Dear Evil Engineer: Can I steal a lake to replenish my shark-infested moat? | Technology Magazine

2021-12-13 19:20:14 By : Mr. Nick Chou

The evil engineers turned their attention to a flourishing evil field: stealing water.

Earlier this year, I bought an abandoned castle. I have been busy maintaining, dealing with the infestation of bats (the previous owner has driven them out) and repairing the dungeon (it has been transformed into a yoga and health studio). The last addition will be a moat full of sharks.

I dug a deep moat around my castle, and now I just need to fill it up. However, my water is metered, so I hesitate to pull out the hose. Can you suggest how I can empty a nearby lake in the dead of night and then fill my moat with stolen water?

If you still have time to suggest how to transport the sharks (I am not sure that it is impossible to send them into the pipeline, but I have never tried it), it would be greatly appreciated.

Water theft, as we call "ancient crime", is steadily recovering in the field of villains. I even included it in last year's Evil & Treachery magazine's list article "Top Ten Trouble-making Trends in 2020". Its poor supervision makes it an important strategic growth area for thieves, and the industry is booming; according to Interpol, 30% to 50% of the earth’s water supply is stolen every year.

Large-scale operations often involve digging up water supply infrastructure and redirecting it to planting pleasing plants or other water-intensive industries, including many legal industries.

In your case, unless there is a conveniently located lake near you that allows you to drain the outflowing water to the moat, you will need to pump water to the donor lake. Since you want to complete the work overnight, you need to set up a portable device between the lake and the moat.

The first thing to say is that you have to make sure that you can use an industrial drain pump, because consumer pumps are unlikely to cut the mustard. For a moat shaped like a canned pineapple slice, its volume is πd(R2-r2), where d is the depth, R is the outer radius, and r is the inner radius. I don't know the size of your moat, but in order to grasp the size, let us express it with some numbers: For d=10m, R=50m, r=45m, you need 15,000m3 of water.

Industrial pumps, such as ANDRITZ wastewater and sewage discharge pumps, seem to be more fluid than most pumps, pumping 10,000 cubic meters per hour at 16 bar, which will surely be overnight even for larger moats Transport enough water between. However, if you insist on using consumer water pumps, such as the impressive Makita model with a pump capacity of 14.4 cubic meters per hour, you will not be able to steal water from the moat overnight (unless your moat is the size of a children’s pool ).

Next comes the problem of transporting thousands or tens of thousands of tons of water between lakes and moats. Although HGVs are sometimes deployed to provide water in emergencies, I do not recommend driving the water tank back and forth between the lake and the moat, even if the distance is small. In the United Kingdom, it is not recommended to use a six-axle vehicle with a load of more than 44 tons, which requires hundreds of driving times. So—unless there is an existing pipeline infrastructure that can be easily hijacked—it is a temporary pipeline. Build a temporary flexible pipeline used in the petroleum industry for rapid deployment: a flexible flat hose of knitted nylon and polyurethane running between the lake and the moat. You can buy a flat hose with a diameter of up to approximately 30 cm and a pressure of approximately 12 bar.

Secondly, about the transportation of sharks. Unless the sharks are very small (and, really, why bother?), the limited diameter of mass-produced flat hoses prevents them from whizzing into your moat in the hills and valleys. Thankfully, captive sharks are often taken from one place to another, which means that a standard procedure needs to be followed. This includes lowering a shark-sized canvas stretcher into a swimming pool, sea or other shark-infested waters of your choice, picking up the shark from the water, and then immediately transferring it to a large fiberglass tank.

Some species are content with sulking at the bottom of their tanks, while other species, such as great white sharks, need to constantly move, so the tanks are large enough to swim in a continuous cycle during transportation while minimizing collisions with walls. For longer journeys, please consider using circulation pumps, oxygenators, skimmers, and monitoring equipment to ensure that your shark does not die before night comes.

Keep in mind that most types of sharks cannot tolerate fresh water (river sharks and bull sharks are tolerable species) and will die if they are released into the lake. But I am an evil engineer, not your mother, so if you want to kill some sharks, go kill some sharks. You can even get some soup from it.

If the robbery is planned and executed properly, it can be completed by driving a large loop with a forklift in one night. Drive from the castle to the lake, lay the hoses while walking; set up a water pump by the lake; use a forklift to pick up the sharks and hide behind the HGV during pumping; once enough time to fill the moat, return to the lake and unload the pump ; Drive back to the castle, roll up the hose while walking; use that forklift to release the shark into the moat. good luck!

PS: Alternatively, you can look for unmetered water charges.

Sign up for E&T news email and send such wonderful stories to your inbox every day.

© 2021 Engineering Technology Society. The College of Engineering and Technology is registered as a charity in England and Wales (No. 211014) and Scotland (No. SC038698).