Page 65 - Blog
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March 17, 2011Here’s further evidence that monitoring your company's waste output is something you should probably keep an eye on… Yesterday the former environmental, health & safety manager for AMCAN Beverages, Inc. (A subsidiary of Coca-Cola) pled guilty to falsifying reports about their plant's wastewater discharge. He now faces up to 3 years in prison and/or upwards of $250,000 in fines for directing employees to dilute wastewater samples before they were sent for off-site testing and then reporting on the tampered results. The company was caught when the City of American Canyon’s own wastewater treatment plant staterd experiencing operational problems relating to Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) measurements and began a covert investigation into industrial discharges in the area, leading them to AMCAN. If only Captain Planet was still around to call on, he'd take pollution down to zero... Read more details on the case here. And yes, we do offer plenty of different
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March 15, 2011A new study by NIOSH found a more effective method for testing occupational exposure to airborne wood dust, which is known to cause cancer. This new practice incorporates silver membrane filters along with a mid-infrared diffuse reflection method for direct on-filter determination of wood dust mass instead of gravimetric analysis and glass fiber filters, creating a more specific test. To learn more, you can view the article abstract here.
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March 11, 2011
For the rest of the month we're offering 10% off filters for water analysis! Check out the Sterile MCE Membrane filter as well as the GA-55 and GC-50 Glass Fiber Filters for treating water and wastewater. It's a great opportunity to stock up on any variety of these frequently used models...
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March 10, 2011
Starting this week you can power your process filtration units and membrane test cells with the full line of flat sheet membranes from TriSep Corporation! These membrane elements are designed to provide premium efficiency in water treatment applications. What is especially great about this news is that now you can get these membranes in precut sizes to fit the CF042, Sepa CF, and HP4750 membrane test cell (individual sheets are available too)! Performing desalination and wastewater purification just got a lot easier…
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March 07, 2011
Today the Environmental Protection Agency awarded $32 million to 4 universities around the country to study the health impacts of air pollution. These centers will answering questions like, "does air pollution effect a child's learning ability?" "Are obese people more susceptible to health effects of air pollution?" "How does your commute effect your health?" We work with a number of environmental labs to provide filtration materials, and one of the most common requests we get from them is for our 0.45 micron, 25mm silver membranes to comply with NIOSH methods for testing airborne contaminants such as silica and bromine. Here is a breakdown of what the four new centers are focusing on:
- University of Washington - Effects of roadway pollution on on cardiovascular health.
- Michigan State University - The relationships between obesity and air pollution.
- Emory University / Georgia Institute of Technology - Characterize health risks of air pollution mixtures, research how social factors (living
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March 01, 2011Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to mix business with pleasure during an ACS sponsored event at a local chocolate maker. Based out of Seattle, WA, Theo Chocolates, appropriately named after the chocolate bean bearing tree Theobroma cacao, is the only bean-to-bar, organic, fair trade chocolate factory in the USA. After a delicious round of tastings and an insightful tour of the production line, COO Andy McShea gave an interesting lecture on all things chocolate. Did you know that the antioxidant poly-phenols found in dark chocolate are known to lower blood pressure, reduce oral bacteria, and improve cognition? Still need convincing it’s ok to take one more piece?
At this point, you're probably wondering, but what does chocolate have to do with filtration? And you're right, not nearly as much as you’d find in the beverage industry. But Theo, in an effort to maintain its organic product status, uses only essential oils as opposed to extracts to create the sensational, true to flavor tastes -
February 28, 2011
According to a recent survey from Laboratory Equipment magazine on the usage of meters and monitors in lab experiments, most researchers do in fact trust their instrumentation; only 1% indicated that they were dissatisfied with their existing equipment. Another sign of trust: 71% of respondents plan to purchase direct replacements for their existing products when they buy new equipment.
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February 23, 2011Last week the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that they are awarding $5.5 million to research possible health risks in nanotechnology. The information developed can guide the EPA and other agencies in policy decisions regarding the safety of materials and products made using nanotechnology. The United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council ($6,000,000) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission ($500,000) are also contributing to this research project. The grants will be divided between three different of researchers in the US and three in the UK. In related news, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recently closed public comment on their draft document concerning possible health effects of exposure carbon nanotubes and nanofibers. The NIOSH document recommends:Employers minimize work-related exposures until scientific studies can fully clarify the physical and chemical properties of carbon nanotubes and carbon nanofibers that define their
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February 17, 2011Scientists at Northern Illinois University recently published a new approach for fabricating hydrogen gas sensors by depositing palladium onto commercially available filtration membranes. This creates networks of ultrasmall palladium nanowires without the traditional obstacles of nanofabrication (tedious production, potential contamination). Palladium, besides poisoning Iron Man, is highly selective to Hydrogen gas and therefore commonly used in room-temperature solid-state Hydrogen sensors.
The new method involves a network of ultrasmall palladium nanowires (<10nm) being placed on 60 micron thick membranes with a nominal filtration pore diameter of 20nm. The end result is that this new type of fabrication method outperformed traditional hydrogen sensors, such as continuous reference film, by providing higher sensitivity and shorter response times. Better hydrogen sensing can lead to greater efficiency in areas such as steel manufacturing and clean energy research. -
February 16, 2011The Department of Energy and Savannah River National Laboratory recently published a study regarding their efforts to improve performance on cross-flow filtration for high level waste treatment. Even though the waste being treated in this case is actually radioactive material from nuclear power plants, the process they describe, along with the issues they raise and recommendations for improvement, can be applied to the more common uses for cross-flow filtration.
The stated goal of this DOE research was to improve filter fluxes in their existing cross-flow equipment, a common request of many customers. The study examines the problem of increasing cross-flow filtration efficiency from a number of different approaches: Backpulsing, cake development, scouring, and cleaning were all taken into consideration.
At the end of the study SRNL was able to draw some conclusions to take into consideration when evaluating your own setup.- Higher solids concentration presents a greater challenge to filtration.
