gloo said:
I want to know how easy it is to find or make a really dense liquid...perhaps 4000 kg per cubic meter at room temperature or lower. I need it to be easily made so that it can fill huge a huge volume like thousands of cubic meters. Is this even possible? Mercury is too dangerous and scarce; many others listed seem extremely toxic. How about Iodine? Is it easy to make and is it safe in containers?
Thanks
Making a ship load of anything is going to be expensive.
The densest drilling fluid which is used commonly and is relatively non-toxic is barite, or barium sulfate (BaSO
4). Barite is typically added to water or diesel fuel to form a liquid mixture known as drilling mud. Since barite is not particularly soluble in water or oil, the drilling mud mixture must be constantly agitated to keep the barite from separating from the rest of the liquid.
Liquid drilling mud is typically prepared and shipped at a max. specific gravity of 2.2, although mixtures with lower S.G. have been used. In any event, the tanks which are used to store this material during shipment are specially reinforced to handle the higher S.G.
Just for giggles, why do you need a ship load of dense liquid? And, by the way, because this liquid will be so dense (S.G. = 4.0), you won't be able to use just any old ship to transport it. It will require a ship with cargo tanks which have highly reinforced structure to keep from collapsing when filled with this dense product.
What money you save in purchasing materials to make this fluid will likely be consumed in outfitting a special vessel to carry it.