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A tale of ant-lion--- I saw a hell in a plant (1)
I am a specialist of powder technology belong to a field of chemical engineering. Why is it connected with an ant lion? I want talk about the following a topic which was conversation with a entomologist in a waiting room for telerecord in NHK.
My experience of the fear of death on a chemical plant:This is a fact
Question: What is powder technology?
Formerly, chemistry classified material to a compound of inorganic and organic, and in education, the field was divided into by the compound. However, powder technology intends for anything if it is a state of powder. It is a study based on a commonality as powder. From fine powder to coarse powder, it is unrelated to the size. Ｗe say they are all powder. If we think so, collection of big particle as gravel gets possible to treat powder as wheat flour.
Before the work in university, I was a factory construction engineer of chemical industry for more than ten years.

When an ant peep into the position of an ant-lion, immediately he attack with a stone
After graduated a university, my first work in the company was warehouse management to store coke of several thousand tons temporarily. My job was plant design for crushing raw materials and a products, and prepared size of the grain and refined them. My first job in the company was observation of the raw materials every day. When I go up to the ceiling of the warehouse in the plant, there look at many large hollows of the raw material (coke).
Just it was a large nest of ant lion, I thought. It was huge net of ant lion and I was only a little ant. Diameter of the hollow of the coke was 10 m or more. The coke which had been carried by train was stored in the warehouse with a conveyer in every day, and it formed a big pile. Under the house, there was some outlet for discharge at the bed of a warehouse, then with a belt conveyor which set up in underground passage. As continued the discharge, formed a big pickpocket which formed reverse cone-shaped dent. If we see from the top, the various size hole are just like nest of big ant lion. Biggest were the diameter of about 10 meter. I remembered the days of a children. The nest of the ant lion existed under the floor or a root of a big tree, or the ground under floor.
Coke of a warehouse was included the powder and lump. Becoming large-scale like this warehouse, the lump and fine powder shows a same property. Powder technology treat same body (powder) without relation to the size. Present age, because we particularly thought about super exact processing in high technology , particle came to treat the nano fine particles. As I look back on it now, it was my first step to my powder technology.
I saw a terrible hell in the plant

By the way, it was the time when I acted as a warehouse watch man, a accident was happen in a near factory which was same company.
One man, he worked similar to me was walking on the top of a mountain of piled coke with one coworker, and he was fall down by mistake in a pickpocket cone shaped hole. The coworker who grew a hand to help him, has been pull in. Because there was nobody else in a warehouse, the conveyer under the floor continued working. Next morning , watch man of underground conveyer found a foot of a person. It was made a fuss in the plant. First of all, they supply oxygen from oxygen bomb, but already suffocated, and holy two life are lost. In pitch-black in warehouse, under the pressure of the coke powder, they died.

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