How a Shortage of Pee Almost Crippled Australia's Economy

[00:03] vast majority of the land has an average population density less than one person per square kilometer a population density that is the equivalent of a single person standing in a tennis court that is one square kilometer in size

[00:16] this sparse population makes tennis matches very difficult it also makes transporting goods and livestock quite hard since much of these lands are used for farming and Mining and since farming and Mining is a large part of the

[00:31] Australian economy Inland transport is greatly needed in order to transport these resources Australia uses Road train a Road train is like a rail train but rather than traveling on shiny metal rails they travel on non-shiny

[00:46] non-metallic roads often these roads are just gravel or dirt that has been graded just gravel or dirt that has been graded flat ish road trains consist of a powerful prime mover that pulls up to four trailers sometimes even longer

[01:00] configurations are used on private roads this Arrangement is more efficient than using separate trucks as each trailer sits in the slipstream of the trailer sits in the slipstream of the trailer ahead minimizing drag a vehicle this big

[01:13] requires a very big engine petrol engines that burn gasoline make use of a spark plug this ignites a flame front that propagates down the cylinder the speed at which this flame moves puts it upper limit on the size of the cylinder

[01:27] so they are not used for trucks this size instead a diesel engine is used in a diesel engine the fuel air mixture is ignited by squeezing the fuel until it

[01:39] becomes hot enough to burn this means that the ignition sort of happens everywhere in the cylinder allowing diesel engines to be scaled up to diesel engines to be scaled up to ridiculously large sizes there is a

[01:51] downside to diesel engines with the high pressure and the temperature sometimes oxygen will end up reacting with the nitrogen in the air it rather than the fuel this will create chemicals like nitric oxide and Nitric dioxide also

[02:07] termed as locks not to be confused with nuts which is also another toxic pollutant Knox is a very effective pollutant it is a toxic irritant that can react with other substances to create nitric acid and smog there is an

[02:22] easy way to get rid of locks though nitrogen really wants to bond with other nitrogen really wants to bond with other nitrogen to create Elemental N2 while oxygen just loves to oxidize things if you provide nox with a nitrogen

[02:35] containing oxidizable substance it will react with it consuming the nox the first chemical used for this was ammonia but ammonia is very toxic and as a pollutant it can be worse than MOX a better alternative is urea the chemical

[02:51] that makes up mammalian URI or piss urea is a relatively non-toxic and is less polluting than Knox so track have systems that mix urea with the exhaust

[03:04] in their catalytic converters to clean up the knocks from their exhaust before up the knocks from their exhaust before 2021 Australia got most of its urea for diesel engines and fertilizer from the People's Republic of China however

[03:18] People's Republic of China however during 2021 political tensions with China started to grow over the typical things so China decided to cut Australia off of its supply of urea soon Australians began to worry about their

[03:34] ability to transport products Inland would be crippled thankfully Australia was able to find a new source of synthetic urea it's Northern neighbor synthetic urea it's Northern neighbor Indonesia along with some new projects

[03:49] for domestic production in the pilburn region of Western Australia this crisis seems to be adverted for the time being and if you want to hear me continue to

[04:01] and if you want to hear me continue to take the piss please subscribe