Out of each five gallon process, I could reliably pull out 9 half-gallon tainers before it was difficult to pull more material out of the n. Due to the nature of a distiltion n, the position of the material I pulled out would depend on both whid of the racted from, as well as what had beeracted prior. For example, if I pulled all nine samples from the top of the n, I would get different positions than if I pulled from the bottoms.

  To attempt to get my bearings on the position gases, I pulled a sample from the top, thetom, and tried stig a fming stito a small amount of eabsp; The top sample didn't react, but the bottom sample fred up, likely meaning that liquid is ri liquid oxygen. It's very likely then that the top is liquid nitrogen rich, but I'd need a differeo verify that for certain. I would expect argon to make up between 0.1% to 2% of the atmosphere, depe on various factors like atmospheric thiess, and pary age.

  To get a rough estimate of oxygen tration, I recharged the n with a fresh batch, and pulled quarter-gallon samples from the bottom, aed the stick test until the stio longer fred up. By the fourth sample, it was barely fring up, and the fifth sample no longer fred. With a little room for error plus the small pert of oxygen likely remaining in the n, I'd say that we have between 15% and 22% oxygen in our atmosphere.

  I then resumed using the bao try to determihe presence of a third gas. Results, while somewhat small, did seem to indicate a denser gas that has a boiling poiweewo ases. I tested this by drawing out different samples of gases from the tops and bottoms in a row, aing them against each other. At the point where the oxygen starts to disappear, the density rises slightly, before falling quickly and remaining low. sidering it's a small spike iy in about one, sometimes tles, followed by the remaining 4 gallons or so being lower density, I'm guessing that it's argon.

  At this point, I've got about a month worth of water left in the reservoir to use before I'd o wait until spring to resume testing, so I really o make things t. I could easily try to charge oxygen and nitrogen into a crystal groaratus to grow a crystal on the mountain currently. I currently am incapable of charging argon. What I would like to do is collect multiple of the argon rich samples, and throw them bato the distiltion tower and enrich them further. For that, however, I'd need another small stirling cryocooler, with a cold side head that could be ied into a dewar fsk a retively sealed, to prevent evaporation of collected samples while I distill them.

  Given we're only actually making about a third of a gallon of liquid air a day, I don't think we'll actually make enough to re-distill out any reasonable amount on. We might, however, be able to pull a riough amount out of the n to at least attempt to charge a crystal apparatus with it. To achieve this, I'll initially pull off about two and a half gallons from the top of the n, then pull about a gallon and a half from the bottom, after reag equilibrium again.

  That gallon and a half will get mixed with liquid air again, and put into the n. Some basic fraal math will let me calcute how much more to pull off the top ime, and so on. After three cycles, I'll pull off some of the oxygen from the bottom as well. In doing this, I'm basically using the n as a cooled tainer where I'm slowly trating the argon, if it is argon.

  As I hauled a dewar fsk up the mountain, I wished it wasn't summer. I filled three fsks with what I sidered to be the best samples I could for each of the three gases. I have a goblin oher side of me carrying oher fsk eabsp; Each fsk is actually fairly small, only holding about a cup of liquid. Since I broke my smallest crystal groaratus, I'm going to be modifying the rgest size, aing growth with what few crystals fit in that apparatus that I have left.

  I pn oing the oxygen st, given how high risk it is to actually use. I pn on starting with nitrogen, then moving on to the argon. That said, the argo is actually still majority oxygen. If the argo yields as, the oxyge should inform me of which of the gasses actually tributed. If none succeed, then I think I'll put the proje hold.

  Well, I ruihis crystal groaratus as well, but not befetting some promisis. I modified the apparatus to have a gas charging chamber attached, where the liquid gases could boil and theer the chamber as a gas through a stone-shaping operated valve. I had the two goblins I brought alo the old crystal sg, and then would slowly try to grow a crystal like I did previously. The nitrogen was useless, as expected.

  The argon rich oxygen produced a very small amount of growth. The pure oxygen, however, did not produy growth, and in fact, irreparably weakehe tainer, causing it to colpse when I tried to pull a vacuum to empty the chamber at the very end of work. I'm sure the argo tributed, given it's rge pertage of oxygen. Oxygen is so reactive, that I'm guessing it modified and weakehe structure to the point of failure.

  The argo being successful, even if minutely, was a huge win. It means I move forward with the stage of this whole process. First, I'll o fix the two broken crystal groaratuses. , I have a few ideas for how I'd like to proceed with processing the argon to make it more pure. First, I'll o make two more small cryocoolers, designed so that their cold-side piston fits snuggly in a five gallon dewar fsk. That way I use the cryocooler to keep whatever liquid inside in that state. Then, as I use the distiltion n, I pull of the quarter of a gallon of oxygen that was ri argon.

  By repeating that process 20 times, I'll have enough of the argon rich oxygen to repeat the process in the n again, and this time, I'll pull the argon from the top of the n. Though we might run into produ issues at that pabsp; If everything works perfectly, we only produce about 60 gallons of liquid air in the operational months, but I want about a hundred for processing.

  Evehe total volume we produ the tail end of that isn't that high. Depending on how the argon actually forms in the crystal structure, it probably won't add much more to the volume of a crystal than it possesses as a liquid. Adding a gallon on to a crystal apparatus, for example, probably won't grow the crystal by more than a few gallons itself. sidering a gallon is only about ah of a cubic foot, we'll need a lot on.

  I'll eventually be able to check this, but for the sake ument, if I had a gallon of liquid argon, and it grew a crystal by a cubic foot, I'd still need nearly 700 gallons on to get a crystal the size of ParTor. In short, our facility would o be scaled up siderably for that to work. Even if it actually grows the crystal by ten times that amount, we'd still need 70 years to reach our target.

  That is, it would take that long if we only relied on this argon produ and the old crystal waste material. We do have the mana crystals that the miners are currently harvesting as well as the handful of leftover crystals in the cave. year, I'll probably als on some stone shaping goblins or lesser earth demons to take over the argon liquid gas produ process, freeing me up to begin work on other processes.

  As byproducts of the argon produ, we'll have a det amount of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. The liquid oxygen actually would be quite useful to aid in our ore roasting process. We could simply put a tainer of liquid oxygen to evaporate he air intake for the roasting ovens, and the extra oxygen tent should roast the ores more thhly, removing a rger pertage of the sulfur. The liquid nitrogen would also be a fairly pure source of nitrogen to use for the previously discussed Haber process for making ammonia. In fact, the oxygen would also be useful for attempting to make the iron oxide catalyst for the process as well, though the Haber process is still quite low on my priority list.