Tesla headquarters spills gallons of lime-green liquid into Bay Area street

www.sfgate.com Access to this page has been denied

px-captcha

You're viewing a single thread.

66 comments

Elon probably told them to dump the coolant in the street because he thought it would be a very funny joke. And probably also told them to put the green dye in first.
Sounds like the sort of thing he would think is hilariously funny.
- Is lye a common thing for people to use as coolant? I’m not saying it’s not, I’ve just never heard of it.
  
  Borax and lye are both cleaning agents.
  
  That's what I thought, but Tesla is claiming that it was coolant.
  
  They're cleaning agents individually; I can't speak to what they are when combined.
  
  Looks like they are also a cleaning product when combined.
  https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1992/10/04/lye-soap-recipes-and-warnings/
  But of course that doesn't necessarily mean it can't also be used as a coolant.
  From what I understand, neutrino detectors involve what is essentially a swimming pool full of dish soap.
  
  That's why Teslas are expensive and shitty. They're diverting effort and funds to neutrino detection.
  
  Lye and oil makes soap, not lye and borax. The key in all these recipes is lye and oils, not lye and borax for anyone who isn't going to click on the link and start mixing these chemicals. Lye can be real nasty if you don't know how to handle it. It's one of those chemicals where the safety precautions are there for a reason, not because it's normal practice.
  
  Lye and rich lady fat if one believes Tyler Durdon
  
  To be fair, the article does start with similar warnings.
  
  Yeah, I'm just warning people who aren't going to click on the link and instead start mixing lye and borax and wiping the counter with it
  
  In that case, thanks for doing that.
  
  Presumably they were cleaning the coolant lines, same as flushing a vehicle radiator
  
  mildly concentrated sodium hydroxide solutions would corrode the living fuck out of aluminum pretty quickly (https://www.calpaclab.com/aluminum-chemical-compatibility-chart/), especially when hot and circulating, so no
  could have been a kind of additive maybe? but then it won't be a lot of it. borax forms a gel or at least high viscosity solution when mixed with glycols so both can't be used at the same time as a coolant
  Dye might be fluorescein, it fluoresces under UV (duh) could be useful in checking what's this thing
  
  It kind of sounds like they told some junior exec to come up with a quick excuse because whatever they were actually doing was a lot worse.
  
  i have no idea what they were cooking but it's not coolant, unless temperature there never drops below 0C
  
  I think @ChicoSuave above figured it out. It was used to flush the coolant.
  
  It's possible they didn't properly treat the liquid they were using as coolant and needed the lye and borax to remove scaling and that it actually wasn't the coolant itself. That would also explain not having the proper permits for storing the chemicals if they were just being used for cleaning. Though wouldn't be surprised if they were then just going to dump it down the drain anyway...
  
  I have absolutely no idea.

66 comments