X-Message-Number: 2176 Date: Thu, 29 Apr 93 14:40:31 CDT From: Brian Wowk <> Subject: CRYONICS Ballast Containers I learned through my industrial alcohol inquiries that the deposit on a 50 gallon steel drum is $60. This compares with the $7 retail price of those collapsible polyethylene 5 gallon jugs we have been talking about. This suggests that there would be no container cost savings in going from small plastic containers to larger metal ones. There probably would be savings, though, in going to larger *plastic* containers. Perhaps 20 gallon cylindrical plastic pails are the best ballast containers. The 160 lb weight should not be a concern since, as Mike Darwin points out, we will need an overhead hoist anyway. We could put sheets of particle board (or some other cheap alternative) between layers of pails to evenly distribtute the weight of overlying layers. The weight of overlying layers, by the way, would be a real problem for the 5 gallon polyethylene jugs (thick bags, really). The bottom containers would have to support 400 lbs (4 psi), and could not be prefrozen because of the low freezing point of alcohol/water. Another advatage of large, rigid pails is that we could stack them to make pillars at strategic locations. In the spirit of Mike Darwin's suggestion for using ice as structural support, such pillars would protect patients against large heavy objects (like the building roof) falling on the Cold Room. Taking the permanent alcohol/water ballast off the floor and making pillars out of it would also solve the vertical space problem that Michael Riskin caught me trying to bluff my way through. --- Brian Wowk Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2176