A rotary trommel machine sorting worms out of soil.

100% the operator fine-tunes the drum RPM for optimal separation based on conditions…and he’ll tell it like its a work of art

WORM SEPARATION IS NOT A PHASE, MOM! I’ll be famous one day. You’ll see

Whats even more crazy is that this kind of basic process works on pretty much anything. Take advantage of difference in attributes (density/stickyness/viscosity/melting points/boiling points) and you can separate just about anything by spinning it around, things will fly out at different places. This is pretty much literally how you enrich uranium; You take refined uranium ore, turn it into gas, spin it around in a giant centrifuge and then U^235 will shoot out in a different place than the common and unwanted isotrope U^238.

I’d like to hear more details about your plans to seperate U^235

Both of you are getting a visit by a bunker buster missile

Less of a visit, and more of an occupation.

Bunker buster is overkill when they could just send some letter boys to kill their pets.

STUXNET has entered the chat

Sure, but the centrifuge has to be like 100,000rpm since the difference between the two uraniums is almost zero. Fun fact: You can centrifuge hot and cold air apart! Air isn’t at a single temperature (individual atoms are at a wide range of temps, your air temp is just the average) and using a powerful enough centrifuge (often powered entirely by the airflow) you can split air into a 0c and +40c stream from 20c compressed air. Its actually used industrially too!

Wait this is fascinating, can you tell me what this machine is called?

Sure. took me a second to find it but its called a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube Do note, its rather inefficient, but the fact it works at all is amazing to me! Can make your own if you have a lathe as its not super precision required, and holy is it ever LOUD! 100,000+rpm air is not quiet! Really sounds like some crazy high speed turbine engine.

Thank you so much!

If you’re looking for a more efficient industrial cooling method that also relies on just water and air then try this one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum\_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cooling) And this one may also be of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_cycle_machine

> Sure, but the centrifuge has to be like 100,000rpm since the difference between the two uraniums is almost zero. That’s the modern way, but a football field sized building full of calutrons works too.

I’m guessing you watched / read about the stuxnet virus and what that did to the Iranian centrifuges?

> than the *common and unwanted isotrope U238.* Unwanted??? [This](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExcWl2c3Zkb2RuMWE3dXVoNTB0d3U1cHJrM25pZ290enUwdWwzaHkzciZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/5h7nwwMJdNpxoWxmlh/giphy.gif) individual would like a word with you.

When covid caused grocery shortages I bought whole sticks of cinnamon, threw them in my oster blender with a glass top and then I’d blend them until the clattering stopped. Then I’d take it off the blender and unscrew the bottom of the cup over some parchment to collect all the coarse bits, followed by using a silicone spatula to scoop all the fine powder onto a separate sheet of parchment. Put the coarse bits back in the blender, add a couple more sticks, repeat. Going into this I was worried I wouldn’t grade the cinnamon fine enough to match what I get from the store, but I get silky smooth results, way better than the store provides and the freshness difference is insane. Plus I’d carve off any knots or deviations in the ‘display grade’ cinnamon sticks before grinding them, meaning my cinnamon ‘silk’ is way higher grade for multiple reasons than the spare bits they grind up to sell in the store.

I don’t think what you are describing is the same process, you aren’t spinning something to seperate two different supstances.

I have this unhatched plan to build a trommel to separate the 3/4″ gravel in my urban yard from all the humus from two decades of unraked leaves. I know it would work, but I hadn’t solved how to separate all of the peach pits that now seem to comprise about 1/4 of the rocks! Now I wonder if it could be done like this. The only idea I had previously was to throw shovelfuls of the trommeled rocks and pits into a barrel of water and scoop off the floating pits.

Not sure about up to date, state of the art machines but that’s how garbage treatment plants used to sort most of their trash 25-30 years ago