Sinchrotron X rays on your tabletop

According to a press release from the Imperial college of London, a new tabletop device generates bright, coherent X-rays similar to those produced in large facilities.
Such rays are useful to investigate the structure of materials at small length and time scales.

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NSF website offline.

As researchers know, the NSF National Science Foundation is a government agency that provides major support to research on non-medical fields. As of Oct 28 the NSF website is offline. There are reports of a power outage or fire in the building, possibly related to lightning strikes.

We hope everybody is OK and things gets fixed soon, so they can get back to their regular supporting science schedule.

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350M Renova Biodiesel project in argentina

New biodiesel mandates in Argentina will require increasing the biodiesel content in commercial diesel blends from 5 to 7%. Blends of up to 20% are envisioned for larger engines such as those used in agricultural machinery.

According to this article Molinos Rio de la Plata and other partners in Renova will invest 350 M to build a soybean processing plant and port in Timbúes, Santa Fe, Argentina.

Renova's current biodiesel capacity is 480.000 ton. Perez-Companc's company Molinos Rio de la Plata already operates a biodiesel plant with 120.000 ton capacity in Santa Clara, near Rosario.



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Molecule-resolution microscopy

Reasearchers from IBM Zurich obtained molecule-resolution images of pentacene. They clearly show the hexagon-like benzene rings. The technique is a modified AFM (atomic force microscopy), where the scanning tip is covered with a single molecule of carbon monoxide. This change causes a slight repulsion between the molecule and the probe, which avoids destroying the molecule being imaged.

Ref: Science 28 August 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5944, pp. 1110 - 1114
DOI: 10.1126/science.1176210





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Your own satellite in orbit for usd 8000

We found out via Slashdot, that a company called interorbital systems is offering to launch a 1/2 Kg satellite in orbit for a mere 8000 US dollars. The system is called tubesat and each one is a cylindrical container which is filled with the customer's payload of about 200g.

The size and weight is vary small, but enough for the electronics needed for transmission of data to earth and and small experiments to generate such data.

According to the company this scheme would be very useful for many schools and companies that would be interested in launching small satellites but have difficulties finding a spot in current commercial launches.

A related project, with larger payloads are Cubesats. These have been developed since 1999, with some successful launches and some failures. The cubesats had a price tag of around 80000 us dollars, or ten times more than the tubesat.


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Large scale cellulosic ethanol

According to a recent report, several companies are already producing large scale cellulosic ethanol. The news comes form a recent ethanol workshop attended by representatives of Coskata, Dupont/Danisco, Iogen, Lignol, Poet and PureVision.
the companies process around 1 ton of biomass per day, which is converted into 70-85 gallons of biofuels.

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Cosmetic formulas

Eckart America has many formulations for personal care products. They include ingredient lists and directions to make:

Eye shadow
Lipstick
Hair gel
Foundation
Skin lotion
Blush
Nail polish


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Free Chemical Engineering Journals

A user from the forum todoquimica (in spanish) supplied a list of chemical engineering publications that are freely avilable. They can be accessed through DOAJ (Directory of open access journals).

The journal names are listed below:


Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan
Journal of Corrosion Science & Engineering
The Journal of Food Technology in Africa
Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications
Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods
Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society
Journal of the Ceramic Society of Japan
Journal of the Chilean Chemical Sociaty
Journal of the Japan Petroleum Institute
Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society
Polymer Journal
E-polymers
Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Quarterly
Platinum Metals Review
Oil and Gas Business
Polímeros
Journal of Water and Environment Technology
Ciência e Tecnologia de Alimentos
Electronic Journal of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Chemistry


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New material harder than diamond

Researchers from Bayerisches Geoinstitut, Universitat Bayreuth, Germany, created a substance denser and less compressible than diamond. It was obteined by compressing fullerene (c60) molecules at a pressure of 10 GPa and a temperature of 2200 degrees Celsius. Attempts to measure the micro hardness failed, since a diamond indenter was unable to make a dent in the new material. The material however was able to scratch the surface of diamonds. It is beleved that the new material would be more effective than diamond for tools and other industrial uses.

