. It crossed my simple mind that wouldn’t it be better to just abandon the most expensive part – which is the fusion research, and just go straight to the more useful and affordable battery research, as we already have very cheap solar and wind forms of electricity generation?

Oh! and the last point he mentioned was that because current fusion research indicates that these reactors need a steady supply of radioactive tritium gas to make the fusion process work, then the reactors become highly radioactive, just like todays ordinary fission reactors. So a very long and costly process to repair and rebuild them each time they are shut down. Ignore rightwing shock jocks and their politician cronies telling us that fusion power is clean and avoids the radioactive concerns associated with todays fission reactors!

I can’t see it ever happening, not in 20 or even 100 years, but as I won’t see either of these time frames come to fruition, it won’t be a concern for me. I can see a place for big battery research though.

I said above that there would be no recipes. BUT…

Just to show that even Greenies can lie just as well as any politician, here is a recipe for zucchini fritters from the garden!

We all have so many of these lovely, productive fruits at this time of year, its hard to keep up with them at times. One reliable stand-by is zucchini fritters.

We were invited to go to a friend’s 60th birthday party in the Village Hall at the weekend. We decided to take along our contribution in the form of these fritters

Have about equal amounts of zucchinis and potatoes, although you can eliminate or minimise the potato if you want to reduce your carbs.udo If you do you’ll ned to add some other form of plasticiser to bind it all together – a little flour perhaps?

As these were not for home consumption to be served directly to the dinner plate, Where it would be OK to be a bit fragile and crumbly, but needed to be a little more robust, Janine used equal proportions. 

Grate the zucchinis and place in a bowl, take out one handful at a time a squeeze all the moisture out of the pulp and place in the mixing bowl.

Pre-boil the potatoes and mash them, add to the zucchini. Season to taste as you prefer, salt, pepper, chilli flakes, sesame seeds, finely chopped cornichons, parsley and or sweet basil?

Make the mixture into small balls and roll in polenta, this gives a nice crunchy texture to the coating after pan frying in a little sesame oil or olive oil.

They are delicious. A lovely summer treat.