More companies in the environmental sector are linking up with each other, or with engineering and construction firms, to meet challenging needs in a future that still looks unclear. Slowing market ...growth is helping to shape environmental equipment and service companies' strategies. While there should not be a dramatic drop in environmental spending, and most observers say companies will still have to meet existing or tougher standards, Congress has been sending signals that it wants regulators off industry's back. Key legislation remains suspended in Congress. One area where some consensus is shaping up is in risk assessment and management. The EPA has several programs in the works to allow for greater use of risk assessment in making priority choices in pollution control and in evaluating hazards.
Managers Tackle Maintenance Problems Basta, Nicholas; Morris, Gregory D L
Chemical engineering (New York),
12/1988, Letnik:
95, Številka:
18
Magazine Article
In the chemical process industries (CPI), there are many new technologies for maintenance, for instance, computerized maintenance management (CMM). However, the basic maintenance problem is one of ...management. Middle management at CPI firms needs to make improvements in planning, scheduling, and analysis. CMM systems have quickly developed into essential tools for overseeing maintenance and for keeping track of work orders and spare parts. The latest innovation in CMM software is to incorporate certain artificial-intelligence concepts into the CMM program to help managers perform better predictive- or preventive-maintenance operations. Notwithstanding all the new techniques, specialists in the field say the CPI could get vastly better performance from maintenance operations if upper management paid it the attention it deserves.
Approximately 88% of adult male workers on a rubber plantation in West Java, Indonesia had hookworm infection, and over 45% were anemic as judged by a hemoglobin below 13 g/100 ml. Hemoglobin values ...and Harvard Step Test (HST) performance for both tappers and weeders were significantly correlated. The rubber tappers were paid by their work output, and their earnings correlated with hemoglobin levels. Morbidity and hemoglobin levels were also correlated. Caloric intakes were not correlated with either work output or HST performance. Treatment with 100 mg of elemental iron for 60 days resulted in a significant improvement in hematological status of the anemic individuals and in their HST performance, work output, and morbidity. Both treatment and placebo groups received a daily incentive payment of 15 rupiahs, equivalent to 5 to 7% of minimum daily wages. This sum, spent largely on food, resulted in added intakes of 3 to 5 mg of available iron and 50 mg of vitamin C. This is believed to explain a significant but lesser improvement in hemoglobin, HST performance, work output, and morbidity in the anemic placebo group. In an untreated subsample to whom no payment was given, no change in hemoglobin, hematocrit, work performance, HST score, or disease morbidity occurred. After income supplementation was stopped, hemoglobin and hematocrit levels and related changes reverted to initial levels within 30 days in the placebo groups, but were unchanged in the iron-treated groups. The cost of the iron supplementation was small compared with the economic benefits of increased productivity and lowered morbidity.
Hate Statistics? Try Neural Networks D. Mukesh ICI India; Basta, Nicholas
Chemical engineering (New York),
03/1997, Letnik:
104, Številka:
3
Magazine Article
When confronted with a complex, multivariables problem, engineers have a number of options. The most promising of these is neural network programming. A neural network takes its design from the ...current understanding of how the nervous systems of living things work. It learns, it remembers and its adjusts to new situations. There now exist numerous software packages to help the engineer to build a functional neural network to optimize chemical processes. To illustrate the capabilities of neural network tools, a pair of chemical reactions will be evaluated by both regression analysis and a neural network. General guidelines for setting up a neural network analysis are proposed.
This paper contains a phytoecological analysis of the vegetation of Deschampsietum caespitosae type which develops on a specific (periodically flooded) hygrophilous habitats around the Crno jezero ...lake (Montenegro, Yugoslavia). Besides a description of communities, a basic ecological phytogeographical, syngenetical and syndynamical characteristics of analyzed phytocoenosis have been deffined as well.
Pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) is moving rapidly into many sectors of the chemical process industries (CPI). The burst of activity centers around a new type of molecular-sieve absorbent invented at ...Bergbau-Forschung GmbH in the late 1970s that separates oxygen from nitrogen with great efficiency. Various licensees have modified the basic B-F process of 2 adsorption vessels operating in tandem. For example, Nitrotec Engineering touts the refrigerative-drying system that precedes a coalescing filter for cleaning and drying feed air after compression. Permea has a system in which a layer of desiccant adsorbs water and impurities before the feedstream reaches the nitrogen adsorption section. Purity, capacity, and price determine the boundaries of the PSA business, which is moving rapidly into food processing, heat treating, and inert-gas blanketing. PSA is taking market share from cryogenic separation; it is uncertain whether membranes soon will provide a serious challenge to PSA.
