Monthly Archives: March 2012

Here’s a cool infographic on water challenges in the 21st century, courtesy of the Waterblog by Suez Environment and the World Water Forum. Fair warning: There are some alarming projections here about clean water shortages. That sort of thing might make you a little sad on this lovely Monday, so here’s a link to some adorable animal videos that you can clear your mind with afterward. Among the many interesting statistics (It takes 11,000 liters of water to make 1 pair of jeans!) is the note that 2% of fresh water is expected to be produced by desalination by 2015. It seems like every other day we’re hearing about a big new desalination facility opening up somewhere in the world, or an advancement that improves the desalination process. One such advancement whose popularity is growing is forward osmosis (FO)

One of the more intriguing applications for our nylon membranes is in fuel testing, where nylon is the preferred media for the testing methods described by ASTM standards D6217 and D5304. ASTM D6217 governs particulate contamination testing by laboratory filtration of middle distillate fuels. Fuel samples are vacuum filtered past Nylon membrane filters (0.8 micron) and the particulate contamination level is determined by weighing the membranes. ASTM D5304 sets a standard test method for assessing the storage stability by oxygen overpressure of middle distillate fuels. It was based on a test method developed by the U.S. Navy and is often used for their applications. D5304 has become more popular in recent years as the Navy and other organizations are using this method to help determine the storage stability of biofuels. Here this is accomplished by filtering the fuel through nylon membranes (again,

We made a small design change to our product category pages today – A thumbnail of each SKU is now displayed at the category level (You can see an example of the upgraded look here). For many of our bench scale and laboratory equipment categories this will make it much easier and quicker to compare all of the different models and parts. While adding the SKU images may not mean as much for the membrane disc filter, syringe filter, and capsule filter categories since there isn’t a dramatic difference between a 0.1 and 0.2 micron Nylon membrane, it does still make for a cleaner looking display overall. Do you like this new change? Have any other design fixes or upgrades you’d like us to make? Sound off in the comments!