Jed Klampet shot varmints to find his billion-dollar oil well. Teh Fu Yen, Ph.D., a professor of environmental and civil engineering at the University of Southern California School of Engineering, developed an inexpensive filter instead. "In preliminary tests, our filter removes as much as 60% of the sulfur [from crude oil] in a single pass," says Yen. To make the filter, an engineer heats a mixture of two metals to nearly 1,000F and sprays it through a nozzle. Emerging as a fine crystalline powder, this "intermetallic" substance is bonded to an inert substrate, such as carbon fiber. The coated substrate is then packed into a hollow glass cylinder--creating a large interior surface. The greater the surface, the higher the efficiency of the filter. To remove sulfur, Yen treats the intermetallic powder with particular chemicals to produce a crystalline structure containing small pits that match the size and shape of sulfur molecules. "The crystalline structure can sort out the bad without affecting the good," says Yen. "Analogous methods of nanotechology might also be used to remove nitrogen compounds, metals, and other impurities. South America, China, Canada, and certain republics of the former Soviet Union have large reserves of crude that are heavily contaminated with sulfur, metals, and other impurities. Intermetallic filters could purify such oils both efficiently and economically." By altering the crystalline structure, variants of the intermetallic filter might also be used to treat sewage and purify wastewater, Yen suggests. E-mail to tfyen@mizar.usc.edu.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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