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this is mission control houston

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the space station itself has hundreds of

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experiments going on on board

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at any one point in time during these

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expeditions but did you know that

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there's an experiment on board that

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takes a look at

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a special classification of water

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because water sometimes

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sometimes can be neither a solid liquid

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or a gas here to explain this way better

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than i can is michael hicks who's from

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nasa's glenn research center he's the

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principal investigator for what's called

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the supercritical water mixture

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experiment mr hicks thank you very much

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for joining us first of all let's talk

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about what supercritical water actually

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is

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let me just uh first start with uh maybe

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somewhat of an unsatisfying answer but

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uh simple

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and that uh supercritical water is uh

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simply uh water that's taking past its

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uh critical point and and for water the

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critical point is 374 degrees celsius or

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uh 705 degrees fahrenheit

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and its pressure is

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218 atmosphere uh which would be a

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little over 3000

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psi absolute so so that's super critical

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water um when it's taken past its uh

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um

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critical point

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and um probably uh to give you a little

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more insight into the experiment itself

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might be good if i if i created a visual

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if you could imagine taking a pot of

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water

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and we put that uh

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we fill that pot of water with maybe

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about

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a quarter full

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and the and we put a lid on it and we uh

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heated it up uh the pressure would build

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up and the pressure would not build up

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as fast as the temperature would and

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eventually you develop a vapor which

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would then uh turn to a gas once you

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pass the the critical point

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and then when you compress that gas

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further it would uh go into the

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supercritical range and we we have the

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same thing on the other side if we

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filled up the pot

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with um

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let's say

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50 water

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then

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you would um

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increase the you would if you heated it

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up and increase the pressure the the

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pressure would uh build up uh eventually

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the pot would fill with water

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and

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because the pressure would condense

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whatever vapor was in there

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and you would then cross over into the

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super critical range

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but uh the problem with that is that you

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really wouldn't be able to see exactly

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when you crossed over to the

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supercritical regime because the

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um

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the the pot in those instances would be

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filled either completely with vapor or

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completely with uh with liquid just

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because of the nature of where we are

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where we started at

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but

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with our experiment what we try to do is

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we try to

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maintain the uh vapor in the presence of

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of liquid throughout the heat up period

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so as we're heating up this this pot of

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water

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we

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actually have two uh

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two phases the vapor phase and the

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liquid phase all the way up through the

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critical point and in order to do that

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you have to fill

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this uh pot of water with exactly the

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proper

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amount of vapor and and liquid and so

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that's uh roughly about one-third liquid

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and two-thirds vapor

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and at that point then you cross right

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to the critical point and you can

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actually visually determine when you get

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to the critical point

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uh by looking at

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the

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that was performed about four years ago

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by the

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uh by our french colleagues

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and

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what we are doing now with the super

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critical water mixture experiment is we

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put

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a small pinch of salt in this water

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we're actually using sodium sulfate and

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we put that in solution and we

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then

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heat it up

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we then look at uh we then cross the

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critical point and we're looking at uh

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when this critical point shifts because

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our critical point will change a little

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bit because of the presence of the uh

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the salt and the water

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so that in essence

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in a nutshell is the experiment that

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we're performing

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okay let's talk about real world

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applications for this the way i

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understand it is that there's actually

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some cities and some also some navy

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ships that are kind of using

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the supercritical water to sort of you

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know clean waste and things like that

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talk about you know real world examples

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of how what this you know what this does

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for people on earth

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yeah one of the one of the great uh

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advantages of super cool water is that

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it becomes a terrific solvent for uh

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organic material organic waste

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and this is because of this change in

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material properties or thermal physical

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properties when it goes into its

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supercritical regime

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and so there's a

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there's a facility on

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that's

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in orlando florida that was just put

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online not too long ago the city of

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orlando uses supercritical water

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oxidation technology

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basically convert all their waste to

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uh

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either

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they essentially burn their waste in in

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a supercritical water reactor and the

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byproducts are then carbon dioxide and

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water so it's a relatively benign

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take this uh the super critical water

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so what's uh what's next i hear that you

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guys have another run of this experiment

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coming up i think in march maybe or

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whenever it's going to be so what are

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what are the next steps

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well the next step would be to

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um

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basically repeat the the test that we

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had already done in july and that that's

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coming up in march and so march 3rd

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we're scheduled for an 18-day uh

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test sequence

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and we'll um we'll have another test

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sequence after that uh probably in april

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so starting in march we'll we'll become

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busy again with this experiment

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all right michael hicks from nasa's glen

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research center thank you very much for

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joining us here on space station live

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you're welcome thank you for your

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interest thank you again that is the

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supercritical water mixture experiment

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of course you can read more about that

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on nasa.gov

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station just take a look at research and

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technology there on the left hand side

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and you can look up pretty much anything

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that these expedition crews are working