On 8 Dec 2014 at 1:22, Alex Goodwin wrote:

> When does said crud buildup (mud/dust/deep fried cheesy fnord) get
> cleaned out?  Annual maintenance?

Given that the *intended* use is refueling from bodies of water, the
answer is that you aren't supposed to be feeding it dirty water in
the first place. :-)

Or, rather, not *that* dirty.

So there are likely filters that someone gets to pull out and
backflush. Which won't be fubn. Especially if they waited too long
and the filters are clogged badly.

The "right" way would be to heat the ices, coillect the methane that
bubbles off and beed that to the "gas" input. You'd probably get some
ammonia as well. But as the temp rises, you'll get most of the
ammonia as a mix with water in various proportions.

Heating that carefully will give you more vapors to feed to the "gas"
input.

If you are *sensible*, you'll let the water/ammonia mix sit so that
the solids settle out. Then use a carefully filtered hose to suck it
up and feed the liquid to the "liquid" input of the refiner.

Being PCs, I don't see them letting it sit long enough to settle.
Which means dealing with clogs and deposits in inconvenient parts of
the piping.

If you are *really* patient, you just keep pumping gases out and keep
the "tank" at low pressure so the ice & liquid boil off leaving the
crud behind. So you could shovel the remains out.

But that'll be a lot slower (you don't want the stuff to "boil", just
evaporate really fast).

Oh yeah, ammonia gas dissolved in water ("household ammonia") is a
powerful bleaching agent and a lot more corrosive than you'd think.
Like most strong caustics, it'll strip the oxide coat off of
aluminum, magnesium, titanium, etc.

This lets the metal react with the water creating hydrogen and metal
hydroxides.

So careless choices of materials will have the water/ammonia mix
eating holes in things.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com