Sources: Elhacham et al. (2020), Hackney et al. (2021), UNEP (2022)
Humanity consumes 18 kilograms of sand per person per day
Since I started following a low-sand diet I now consume at most a few spoonfuls per day (mostly during breakfast). Every little thing counts.
Since the graphic claims microchips are made out of “sand”, I will call silica “sand”. To get a spoon full of “sand”, some random internet sources suggests that it would weigh about 33g, and apparently oats is quite dense in “sand”, so youd need about 176 kg of oats, or about 27,000 spoonfulls of oats to satisfy your diet of “sand”. Impressive!
(Or maybe you just eat it raw as a anti-caking agent?)
spoonful
anything but the metric system
I was using a metric tablespoon for my calculations (15ml)
using volumes for dry powders is unacceptable
It’s okayish if they’re really dry.
But for small amounts, particle size and container shape can have an effect, no?
Container shape is important for small amounts and error from particle size scales linearly with the amount.
If we’re talking cooking flours, particle size tends to be somewhat uniform, and container shape don’t make much of a difference, humidity being the heavy hitter when it comes to density variation.
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Interesting, but they neglect to mention why desert sand is unusable.
Only some sands are suitable for the construction industry, for example for making concrete. Grains of desert sand are rounded by being blown in the wind, and for this reason do not produce solid concrete, unlike the rough sand from the sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand#Resources_and_environmental_concerns
That’s a bit confusing because the article also says this
Sand from rivers are collected either from the river itself or its flood plain and accounts for the majority of the sand used in the construction industry.
Sand dredging in the Mekong is a major problem.
So am I correct in guessing it at least (if quartz sand) can be used for microchips and the likes? I hope the rough sands aren’t extrated just to be used in something, were other, less scarce sands could be used - but I could at least imagine stuff like economy of scale, existing infrastructure and special interest of the established industries could actually cause that.
But the amount needed for chips is several order of magnitude lower than what needed for concrete. If you see the square, usage diagram on the lower left, chips aren’t even visible, so small is needed.
You can also use it for glass, which is on the diagram, there is this old video of a guy 3D printing things with only solar power in the Sahara:
- original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8
- background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpunlLk4fgE
We don’t really have an economical alternative to concrete (yet) in a lot of usecases, e.g. building foundations, substructure everywhere on the earth is made from concrete. On superstructure there are other options as structural material, e.g. wood, steel, but those don’t like to be put in soil.
In case you don’t know, desert sand is very smooth, which means that it doesn’t bind at all in e.g. concrete. For cement, concrete etc., you need sharp sand, which has more ‘sharp’ bits for things to bind to.
Easy. Just put the desert sand in a magic bullet to make more edges.
Bake it, then crush it? I guess it’s just easier to pick it up as long as there’s some laying around.
This recent video by Business Insider talks about it and shows how it’s mined. It comes down to the shape.
Problem is sand is being dredged from poor areas that rely on shallow water environments for survival, aka fishing. Companies come in, take all the sand, destroy the environment in the process by deepening these shallow water environments and driving away all the fish - leaving the local population destitute as the local government recieves the payout without them seeing a cent.
They stole a whole beach in Jamaica.
Locals went to bed with a beach and woke up to the sand missing in the morning.
“Now, we are running out”
Uh, elaborate?
Much of the problem lies in the type of sand needed for construction, with desert sand “largely useless to us” as its grains are the wrong shape. “Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete,” explained the BBC. “The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore.”
Fascinating. I wonder if the rounded desert grains could be processed in such a way as to make them angular, say by crushing?
I have no idea what I’m talking about but could the angular sand extracted from rivers be replaced by round sand from the desert? Over time, that might be shaped into the way we like it, right?
I think that might be possible but costly?
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