Welcome to Issue Qtr 1 2009

buzz stop

We go back a long way...

...over 600 million years to be precise. The hydropyrolysis technique (HyPy), developed at the University of Nottingham and commercialised by Strata Technology, has been used to isolate the remains of ancient sponge fossils found in rock strata dated to be over 635 million years old, which represents the oldest evidence for animal life in the fossilised record. HyPy is able to release key bio-markers from rock samples with minimal structural alteration, which allows researchers to pinpoint the biological source of the material with great precision. Dr Gordon Love of the University of California, and one of Strata’s first customers for the commercial unit, interprets the evidence as indicating that complex multicellular animal life diverged from simpler forms between 635 and 750 million years ago. The HyPy collaboration between Strata Technology and the University of Nottingham won The Engineer Business Support for Universities award in 2008.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/nature07673.html

Underwater Badger

In an effort to cut costs and reduce the environmental impact from fixed drilling rigs, a Norwegian inventor has developed the Badger Explorer. The Badger is described as an autonomous "fly-by-wire" exploration tool that operates on the seabed and drills into the rock using an electrically-powered bit to loosen and crush the formation ahead of it. All the badger requires by means of support is a sub-sea power supply and communication cables, which are transported and put into place by a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). When a Badger is deployed in a grid-like system with 8 to 10 other Badgers the subsea structures, temperatures, pressures, the presence of oil or gas and porosity can be determined more quickly at 10% of what a full rig operation would cost.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/308771/Badger+drills+for+oil+and+gas.htm

pipeline

The opposite of gunpowder?

The inventors of gunpowder found a way of turning powder into gas. A team at the University of Liverpool has been investigating the opposite: in order to solve the problem of getting natural gas from the reservoirs to the end user, they have been looking into converting methane gas into a powder form, and they think they can do it. The resulting material is a form of methane hydrate - fine droplets of water treated with silica to prevent coalescing, and then exposed to methane at near-freezing temperatures - which is readily transportable and might even be used directly as vehicle fuel.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/11/20/new.material.could.make.gases.more.transportable

The pen is mightier than the mouse...

Much design work is still started with pen and paper (and many say AMEN to that), but nowadays it is progressed using the sophisticated CAD tools developed over the last 50 years. Now a new software product - SketchCAD - is being designed to make the transition from mental concept to computer easier and simpler, and help the creative designer interact more intuitively with the comprehensive CAD tools available. It uses a digital pen-based system to permit engineers to sketch 3-D schemes, and is said to be much simpler to learn to operate than conventional keyboard and mouse interfaces. If it’s as good as they say I would like one for my birthday...

|http://www.physorg.com/news151080012.html

Green machine

Wind Farms Strike at Night

Wind farms are cited by some as part of the antidote to global warming, but research into the effect of wind farms on their immediate surroundings indicate that they might actually be a contributor to warming at the local scale. Studies on local weather climates currently being carried out by Somnath Baidya Roy from Duke University in Durham, N.C. have shown that the turbulence created by the blades of a wind turbine mixes air up and down creating a warming and drying effect near the ground. One result is the local loss of soil moisture, which increases the need for irrigation on nearby crops. This effect is often seen miles from the wind farm and is worse at night due to winds being generally stronger. An answer might be found in better rotor design.

http://www.aip.org/dbis/stories/2005/15022.html

Turn Up the Volume

There used to be a riddle along the lines of "What is it that is totally useless but that your car can’t move without?" and the answer was - noise. Well, it might not be totally useless after all. Researchers are concluding that the coming of quieter hybrid and electric vehicles might pose increased risks to a pedestrian population used to relying on audible warnings of an approaching vehicle, and they suggest that such vehicles might need to start making more noise. Reproduction automotive sounds seem favourite with the study participants, and Lotus engineering has already tried to address the problem by emitting a sound from a hybrid car that mimics an internal combustion engine whilst the vehicle is in electric-only mode. One anticipates the advent of kits that make 125cc motorcycles sound like Harleys...

http://www.sciencecodex.com/hybrid_cars_too_quiet_for_pedestrian_safety_add_engine_noise_say_human_factors_researchers

The Cooling Effect

Local cooling causes global warming: the air conditioning systems that we use to control our working environments through the summer months use lots of electricity. However, GSK is taking a step back to the days when water was the prime source of industrial energy - their headquarters will be implementing a scheme to use the water from the local canal to reduce its the carbon dioxide emissions by almost 1,000 tonnes a year. The novel cooling scheme will use canal water, heat exchangers and chillers in place of conventional air conditioning systems. British Waterways, who oversees the canals, estimates that a further 1,000 businesses alongside urban waterways could follow GSK’s example, saving money and reducing the impact on the environment.                                        

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/309436/Canal+cooling.htm

Gleanings

Produce hydrates faster...with starch

A separate slant on the methane-hydrate-as-fuel possibility here - scientists in Japan have come across a means of accelerating hydrate formation by use of starch-based polymer additive made from beta-cyclodextrin. Their objective was to speed up the production of hydrates in order to carry out research into their use as fuel, but there must be some synergy with the work of the Liverpool team on powderising the hydrate. Let us hope they are speaking to each other...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061025185724.htm

Steel yourself...

If you thought that all new materials developments are in composites and that there was nowhere to go with cheap carbon steels, think again. Scientists working for the UK MoD have developed a process called isothermal hardening that creates super-hard steel dubbed "Super-Bainite". Bainite is a steel microstructure named after US metallurgist Edgar Bain. Considered by some as a "potentially game-changing technology" super-bainite is not yet commercially available, but has all the right attributes - performance, low cost - to make it a winner. Where else can we use it?

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/309797/Advanced+armour+steel.htm

Making a virtue out of a necessity

Well not quite, but researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are certainly making positive use of a normally undesirable phenomenon. They have developed a system that employs the water-hammer pressure pulse created by closing a valve quickly to interrogate the pipeline and detect blockages and their whereabouts. This is said to be quicker, simpler, and less intrusive that current methods for finding blockages. Every cloud...

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/308182/Pressure+release.htm

Big Bangs

How Much Dust is too Much Dust?

Do you run the risk of a dust cloud explosion? On average a dust explosion results in a gross loss of over "1M, and they are a constant risk to organisations whose operations by their very nature produce combustible dust. As a guide to how much dust would be needed, if you can write your name in it with your finger, there is potential for an explosion. To create a dust explosion there needs to be a source of ignition and oxygen, as well as dispersion of dust within the atmosphere and a confined environment. To understand how these factors contribute to a dust explosion, click on the link below. And before you decide that it couldn"t apply to you, answer this question: if you spilled toner from your photocopier all over your floor, would you think it was OK to clean up the mess with an ordinary vacuum cleaner...?

http://www.hazardexonthenet.net/article.aspx?AreaID=4&ArticleID=20287