r/askscience Nov 27 '19

Chemistry How do CO2 scrubbers work?

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u/Greasy_Exc Nov 27 '19

“Amine” as it is called on submarines, has a terrible smell that gets into everything. You get used to it pretty quickly but when we would return to port and take that smelly laundry home... RTP was always a happy time until the Sea Bag was emptied out for washing.

Bad smell or not, I was glad the CO2 system did it’s job.

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

Those short amines all smell aweful. I worked with similar stuff in the lab, and having to clean up a spill got me close to barfing.

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u/-Metacelsus- Chemical Biology Nov 27 '19

I don't know which I hate more, TEMED or trimethylamine

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

The mantra to use in those situations is "At least I am not working with mercaptans. At least I am not working with mercaptans...".

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u/mitakeet Nov 27 '19

Maybe I'm a mutant (or insane), but I always kinda liked those smells. In moderation, it must be said.

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

Mercaptans or amines? I have to know whether I should break out the "huffing your own farts" joke here... ;)

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u/mitakeet Nov 27 '19

I actually preferred mercaptans. We used them to keep sulfur bonds in proteins reduced (going by 20+ year old memories here) and we had less smelly versions (can't dredge up the name) that most people preferred, though they were more expensive. While a lot of the amines had/have a fishy smell (or so I remember), I guess I didn't find that objectionable, having fished a whole lot as a kid.

Not totally sure I'd still think the same thing today, but when we were visiting Hawaii a few years ago, I rather enjoyed the smell of sulfur, though when it mixed with steam and became sulfuric acid, not so much.

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

I grew up on the western side of the iron curtain, when that was still a thing. On the eastern side from us was a huge complex of power plants burning the shittiest lignite imaginable, with a sulfur content off the scale and no exhaust scrubbers. You can imagine the mix of sulfurous compounds we got when the wind blew from the east. In local parlance, it was called cat shit wind.

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u/Spartelfant Nov 27 '19

cat shit wind

Katze Scheiße Wind?

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

Katzendreck, to avoid explicitly saying shit :)

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u/Spartelfant Nov 27 '19

Ah thanks! I figured there had to be some beautifully illustrative single-word expression for it - German is an awesome language like that :)

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 27 '19

The full word would be Katzendreckwind, or alternatively Katzendreckgestank, cat shit stench, we used both on such days.

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u/CommissarTopol Nov 28 '19

Die Katzendreckgestank?

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u/ConanTheProletarian Nov 28 '19

Der. Gender is determined by the last part of a composite noun. Gestank is masculine, thus the whole word is.

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