User talk:Mbeychok

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This user is a   Chemical Engineer

On June 24, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Flue gas stack, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

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[edit] Invitation to join projects related to the Energy Portal

Hello Mbeychok! You made some great contributions on energy related issues. I thought you might like to be aware of the opportunity to contribute to the energy portal. If you are able to help and wish to show your support (and to automatically add yourself to the list of Wikipedians plugged into the Energy Portal), you might also like to paste one of these user boxes onto your user page (according to your colour preference!):

Paste this text...	...to get this tag
{{User_energy_portal_blue}}	This user is plugged into the Energy Portal.
{{User_energy_portal_red}}	This user is plugged into the Energy Portal.
{{User_energy_portal_blaze}}	This user is plugged into the Energy Portal.

Beagel (talk) 21:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Injector

Hi. Please have a look at my comments at Talk:Injector. Bill F (talk) 02:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Bill F, please read my full response to your comments at the Talk:Injector page. Regards, - mbeychok (talk) 02:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD nomination of Air pollution dispersion modeling books

An editor has nominated Air pollution dispersion modeling books, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Air pollution dispersion modeling books and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Howdy there! You might want to edit your statement in the AfD discussion. It was PatrickStar LaserPants (talk • contribs • count) not DHartung who is the suspicious new user. And yes, I thought it very odd that a brand new account with three, count em three, edits was prodding an article and leaving maintenance tags on an article maintained by someone with over ten thousand edits. I patrol the user creation log, and although I may have been in the seafood section this time, something smelled fishy to me. MKoltnow 19:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

MKoltnow, thanks very much and I have fixed my mistake. It would be useful if you would be so kind as to also offer your above comments on the AFD discussion page. Regards, - mbeychok (talk) 19:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Here's the problem, though. I skate a bit too close to WP:BITE and WP:NPA sometimes. In this specific case, I removed the prod specifically because this was the editor's third edit. It was his third consecutive "tagging" edit, and I (as I said above) smelled a rat. It is clear that this is not a brand-new editor from his edits. I feel that questioning his actions/motivations based solely on his short edit history is commenting on the contributor rather than the content, which is on a slippery slope to a personal attack. It's easy to remove a prod tag--I merely have to contest the deletion on any grounds at all. It's another thing to participate in the AfD; I'll need to formulate a decent argument before contributing. I suspect I will comment on this AfD, but I think it best that I wait a bit. Fortunately there is time. P.S. I really like that you prefer threaded UserTalk discussion. This is the kind of exchange that people should be able to look at and follow. It is so odd (to me) that it is more common to use UserTalk as if it were email and leave disjointed discussions on a variety of pages. MKoltnow 20:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I saw your response at the AfD, and I'm not entirely certain that I agree - if there are so many books about air dispersion modeling, either there ought to be more to say about the subject in the article, or the books are largely redundant to each other, and the value of the list is low. On the other hand, large bibliographies are positively welcome over at Citizendium, even for very short articles; and right now, there doesn't seem to be anyone working in your area of expertise. Argyriou (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Argyriou, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. As for Citizendium, at my age, I really have about as much as I can do right here on Wikipedia. Thanks for your comments. Regards, - mbeychok (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piping&diff=next&oldid=166201797

Hello. I just noticed your edit and the comments justifying the removal of pictures. There is already an article on Firestops, of course. Pipes have to be firestopped when they penetrate fire-resistance rated walls and floors and this is all to often done incorrectly for a variety of reasons shown here: http://www.geocities.com/achim_hering/history_of_firestops_in_north_america.html . Firestops are in immediate contact with the piping and what the piping does and the insulations, what it's all made of etc. is inextricably related. Does that concept seem offensive to you? Before you answer that, please take a look at the piping related examples here:

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Firestop#Bad_examples_.28Building_and_Fire_Code_Violations.29
• The point is, that when these basic lessons are ignored, which happens with great regularity all over North America in particular, you can have the greatest piping system on the planet, but it does not matter in the slightest if the installation of it results in code violations that render the occupants dead.
• Best, --Achim (talk) 04:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Achim, I congratulate you on creating the Firestop article (or expanding most of it). I never found the concept of firestops or your images to be "offensive", nor did I say that. I simply felt they were out of place in the Piping article and I still do. The very long length of the Firestop article simply proves my point that your images would be better in such a stand-alone article. Regards, - mbeychok (talk) 07:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, I won't make a big deal of it, but how do you explain the existence of the firestop requirement under Section 15050 of the MasterFormat? --Achim (talk) 03:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SVG image

Seeing Image:NatGasProcessing.png in Natural gas I couldn't help but think that it would be better as a vector image, so I created one: Image:NatGasProcessing.svg. I haven't replaced it in the article since a) I wanted to make sure people didn't think it sucked :) but more importantly 2) there is a bug in MediaWiki's rendering of SVGs which makes the arrowheads invisible. Seems to be fixed upstream though so it's only a matter of time till it looks right. Hairy Dude (talk) 19:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hairy Dude: As the originator of Image:NatGasProcessing.png, I don't think that your svg version "sucks". But I do have two important comments:

• My original png drawing has a Legend box in the lower left hand corner that is essential to explaining the flow diagram and your version should also include that Legend box.
• I deliberately chose my text font sizes so that the font would be readable in a drawing that was no more than 584px wide ... since that is the maximum width that can be displayed on a Wikipedia page without horizontal scrolling or without having to use the "thumb" function to reduce the image width. On my IE browser, using the "thumb" function to reduce the size of an image reduces the appearance or resolution quite visibly. I would urge you most strongly to reduce your font sizes so that the current 744px width of your svg version can be reduced to 584px.

Obviously, the arrow heads must be visible. Without them, the drawing is no good.

Personally, I think the png version is fine as is. But if you are going to change it to a svg version, then please consider the above two points. Regards, - mbeychok (talk) 20:51, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, scaling it down will be no problem... though why 584 px in particular? Also, I thought it would be better to keep the legend outside the image, since it is basically text rather than graphics. I really don't think representing text as graphics is a good idea. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Take a good luck at what is in the legend. It is all needed to explain the colors, etc. If some user just inserts the image in an article and does not include the legend in the caption, then confusion will reign. That's why the legend is needed inside the drawing. As for 584px, as I said before that is the largest size that will fit on an article page without needing to use horizontal scrolling. If you make it much smaller than that, the font may not be readable. - mbeychok (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, I will not change the image in the article until that bug is fixed, since I agree, it is no good without the arrowheads. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] en dash

Hi, M, I see you're not a fan of the en dash for connecting pairs of names. I, on the other hand, feel that the modern trend toward using a hyphen instead is just the laziness of writers who didn't have an easy way to type an en dash in windows. Alas, however, the Chicago Manual of Style, crufty doc that it is, also likes the hyphen. Anyway, I've fixed it to en dash in a hundred or more articles, because it seems so much more respectful of individuals to connect their names in the way that means they are separate names, rather than use the hyphen that suggests the former modifies that latter, as in Green-Kubo relations; why would a Kubo ever be green anyway? But Green–Kubo relations are obviously due to two individuals. Now, if you look in books for the Joule–Thomson effect, as usual you'll find most don't do it the strictly right way; but a few do [1] [2]; I generally take the occurence of any the right way as evidence that some editors still care. Anyway, since I never got any pushback on this before, I'm not sure what to do. I suppose it doesn't hurt to leave Joule-Thomson the lazy way, since probably the majority of other articles are that way still. Dicklyon (talk) 05:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Dick, It is not whether or not I am "...a fan of the en dash for connecting pairs of names". In my pre-retirement career of over 50 years as a chemical engineer, I had never seen it written any way but Joule-Thomson. You know engineering and thermodynamic books were printed and published long before we had computers and long before we had Windows ... so you really should not say that people take the "lazy" way out because there is no easy way to create an en dash in Windows. And many books published currently or recently also use the hyphen.