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Photos of industrial plants

Those who appreciate giant structures, tanks, piping and large abandoned buildings, may like these photographs. The plants are closed, unused or in the process of being teared down. Buildings include sulfuric acid plants, steel furnaces and others.

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Excellent laboratory website

Chemistry teaching websites are often of poor quality. That's not the case for Chemlab, the website of Darthmouth college's chemistry lab.
Laboratory procedures are clearly explained, as are some topics in chemistry. I highly recommend it to anybody teaching or concerned with the design of a chemistry teaching website.

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Origins of FORTRAN

I'd like to invite computer programming enthusiasts to view this video about the team that created the first version of the FORTRAN computer language. It's 12 minutes long and consists of interviews with the main protagonists of the story. The interviews reveal how excited they were of working on the (at the time) innovative project.

Even today, Fortran is one of the most widely used languages for numerical and scientific applications.

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Heat engines without moving parts

Whenever something does not have moving parts, engineers get excited. Absence of moving parts means less parts that require lubrication, or can break down, and therefore the system has less maintenance.

Heat engines such as the internal combustion engine, compression refrigeration cycles or steam turbine cycles are widely used, but have great mechanical complexity and require many parts. Is it possible to make heat engines without turbines, pumps, pistons or hydraulic seals?

Yes, one such technology are the so called thermoacoustic engines. They use a compressible gas that vibrates inside a cavity at a resonance frequency. Invented long ago, the first models had poor efficiency, but recent advances achieved increases in efficiency that make them more attractive.

They can operate in direct mode, producing work from a temperature difference, or in reverse mode, as coolers that transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot one at the expense of work.


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List of good free math software

Below is a selection of high quality free math software. Many of them are distributed under a GNU license and work on multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, etc)

Maxima Algebra system with emphasis on symbolic computations.

Octave High level language, mostly oriented to numerical methods. It's fairly compatible with MATLAB. It was created for use in chemical engineering problem solving.

R Statistical and graphics package.It's similar to the "S" system developed at Bell labs (The main author of "S", is part of the development team of "R")

Scilab User friendly numerical package.

Gnuplot Very comprehensive scientific plotting program. Can be used from a command line or via scripts that allow automation of many tasks.

We found the links in GnuWin, a website dedicated to software of the GNU kind.

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Composites for aircraft

Composite materials are a material of great interest for aircraft. According to Frost & Sullivan, as soon as the materials improve their cost-benefit ratio, they will replace parts currently made of aluminum alloys or steel in civilian and military aircraft.

One of the research trends is adding carbon nanotubes to composites. It is estimated that by 2020 nanotubes will be used widely in aircraft such as the Airbus A380 or Boeing 747.


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Chemistry dissertations in spanish

Many PhD dissertations with chemistry related topics can be found online at universidad complutense de madrid. They describe procedures, research techniques, etc. Here's a link to another website with links to thesis.

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Formulations for personal care

ITDF is a supplier of ingredients for cosmetics and household chemicals. Their website has interesting documents regarding regulations for manufacturing cosmetics.

There is also a section with formulations, or recipes to make a large number of ingredients.

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Cost of chemicals

Market prices of chemicals are useful for economic studies and chemical engineering design projects. This information can be hard to find for students.

To help with these task we found a website from ICIS with prices of a large number of chemicals. Although they might be a bit dated, thay can be useful for student papers or projects.

Another source of estimated prices of chemicals can be found here (prices in UK pounds)


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Laboratory glassware

Chemical labs use a great variety of glass equipment, including, flasks, burettes, etc. We found a couple links thay may amuse those who spend many hours a day using glassware.

1)The original design of the Erlenmeyer flask.

2) A hybrid between a flask and an erlenmeyer, called fleaker. It combines the conical and cylindrical shapes providing the advantages of both. It might be so, but it also seems that it might be hard to clean if anything happens to stick to the interior walls.

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Cellulosic ethanol process

One of the multiple process for cellulosic ethanol is the one of bluefire (Arkenol). In their website they show flowsheets and pilot plant schematics.

One of the reasons in producing cellulosic ethanol as a renewable fuel is to use agricultural residues that would otherwise be burned or disposed of as waste.


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