lazersteve
Well-known member
I was dropped after stage two.
Steve
Steve
10 Million Dollar Challenge
- Thread starter jimdoc
- Start date
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Those final nine must be true professionals.
I know that I don't have to say this to you Steve, but your process may be perfectly suitable for other applications but ultimately not cost effective or employable on a grand scale. So don't be bummed, it happens to the best. Making it past the preliminaries is admirable, considering you are up against extremely motivated groups, all of them containing people with years of practical experience, and last and least, quite a few letters after their names.
I know that I don't have to say this to you Steve, but your process may be perfectly suitable for other applications but ultimately not cost effective or employable on a grand scale. So don't be bummed, it happens to the best. Making it past the preliminaries is admirable, considering you are up against extremely motivated groups, all of them containing people with years of practical experience, and last and least, quite a few letters after their names.
Chuck_Revised
Well-known member
LazerSteve.... So you made the group of 16 teams selected before the final nine were chosen? Wow, that's impressive! Being in the 7 percentile is nothing to hang your head about. Congratulations!
Perhaps you should publicize your patent!
Perhaps you should publicize your patent!
lazersteve
Well-known member
Chuck,
I made it past stage one to the review board stage. I don't know how many teams were in the running at that stage, but it wasn't that many. It was after the first cut had come out. It really sucked anticipating the second package in the mail. The day it showed up at my house via Fed Ex my heart was racing. When I opened it and the news was that I was out, it was a real blow.
I need to revise my patent since it was submitted. It was the first patent I've ever drawn up and filed. My patent skills were rudimentary at best when I hastily filed it. I have since filed another unrelated patent and it's formatting is much better.
In my approach to the Barrack problem I proposed using a well known sodium silicate manufacturing technique to dissolve the quartz and leave the pm's behind. The only chemicals required were soda ash, lye, and water. I can only assume the key reason it was rejected was likely due to the sodium silicate disposal issues created when dealing with the process. The silicate has useful applications (Aerogels, refractory, textiles, fire fighting, etc.) but the point that I may have overlooked was the cost of transporting the sodium silicate produced off site.
All in all, it was an exhilarating contest for me, and I'm proud I made it as far as I did.
Steve
I made it past stage one to the review board stage. I don't know how many teams were in the running at that stage, but it wasn't that many. It was after the first cut had come out. It really sucked anticipating the second package in the mail. The day it showed up at my house via Fed Ex my heart was racing. When I opened it and the news was that I was out, it was a real blow.
I need to revise my patent since it was submitted. It was the first patent I've ever drawn up and filed. My patent skills were rudimentary at best when I hastily filed it. I have since filed another unrelated patent and it's formatting is much better.
In my approach to the Barrack problem I proposed using a well known sodium silicate manufacturing technique to dissolve the quartz and leave the pm's behind. The only chemicals required were soda ash, lye, and water. I can only assume the key reason it was rejected was likely due to the sodium silicate disposal issues created when dealing with the process. The silicate has useful applications (Aerogels, refractory, textiles, fire fighting, etc.) but the point that I may have overlooked was the cost of transporting the sodium silicate produced off site.
All in all, it was an exhilarating contest for me, and I'm proud I made it as far as I did.
Steve
That's a clever idea!
It's a very useful and convenient procedure to use NaOH and a good boil to rid a sample of silicon dioxide (silica) and be left with water soluble silicate.
If I were to have bothered going through all of that, I would've suggested something similar, or perhaps decrepitation by heating the ore to a high temperature...
It's a very useful and convenient procedure to use NaOH and a good boil to rid a sample of silicon dioxide (silica) and be left with water soluble silicate.
If I were to have bothered going through all of that, I would've suggested something similar, or perhaps decrepitation by heating the ore to a high temperature...
aflacglobal
Well-known member
Yeahhhhhh. I kind of screwed the pooch on my submittal. I was not able to qualify for the main program, but elected to take a different approach. Make a long story short when i took my 7 months off to do my government work let's say :roll: i just dropped my persuit of the subject. I figure i'll wait around and see what happens with the other finalist before i approach barrick again. See if they find the answer they are looking for. I'm thinking very seriously about pitching it to Newmont next. It just takes so dam long to find the right person and do all the leg work involved. But at least i've go plenty of time to try again. :wink:
