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When the nationwide student conference of the Architectural Engineering Institute came to Omaha this spring, a Durham School team won two of five categories-earning prime honors in Structural and Mechanical occasions-in the competitions.
Nebraska Engineering News
NanoSpec 6100 |
Non-speak to spectroscopic-reflectometry used for film thickness measurements
For the study of MEMS gadgets, enabling quantitative R&D, and failure analysis.
Yokogawa Electric Corporation has appointed Ian Verhappen to be the Managing Director of Yokogawa Canada Inc. reporting to Yokogawa Corporation America President Mr. Chester J. Mroz. In this position, Mr. Verhappen will be responsible for overseeing all Yokogawa organization operations in Canada. With his experience and reputation as a strong leader in the industrial automation sector, Yokogawa is well positioned to broaden its organization in the Canadian industry.
Mr. Verhappen’s skilled profession covers a broad variety of engineering, managerial, consulting and executive positions with a top oil sands operator, automation suppliers, and consultants, and engineering societies. Mr. Verhappen spent the 1st 25 many years of his profession in the upstream hydrocarbon market with Petro-Canada (now Suncor) and Syncrude Canada Ltd. gaining exposure to the full spectrum of the oil and gas as nicely as the oil sands sector. Mr. Verhappen left the Oil Sands market for MTL Instruments (now part of Cooper Crouse-Hinds) where he was accountable for the advancement of worldwide company approach and benefits for MTL’s worldwide industrial networking business. Much more not too long ago, Mr. Verhappen has been operating in the engineering providers company as a international consultant assisting clients with their approach plant networking, digital area programs, procedure control and safety systems, procedure analyser methods and automation tasks.
Mr. Chet Mroz, President of Yokogawa Corporation America had the following to say about the appointment: “Mr. Verhappen is properly recognized inside of our industry as someone who swiftly identifies the customers’ core difficulty and understands how technologies can be employed to provide expense helpful answers to the situation at hand. I feel that his knowledge, business knowledge, understanding of the Canadian industry, as nicely as his powerful leadership, will help broaden our organization in Canada by delivering consumer providers excellence.”
He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alberta, and a Certified Automation Expert. He is a Expert Engineer in Alberta.He has been an energetic volunteer member of the Worldwide Society of Instrumentation, of which he is a Fellow, for a lot of years. He has served in senior society positions in the publications and strategic organizing as effectively as a lot activity in the specifications region. He is co-author – with Augusto Pereira - of “Foundation Fieldbus,” which recently issued its fourth edition, published by ISA.
Mr. Verhappen, born and raised in Western and Northern Canada, will be based mostly in Yokogawa Canada’s headquarters in Calgary, Alberta.
We are all acquainted with the notion of the guy who had a brilliant thought and got it to industry – James Dyson and his revolutionary vacuum cleaner Steve Jobs who dropped out of school, tinkered with some electronics and set up Apple Percy Shaw, the guy behind the cat’s eye. And most of us are vivid enough to know that there is an awful lot of hard perform among possessing the concept and reaping generous rewards.
By no means the significantly less the principle is sound and of far higher significance then the inventor’s eventual individual wealth is the reality that complete businesses and industries can be designed and sustained. These will employ a lot of individuals and make an integral contribution to the national economic climate.
Sensor Technology is a business steeped in innovation. A big percentage of our employees are scientists, engineers and researchers who have pushed the boundaries of understanding and technologies. Above the years they have developed numerous sensible technologies that we have designed into successful industrial items, generally in the area of sensing and measurement.
Of program there have been some failures along the way as well. In fact if you have been to count up, almost certainly much more failures than successes. But the crucial point is that the successes can be capitalised upon to more-than cover the cost of the failures.
This is fairly significantly the standard model for innovation that economists speak about (it is also the model that politicians and pundits abbreviate to ‘one very good idea and you are produced for existence)’.
But my feeling in that this misses out 1 critically crucial point, namely ‘technology transfer’ – introducing the invention to ever-much more sectors and feasible new consumers (maybe tweaking it or repackaging it to meet certain needs).
Well-known examples of this consist of space technologies (a thing produced for NASA transfers to army aircraft, then industrial ones, then other non-aerospace applications) and Method 1. But it also occurs in more mundane fields, for instance automation technologies this kind of as VSDs, PLCs and HMIs are more and more constructed into customer merchandise.
My expertise at Sensor Technologies is almost certainly normal of the far more normal sort of engineering transfer. The simple truth is that we have invented fairly few new technologies, but we have utilized every to many diverse locations, sometimes by our personal endeavours, often by licensing or promoting the technological innovation. Also it is sometimes a ‘secondary or supporting’ technology that can be transferred, as illustrated by our TorqSense and LoadSense items. TorqSense is really clever it uses surface acoustic wave sensors to measure torque in rotating shafts and we have utilized this to more and much more fields.
Nevertheless, to make TorqSense viable we had to create a secondary technological innovation, a non-contact way of collecting the data stream, so that we didn’t have to use slip rings. So we combined radio transmissions with piezo technologies and received our remedy.
In yet another region we had been talking to helicopter pilot about an entirely diverse venture when he mentioned that since he had wired a cargo load gauge into his cockpit he was going to have to get his craft’s airworthiness certificate expensively renewed. We asked if a radio website link among cargo hook and gauge would indicate he hadn’t modified his aircraft, and assured him that we could create just such a remedy!
That was the light bulb moment and naturally there was a year or so of hard graft to get to a commercialisable merchandise. But now a number of many years down the line we have a wonderful new enterprise marketing intelligent cargo hooks to helicopter operators about the globe.
The crucial point is that if governments want to remodel a nationwide economic system to make engineering style and design and manufacturing more powerful, then they need to have to motivate engineering transfer as significantly as innovation.
American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) has received a $ one million pledge from long-time Ben-Gurion Society members Henry and Anita Weiss to more nanotechnology research at...
AZoNano.com - Nanotechnology News Feed
Significant wine buffs have typically asked them- selves the query, ‘what’s greater for preserving wine – stress or a vacuum?’ Even so, Dick Berresford, managing director of Bermar, believes that, offered the correct technology, you can combine the greatest of the two worlds. It was for this purpose that he turned to professional switch distributor PVL whose head of revenue and advertising and marketing, David Almond explains how the Bermar makes use of its technologies. Perhaps better identified for its brand title, Le Verre de Vin, the market place for Bermar’s wine cabinets is identified in hotels, restaurants and bars in which wine is served by the glass in 82 nations about the planet. Each and every three star Michelin restaurant in Britain makes use of Bermar equipment, as do over 800 Whitbread pubs.
Right after opening, the wine remaining in a bottle at first has a fast oxygen consumption price, which indicates that most chemical adjustments happen to the contents inside of the first couple of days. The process slows progressively thereafter, but by then the damage is accomplished damage that is irreversible and is straightforward to spot by smelling or tasting the wine. The 1st chemical compound formed when oxygen reacts with the ethanol in a wine is acetaldehyde. At low ranges it can make a wine taste ‘flat’ and vapid and it is also accountable for the loss of a wine’s fresh fruity taste. Further exposure to oxygen converts the acetaldehyde into Acetic Acid, the most widespread of all volatile acids and one of the common, sour tasting carbonic acids which type the primary constituent of vinegar.
Oxygen and phenolics
The last chemical adjust will take spot lengthy following a wine should have been discarded (normally inside 5 to ten days). The reaction in between oxygen and the phenolics in the wine leads to the wine to alter colour, moving to amber and eventually to a brackish brown.
“We buy switches from PVL for two functions: one particular is to create a sub-atmospheric strain or vacuum in bottled nonetheless wine, and the other is to produce a super-atmospheric pressure or compression of carbon dioxide within Champagne or sparkling wine bottles,” explains Berresford.
“We have the only Champagne preservation technique in the globe. We include PVL switches into a variety of nine different preservation techniques. The tools is employed for all wines which includes those at the reduced finish of the marketplace.
“If a restaurateur gives visitors a selection of 20 different wines by the glass, he does not want to compromise their high quality. As long as he re-seals each and every bottle immediately after each glass offered, it will give him a 21-day shelf daily life. Even if he is promoting wines in the £3 to £8 a glass range, he can even now get a important revenue boost in the identical way Michelin three star restaurants offer wine at £50 to £100 a glass would.”
Pinpoint control
But wouldn’t it be much better to compress an inert gasoline like carbon dioxide into a nevertheless wine bottle rather of evacuating it? Berresford argues that, simply because of the pinpoint handle provided by PVL’s – switches, the rewards of this are replicated irrespective of the volume of wine remaining in a bottle. In order to offer a lot more than ample preservation in more than 95% of circumstances, only a vacuum is needed.
He adds: “There is the chance of employing inert gasses in combination with vacuum, and we have patented methods under a diverse brand, which also include PVL switches. It is only offered selectively at the second but will kind the subsequent generation of tools.
“We’ve been profitable in making men and women recognize why a cabinet costing two grand is far better than utilizing a £10 hand operated vacuum pump. Our 2nd biggest market place is China, exactly where they have an inordinate passion for wine. They have cornered the Bordeaux fine wine industry, especially the wine futures exchanges like Liv-ex, in which you can speculate on wines like you can on pork bellies.”
Eccentric distribution
“I at times believe that all French wine would be in the hands of the Chinese was it not for France’s very eccentric technique of distributing wine. For instance, a ‘First Growth’ Château like Lafite generates a fixed number of situations each year for world consumption. You can only purchase their wine in tranches through a series of channels. Supplied you spend the appropriate price tag for a certain amount then you get the appropriate to the identical volume of wine.
“This dates back to the days when wine producers had been not the same folks as the distributors and they wished to have acknowledged markets for their wines. A distributor, or négociant, would take all the production of a Château whether or not the vintage was excellent, undesirable or indifferent.”
Prior to founding Bermar, Dick Berresford had an engineering organization in Ipswich and a fellow wine lover informed him about the difficulty he had trying to keep wine fresh following it had been uncorked. They began operating with a Master of Wine (MW) from Greene King Brewery, one particular of only 212 MWs in the globe at the time, as well as a company of analytical chemists.
“You can think about the conundrum with the MW saying: ‘I really don't care what the chemists say, this wine is flat.’ The instruments have been pitched at oxidation ranges, not the other degradation factors affecting the wine,” continues Berresford.
“Phenols and esters are generally the elements that give wine its fruit and body, and extreme vacuum draws them out of the wine, which an expert wine taster would describe as ‘flabby’ or ‘lifeless’. It took a couple of many years of dabbling on and off and when we eventually did a blind tasting the very best tasting notes have been on a 15-day old Château Margaux. We fundamentally slowed the breathing process from a few hours to 15 days.” Vacuum based wine preservation is an exact science. To guarantee functionality, the method need to be in a position to create a precise, repeatable level of vacuum, and this is where PVL’s switches play a role. The tools mustn’t more than-evacuate the bottle as this will damage the delicate phenols and esters that make up considerably of the body and bouquet of the wine.
The technique need to also not ‘under- evacuate’ the bottle either, as too significantly oxygen indicates the wine continues to oxidise. Till a quantifiable, minimal vacuum is accomplished, the technique achieves no preservation what ever – which is the explanation that some hand vacuum pumps are described as creating ‘hit and miss’ benefits.
To permit use by inexperienced operators, the technique need to have a lower-off switch that is quickly and immediately triggered to ensure precision control, and to eliminate the risk of accidental above or beneath vacuuming.
This is exactly where PVL’s switches excel: the technique should integrate a pneumatic ‘balancing’ technique that guarantees the precise level of vacuum is created inside of the open bottle, every single and every time the system is employed and irrespective of the quantity of wine remaining within. Overall performance criteria here are +/- one% accuracy. The program have to also use established, specialist ‘vacuum’ stoppers that produce an successful, semi-permanent seal to prevent air seeping into the bottle.
Champagnes & sparkling wines
The boffins in white coats in Reims, the residence of Champagne, lately confirmed that ‘there are 30 occasions more flavour-en-hancing chemical compounds in the bubbles than in the rest of the wine’. This goes some way to explaining why the traditional Champagne approach of production tastes so considerably much better, and the debate has inevitably swung to the very best methods to protect open bottles of Champagne and sparkling wines.
The finer and a lot more plentiful the bubbles, the much more of the taste and flavour of the Champagne will be conveyed to the drinker. Throughout the secondary fermentation method, yeast converts the sugar to alcohol (the ‘kick’) and carbon dioxide (CO2) to bubbles (the ‘pop’). The CO2 is gradually dissolved and trapped inside the Champagne bottle. When the lees (discarded yeast waste and other residue) are removed from the bottle it is then essential that the bottle remains completely airtight or the popular ‘sparkle’ will be lost.
As with all wines, a single of the biggest threats to an opened bottle of Champagne comes from the air – or a lot more particularly from the oxygen (O2) contained inside of. Champagne nonetheless is also at quick chance from the loss of the stress retaining gadget (the cork), that has kept the sparkle in because it was made.
“This dates back to the days when wine producers have been not the very same people as the distributors and they wanted to have known markets for their wines. A distributor, or négociant, would consider all the production of a Château whether or not the vintage was good, poor or indifferent.”
The carbon dioxide pressure in an unopened Champagne bottle can attain far more than 140 pounds per square inch – about twice the pressure utilized to inflate a double-decker bus tyre. This is the explanation that Champagne bottles are so robust and heavy. Once the flow of carbon dioxide has slowed, the approach of oxidation requires above as the key risk to the Champagne.
Thermodynamics
From a combination of the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the laws of partial pressures of gases, it is possible to accurately estimate the rate of oxidation of the Champagne remaining inside a part-consumed bottle. This is influenced by temperature, alcohol content and the volume of accessible oxygen. The complete physical exercise turns into instead academic any- way if the Champagne has already lost its sparkle.
The Champagne stopper generates an air tight seal stopping carbon dioxide leaving a part consumed bottle. Unfortunately the oxygen that is trapped in the bottle when the stopper is utilized will continue to be in direct get in touch with with the Champagne, and oxidise it at a calculable rate.
The major flaw with this technique is that the Champagne remaining in the bottle will continue to release carbon dioxide (it is ‘sparkle’), until a ‘pressure equilibrium’ is produced inside of the bottle. If the bottle contains a huge volume of liquid, then the strain equilibrium may be achieved with only minor bubble loss from the Champagne. As the volume of liquid in the a smaller sized volume of liquid has to emit a more substantial volume of carbon
dioxide prior to the pressure equilibrium is reached.
Consequently Champagne stoppers can be effective for quick phrase preservation offered there is a sufficient quantity left in the bottle and it has not been allowed to eliminate its organic CO2 by being left open for as well prolonged just before resealing. As a basic rule, anyplace from two thirds of a bottle down and this strategy becomes less and much less reliable. The number of occasions a bottle is opened is also important – the a lot more frequently, the worse the effect.
“Manufacturers of hand operated and battery pumps claim that the introduction of air under strain will avoid oxidation and bubble loss in opened bottles of Champagne, which is bizarre” claims Berresford. “The logic seems to run that air, or instead all its constituent gases, can be used to ‘lock’ carbon dioxide in a remedy. As the pressure of air in the bottle is enhanced, the solubility of every single gas within the air increases – the result is that oxygen inside of the air will be even far more quickly absorbed into the Champagne, really accelerating the oxidation of the drink!”
Henry’s Law
Henry’s Law states that solubility is significantly enhanced in liquids at very low temperatures this kind of as the serving and storing temperature of Champagne. It is also worth remembering that hand pump sort gadgets
do not have filters to scrub the airborne contaminants in the air getting forced underneath pressure out of the Champagne.
CO2 is the only gasoline that can be utilised in the Le Verre de Vin’s super-atmospheric re-sealing process, considering that, fairly logically it is the only gasoline with the identical molecular framework as the CO2 in the Champagne itself. The ‘structure’ is essential, considering that gases really don't behave like liquids or solids – the only helpful way to create the-stress stability so critical in the preservation approach, is with an identical fuel.
Applying ‘exactly’ the proper pressure of CO2 using a PVL switch indicates that the normal fizz in the Champagne is locked in location – and Le Verre de Vin achieves the optimum reseal stress on every and each bottle with above 99% accuracy. The science behind this has resulted in Le Verre de Vin getting awarded globally patents and reaching worldwide recognition as ‘The Industry Common for preservation’.
Wine begins to oxidise as soon as the cork is eliminated.
By getting rid of the oxygen to a precisely managed degree Le Verre de Vin technologies efficiently preserves wine without having any chance to it is subtle construction.
The compelling scenario that Plant Asset Management (PAM) Techniques supplies for minimizing operational costs even though simultaneously improving functionality is the main element driving development of PAM. The worldwide market place for Plant Asset Management Systems will expertise development this year and during the forecast period according to a new ARC Advisory Group research.
PAM growth is getting fueled in part by the improved amount and complexity of automation devices in manufacturing plants that needs a increased order approach to maintenance supplied by PAM methods. “As aging workers leave the workforce, maintenance professionals are vanishing and are being replaced with generalists. These generalists will need user-friendly equipment and much more simplified work procedures to retain plant tools,” according to Sr. Analyst Paula Hollywood, the principal writer of ARC’s “Plant Asset Management Methods Globally Outlook”
Plant Operators Are Finding Involved
The approach industries and utilities as a complete identify the need to decrease downtime and maximize asset availability. Certainly, asset intensive industries give the biggest possibilities for PAM suppliers. In these industries, duty for asset availability is no longer the domain of upkeep alone as operators consider a a lot more active part in information collection and machine inspection.
Business and Application Particular Answers
Business and application specific remedies are emerging. Numerous suppliers have introduced options for wind turbines. With turbines situated high in the air, servicing a single can be the two hazardous and pricey. The mechanical nature of turbines and the reality that they are typically located in remote locations helps make them prime candidates for continuous on-line monitoring. PAM remedies can make owner/operators conscious of individual turbine functionality degradation, enabling upkeep to be scheduled and performed nicely in advance of real failure.
Economic Expansion in Emerging Markets Drives Growth
Key development drivers are financial expansion in Asia, Eastern Europe, Brazil, and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the lingering results of the 2007-2009 recession are nonetheless becoming felt as world-wide financial imbalance remains. Unemployment in the US stays higher and uncertainty in Europe persists. Asia and Latin America have been less affected. These imbalances will effect growth of PAM options from a regional point of view. ARC expects development in the international PAM marketplace to continue to expand at over common automation industry growth prices as the positive aspects of PAM are too impactful to disregard.
Frost & Sullivan has released its three big predictions for 2012 for the worldwide vitality and atmosphere marketplace. Industrial convergence, sensible technologies and distributed generation will be the crucial subjects in 2012 and beyond.
Based mostly on a survey of a number of thousand companies carried out in December 2011, this research paper highlights places of growth. “Data and opinions of essential stakeholders, mixed with analysis and commentary from Frost & Sullivan sector authorities, have been utilized to present essential industry highlights, hot development subjects, international and regional hot spots, regions of market place convergence, and bold predictions for 2012,” explains John Raspin, Director and Partner at Frost & Sullivan.
Convergence and Value Chain Integration
Power and environment players see the greatest convergence nowadays from inside their personal sector as effectively as the industrial automation and ICT industries. It is also very important the convergence amongst vitality and automotive markets and relates primarily to the emergence of electric vehicles and e-mobility that is driving innovation in batteries, vitality storage, transmission and distribution infrastructure, battery charging and integration of mobility into the smart property. Convergence opportunities exist also in the water sector driven by innovation amongst remedy technologies, method manage and automation & instrumentation sectors.
Worth chains, less consolidated and stretching across hundreds of elements, have been and are even now presenting a lot of possibilities in the renewable power sector. Wind power is the most very desirable section to European organizations. Solar PV nonetheless has a constructive development outlook but opportunities for European players are slowly vanishing as the worldwide industry becomes far more dominated by Chinese players. Chemical and materials firms have begun to take significant measures further down the value chain to obtain key technology and remedy capabilities in the fast growing and high possible energy and surroundings markets.
Smart Technology
Sensible technologies is going to play a important function in the long term advancement of the vitality and environment sector with effectiveness enhancements at the centre of the marketplace evolution. Intelligent grids, buildings, homes, cities and water networks will all become a reality this decade, as a result producing far-reaching marketplace growth possibilities.
Distributed Generation
There is and will be increasing focus on deployment of little scale renewable vitality shut to the point of consumption. This will create possibilities for suppliers or micro-generation technologies as well as requiring new methods and company models from electrical power generation companies and utilities. Development of distributed generation, legislation surrounding this industry as well as integration of distributed generation into the grid are emerging trends especially in the developed markets.
The essential themes outlined above function heavily in Frost & Sullivan’s energy and setting study programme for 2012. A key driver for the study is the perform Frost & Sullivan has been conducting around Mega Trends which are driving new and emerging market place segments for key industry participants.
See the presentation!
Frost & Sullivan insight on the 3 massive predictions for 2012 and past is accessible on SlideShare.
