[Beowulf] [OT] MPI-haters

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

Salt will react with some things that sugar will not react with: Dissolved salt is sodium ions and chloride ions, while sugar remains a nice intact molecule.  So you get your molecular sieve (filtering does work, you just need a finer filter).

If you could find something that reacts with salt to produce an insoluble precipitate, that would work. Sodium salts, though are notoriously soluble, as are chloride salts.

Or, you electrolyze the mixture: the chlorine comes off as a gas, the sodium turns into sodium hydroxide (hydrogen comes off the other electrode): the sugar just stays there.  Now you have a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sugar, and maybe that's more easily separable.

Or, you use the fact that they crystalize out of solution at different concentrations.. you evaporate it in a thin dish, and the resulting solids will be partially separated.

Or you use differential freezing (same as evaporating, really)

If you don't need to actually recover the sugar, you could heat it up until the salt melts: the sugar will decompose and leave carbon behind, bubble oxygen through the molten mixture and the C will get burned off as CO2. 

And, then, there's another approach: add yeast to the solution, which will digest the sugar making alcohol.  And wouldn't you really rather have alcohol with salt?  Add lime juice and you're all set.



Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: John Hearns [mailto:John.Hearns at xma.co.uk] 
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2016 7:59 AM
To: 'C Bergström' <cbergstrom at pathscale.com>; Justin Y. Shi <shi at temple.edu>
Cc: Lux, Jim (337C) <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov>; beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: RE: [Beowulf] [OT] MPI-haters

> - either magically inside the compiler and or explicitly via source 
> syntax sugar.. However, resolving them is only half the battle
> - keep it all high performance is the other half. (reducing data
> movement/locality) so lets not mistake salt for sugar..


Disclaimer - I am not a chemist.
How WOULD one separate salt from sugar?  Let's have some inventive ideas.
Forgive me of this is in Chemistry 101 and is an easy undergraduate problem.

Both are water soluble, so there is no point in dissolving one and filtering out the solid part.
Is there a solute which acts on sugar but not on salt  (let's say common table salt and sucrose crystals for arguments sake).

Or do we ned a sophisticated Rube Goldberg machine which sends drops a stream of single crystals through a laser scanner which is then followed by an ultrafast air-blast kicker to sort the crystals into separate hoppers.


#####################################################################################
Scanned by MailMarshal - M86 Security's comprehensive email content security solution.
#####################################################################################
Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. Employees of XMA Ltd are expressly required not to make defamatory statements and not to infringe or authorise any infringement of copyright or any other legal right by email communications. Any such communication is contrary to company policy and outside the scope of the employment of the individual concerned. The company will not accept any liability in respect of such communication, and the employee responsible will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising. XMA Limited is registered in England and Wales (registered no. 2051703). Registered Office: Wilford Industrial Estate, Ruddington Lane, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7EP