As for a right way or a wrong way, I have yet to see any definition anywhere that using an en dash is "the right way". Nor have I seen anywhere that says using a hyphen is the "wrong way". That appears to me as simply your personal opinion of what is right or wrong.

In any event, another reason for my reversion of your renaming the Joule-Thomson effect article to use an en dash was that you only changed the name and few uses of the hyphen in the first few sentences. You didn't follow through and change the number of other uses of the hyphen in the article. So rather than having to clean up after you, I thought it much simpler to just revert your changes.

I don't feel that I am "pushing back" as you expressed it. I am simply using the hyphen as has been done for decades. As you noted in your above comment, the Chicago Manual of Style uses the hyphen.

If you feel strongly about this, I suggest you make an attempt to have use of the en dash codified in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Best regards, mbeychok (talk) 07:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Beychok's Cover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Beychok's Cover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 04:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Packed Bed

Hi. I am trying to expand on the packed bed article. I was wondering you had any thoughts or comments on how to get this article a step up from stub class and what parts of the article would be the most useful in expanding upon. Thanks. Fxcenglish (talk) 00:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

First of all, it would be very helpful if you registered and took a few minutes to create a User Page and a Talk Page. That would make it easier to communicate with you.

I would suggest that you thoroughly read and study the Theoretical plate article (especially the section on "Distillation and absorption packed beds"), the Continuous distillation article (especially the "Packing" section) and the Fractionating column article (especially the "Industrial fractionating columns" section.

Paragraphs should discuss just one subject. Take a look at the quick and dirty edits that I just made to Packed bed. Also, the lead-in introductory section was too long, so I broke it up and created some sub-sections for you to flesh out.

The article needs more references. But most of all, in my opinion, the only way to write a really good article is to know the subject very thoroughly beforehand. A novice to the field simply cannot write a good article just by reading some textbooks or other reference books. For example, I am quite sure that I could never write a good article about quantum mechanics or black holes or relativity.

Good luck and have at it. mbeychok (talk) 02:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Review/Content

Stripping (chemistry) Hello Mbeychok, I was wondering if you could review this article to see if you think it has any mistakes or needs more content. If you think that more content is needed feel free to add more as it seems like you have a lot of experience in the field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iowaskier (talk • contribs) 19:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

From a rather brief scan of the article, it seems like a good start. I don't have the time right now to go into it in depth. I did straighten out the references and I also added quite a few more relevant "See also" links. - mbeychok (talk) 23:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Coal thumbrule question

Hello Mbeychok,

I've been trying to wrap my head around a primary energy vs. secondary energy problem. You might know the answer or be able to point me in the right direction. The problem is this, if you add the upstream energy inputs that go into coal (digging, transporting and processing) to the HHV of coal how does this compare against the energy content of the electricity produced. Or more specifically, how much primary energy do you have to use to produce a given quantity of secondary energy (electricity) using coal? I'm looking for a rough thumbrule. I'm guessing the primary/secondary energy ratio is about 3.5 to 1. Cheers Mrshaba (talk) 04:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Found it... 3.17... Mrshaba (talk) 17:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Surface Condenser

Hello, perhaps you could help me with this pickle:

one thing i could not understand in the surface condenser article:

Why does the steam need to be condensed to water? Does this not make it lose energy, therefore needing more energy to be put into it again later before it can be returned to the steam turbines? Does this not therefore make the process less efficient as it requires more raw material to re-heat water into steam - when it was steam in the first place?

Thank you in advance, and eagerly awaiting your reply :-) BigSteve (talk) 14:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

As explained in the Surface condenser article, the surface condensers operate under vacuum so that the turbine exhaust steam pressure is at a pressure well below atmospheric pressure ... and virtually all of the energy in the turbine's high pressure inlet steam has been extracted. There just isn't any significant amount of energy left in the very low pressure exhaust steam. By condensing the very low pressure exhaust steam, we at least recover clean condensed water that can reused as boiler feedwater. - mbeychok (talk) 00:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)