Chemical & Process Magic, jiggery pokery, whatever you want to call it, Chemical engineers can perform some truly amazing things. Keep up to speed on the latest news in this exciting area of engineering.
|
Free-electron lasers consist of two fundamental components: an accelerator that produces high-energy electrons, and so-called ‘undulators' that send these electrons on a periodically curved path. The wiggling of the electrons along the path causes the emission of high-energy laser radiation through electro-magnetic interaction between the electrons and the radiation field.
Currently, x-ray FELs require large-scale electron accelerators of a few kilometers in length. It is important to reduce this length to enable the fabrication of cheaper FEL systems. The project team's compact FEL design of 55 m has produced a high-quality laser beam at the RIKEN Harima Institute. |
|
Saturday 1 November, 2008 01:34 PM |
| |
“Many engineers and designers have only a limited knowledge of the breadth of surface technologies available to provide enhanced surface mechanical, chemical, optical, thermal, electrical, aesthetic, and other properties,” Dr. Tucker said. “Thermal spray is one of the most versatile of the surface engineering technologies, but needs to be considered in light of the others that are available when addressing a specific design or problem situation.”
|
|
Wednesday 29 October, 2008 03:33 PM |
| |
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. ITER Project Office, which is housed at ORNL, have developed a new cast stainless steel that is 70 percent stronger than comparable steels and is being evaluated for use in the huge shield modules required by the ITER fusion device.
ITER is a multibillion-dollar international research and development project to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power and to enable studies of self-heating burning plasmas. It will require hundreds of tons of complex stainless steel components that must withstand the temperatures associated with being in the proximity of a plasma heated to more than 100 million degrees Celsius. |
|
Monday 27 October, 2008 01:11 PM |
| |
Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called “graphene” as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
The researchers believe their breakthrough shows promise that graphene (a form of carbon) could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon.
“Through such a device, electrical charge can be rapidly stored on the graphene sheets, and released from them as well for the delivery of electrical current and, thus, electrical power,” says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor and a physical chemist. “There are reasons to think that the ability to store electrical charge can be about double that of current commercially used materials. We are working to see if that prediction will be borne out in the laboratory.” |
|
Saturday 25 October, 2008 03:38 AM |
| |
Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture. Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) chemists and their colleagues combined electrically conductive plastic with metals including molybdenum (Mo) and titanium (Ti) to create the hybrid material.
|
|
Wednesday 22 October, 2008 06:09 AM |
| |
BASF, the big German chemicals company, virtualized a sophisticated desktop application that its engineers were using to model complex chemical processes. In doing so, it found application performance was slowed at the desktop but a number of other advantages offset that effect.
Application virtualization is different from the current wave of stacking up virtual servers on a single physical machine, the widely recognized practice of server consolidation. It's also different from desktop virtualization, where every end user often gets a virtual machine.
|
|
Saturday 18 October, 2008 05:25 AM |
| |
In the traditional design world , engineers design the product, but the material is simply selected from a catalog of available material properties. In the next material world, engineers will design both the product and the materials. Concurrent design will be the key to competing in tomorrow's manufacturing world, researchers say. Traditionally, the performance of materials is quantified in terms of simple sets of properties. Product designers have historically used catalogs of material properties either online or in books and they interface with the material supplier in what is called the material selection process. They simply select materials which meet performance requirements.
|
|
Wednesday 15 October, 2008 04:12 PM |
| |
Researchers at the Institute of Photonics, University of Strathclyde, have started work on a 3.5 year project to develop a novel solid-state laser design incorporating CVD (chemical vapour deposition) diamond manufactured by Element Six Ltd. Element Six leads the world in the field of CVD diamond synthesis and its application
|
|
Tuesday 14 October, 2008 01:37 PM |
| |
The Waukesha Water Utility , in partnership with two Milwaukee colleges, is testing emerging clean-water technology that removes potentially cancer-causing radium from Waukesha's drinking water.
The technology has proved to be effective in reducing radium levels by 60% to 90%, which could provide Waukesha a temporary fix until it finds another water source, possibly Lake Michigan.
But the technology has a potential problem, utility manager Dan Duchniak said. That’s where the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Civil Engineering Department becomes involved. The possible fix is that the utility gets into the aggregate business.
Along with radium, the system from Procorp Enterprises of Wauwatosa removes calcium, a substance that hardens water and ruins water pipes and plumbing fixtures.
The system compresses byproduct calcium into pellets, which contain low levels of radium, he said. Other industrial byproducts such as fly ash and slag also contain radium and are converted into byproduct reuse, a Procorp report on the project says. |
|
Monday 29 September, 2008 09:20 AM |
| |
Metal alloys are solids made from at least two different metallic elements. The elements are often mixed together as liquid, and when they "freeze," into solids, tiny grains of crystal form to create a polycrystalline material. A polycrystalline material is made of multiple crystals.
Within each of the grains of crystal, atoms are arranged in a periodic pattern. This pattern isn't perfect, though. For example, some of the places atoms should be are empty. These empty spaces are called vacancies. Atoms of each element in the alloy take advantage of these holes in the lattice. In a process called diffusion, atoms hop through the material, changing its structure.
"It's kind of like musical chairs," said Katsuyo Thornton, assistant professor in the U-M Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "Diffusion happens in nearly every material, and materials can degrade because diffusion causes certain changes in the structure of the material." |
|
Friday 26 September, 2008 07:12 PM |
| |
Scientists from the Carlos III University of Madrid have developed a system that can improve the efficiency of the conversion process of biomass to fuel gas that will contribute to the production of energy in a more sustainable manner.
One of the challenges that chemical engineers face is placing solid materials in contact with gases to generate certain reactions. One of the options is to use a fluidised bed, consisting of a vertical cylinder with a perforated plate inside where solid particles are introduced using pressurised air.
This way, the solid particles are suspended, and behave much like boiling water. Solids behaving like a liquid depend on the speed of the air stream, making it key to achieving the desired behaviour. With insufficient air, the particles don’t move, but with too much the opposite happens, and they are carried away by the air stream. |
|
Wednesday 17 September, 2008 02:25 PM |
| |
Scientists from the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) have developed a system that can improve the efficiency of the conversion process of biomass to fuel gas that will contribute to the production of energy in a more sustainable manner.
One of the challenges that chemical engineers face is placing solid materials in contact with gases to generate certain reactions. One of the options is to use a fluidised bed, consisting of a vertical cylinder with a perforated plate inside where solid particles are introduced using pressurised air.
This way, the solid particles are suspended, and behave much like boiling water. Solids behaving like a liquid depend on the speed of the air stream, making it key to achieving the desired behaviour. With insufficient air, the particles don’t move, but with too much the opposite happens, and they are carried away by the air stream. |
|
Wednesday 17 September, 2008 04:29 AM |
| |
A coproduct of ethanol production could be used as a non-petroleum-based filler in plastics, based on preliminary studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their cooperators.
The ethanol coproduct, called distiller's dried grains with solubles (DDGS), has a high fiber content and a molecular structure suitable for binding—two attributes that make it a candidate as a filler in plastics, according to ARS agricultural engineer Kurt Rosentrater. |
|
Monday 30 June, 2008 05:34 PM |
| |
UTEK Corporation , an innovation services company, and CSMG Technologies, Inc., a technology management company, are pleased to announce that CSMG Technologies has acquired Carbon Capture Technologies, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of UTEK, in a stock transaction.
Carbon Capture Technologies, Inc. holds a worldwide exclusive license to a composition and method for use of a novel Carbon Dioxide (CO2) adsorbent. Researchers at the University of Ottawa have developed recyclable CO2 adsorbents based on surface modified nanoporous silicas.
|
|
Monday 30 June, 2008 07:11 AM |
| |
|
LANSING - Governor Jennifer M. Granholm and Mascoma Corporation CEO Bruce A. Jamerson today announced that the Massachusetts-based company has entered into a series of key strategic relationships to further Mascoma's efforts to build its first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. |
|
Sunday 29 June, 2008 01:07 AM |
| |
|
Cellulosic capacity is up and raw materials from biomass are emerging fast. Current pressures in terms of environmentally benign processing routes could quickly change everything for an industry like nonwoven fabrics, writes Adrian Wilson. Of the 1.725 Mt of nonwovens currently manufactured annually by spunmelt processing routes, around 75%, or 1.29 Mt, are employed in hygienic disposables- diapers, femcare and adult incontinence products. And 98% of such nonwovens are made of polypropylene (PP). However, a number of industry observers believe this may be about to change. |
|
Friday 27 June, 2008 09:07 AM |
| |
PacificGMP , a tiny local manufacturer of biotechnology drugs, will announce today that it is expanding to 25 times its size with the help of the Chinese government.
The company, which has an 8,000-square-foot facility in Sorrento Mesa for manufacturing biological agents used in cutting-edge therapies for disease, will join a collaboration that is building a 200,000-square-foot plant in Taizhou, China. The building is expected to be completed in October.
|
|
Wednesday 18 June, 2008 09:29 PM |
| |
Chemical engineers at MIT have used carbon nanotubes to build the most sensitive electronic detector yet for sensing deadly gases.
The technology can detect the presence of harmful gases such as sarin, mustard gas, ammonia and VX nerve agents.
It has the potential to be used as a low-cost, low-energy device that could be carried in a pocket or deployed inside a building to monitor hazardous chemicals.
|
|
Saturday 14 June, 2008 03:02 PM |
| |
|
Scientists at Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering have developed an optical sensor that can quantify the force that a cell exerts on a special surface as it moves across it, which should allow for creating somatic cell sorting machines and single cell diagnostic devices. The project is a part of the European Information Society Technologies initiative. |
|
Friday 13 June, 2008 11:51 PM |
| |
|
A Canterbury student whose research into producing ultra-fine, nano fibres was honoured in the 2006 MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards has gone on in collaboration with partners to develop an electrospinning machine that is being sold to research laboratories around the world. |
|
Thursday 12 June, 2008 11:58 AM |
| |
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc . announced today that it received a contract from
Estelux to provide engineering, procurement, and construction management
(EPCM) services for a new polysilicon manufacturing facility at the existing
petrochemical site in Ferrara, Italy.
Estelux is an Italian start-up company with a mission to provide
first-class polysilicon, strategic to the entire photovoltaic supply chain.
SOLON Group, one of the largest European solar module and photovoltaic systems
manufacturers, owns shares in Estelux. |
|
Wednesday 11 June, 2008 09:42 PM |
|
| << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next > End >>
| | Results 43 - 63 of 132 |
|
Save This Page