Download Minimizing Waste Product`s Harmful Impact

VOLUME LXIII • NUMBER 11 • November 2014 • $3.75
g
n
i
z
i
m
i
n
i
s
’
M
t
c
u
d
o
r
P
e
t
t
s
c
a
a
p
W
m
I
l
u
f
m
Har
g
tin ls
l
u i
ns eta
o
D
a C ing 527
i
3
in t
rg Lis 79i
7
5 V tory 041
20 rec all 8
Di C
9,000 Unique Visitors
Each Month!!
Each and every business day, more than
200 prospective customers access our
electronic directories! And the numbers keep
growing each and every month. Whether they’re searching for manufacturers’
representatives and distributors, or consulting
firms, or contracting firms, or professional
services firms, www.vaeng.com is where
they go to find what they need.
If your company profile is not currently listed,
call Richard Carden at 804.779.3527 or send
an email to [email protected] to make sure
the most complete information about all your
firm’s products and services, including links
to your site, is available when they come.
Volume LXIII
Number 11
November 2014
THE TOP OF THE NEWS
Focus of Continuing Research
Take advantage of our ‘Money Back’ guarantee
to enjoy the only publication dedicated
exclusively to Virginia’s Engineers.
Join the thousands of other professionals
already in the know for just pennies an issue.
Don’t Miss Out — Subscribe Now!
www.vaeng.com
E-mail
FAX
Snail-mail
[email protected]
804.779.3032
The Virginia Engineer
7401 Flannigan Mill Road
Mechanicsville, VA 23111-6056
Moving?
Don’t forget to stay
in touch! Send us your
new address before
you move, and your next
issue will reach you at
your new address.
6
Examining the Mechanics of Coiling
Natural Curvature Affects Process
8
Researchers Fight Drug Counterfeiting
High-Tech Label Is Newest Tool
9
Underwater Landslide
Possible Contributor To Deadly Tsunami
Predicting Electric Power Blackouts
10
Prior Event Protection Strategies Developed
World’s Thinnest Electric Generator
Not Yet A Subscriber?!
4
Reducing Waste’s Harmful Impact
13
Could Lead To Wearable Devices
Fighting The Spread of Ebola
U.S. Army Lab Plays Key Role
16
THE BEST OF THE FEATURES
Engineers On The Move
12
Professional Directory
22
Bits and Pieces
21
Index to Advertisers
25
The Outer Edge
26
The Virginia Engineer (ISSN 0504-4251/USPS 900-720) is published
monthly, all rights reserved. Tel: 1-877-779-3527. Postmaster: Forward
address changes to 7401 Flannigan Mill Rd., Mechanicsville, VA 23111.
Address all correspondence to Richard O. Carden, II, at the address above.
Subscriptions: 1 year-$20.00; 2 years-$38.00; 3 years-$55.00; single copy,
$3.75 plus S&H, except January Annual Directory Issue, $25.00 plus S&H.
Editorial and advertising deadline: 20th of month prior to the month printed.
Periodical postage paid at Mechanicsville, VA and other offices.
www.vaeng.com
www.vaeng.com – Page 3
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
even though they were the size
of sand grains”, said Rowshyra
Castañeda, a former McGill MSc
student (now at University of
Toronto) and the lead author of
Reducing the impact of hu- sives. Owing to their small size the study.
At some locations, the reman created waste and its re- and buoyancy, they may readily
sultant environmental pollution pass through sewage treatment searchers measured over a
continues to be the focus of re- plants. Microplastics are a glob- thousand microbeads per liter
searchers across the nation and al contaminant in the world’s of sediment, a magnitude that
throughout the world. With as- oceans, but have only recently rivals the world’s most consociated costs in the billions, been detected in the surface wa- taminated ocean sediments. “We
were surprised to find such conthese research efforts encompass ters of lakes and rivers.
reductions in source waste genIn research being funded by centrations at the bottom of a
river,” noted McGill
eration that lead inprofessor Anthony
exorably to increased
Ricciardi, who suenvironmental degpervised the study.
radation in the form
“It was previously
of land, water, and
assumed that floatair pollution.
ing microplastics are
As possibly the
flushed through rivmost
ubiquitous
ers to the sea. Now
source of man-made
we have evidence
environmental polluthat rivers can act as
tion, plastic waste has
a sink for this pollulong been recognized
tion.”
as a massive problem
The prevalence of
in search of a solution. Found in abun- Previously undocumented in North American rivers, con- microplastics in the
dance in the world’s centrations of microplastic particles in the St. Lawrence St. Lawrence River
oceans and on every River were found to be as high as those found in the world’s raises the possibility
continent, a team of most contaminated ocean sediments, the first time such that they are being
researchers from Mc- pollutants have been found in freshwater sediments. Photo consumed by fish and
other animals. The
Gill University and courtesy of Anthony Ricciardi.
environmental
efthe Quebec government have now discovered mi- the Quebec Centre for Biodiver- fects of microplastics are poorly
croplastics (in the form of poly- sity Science, researchers lowered known; but the surfaces of such
ethylene ‘microbeads,’ less than a steel grab from a boat to col- particles attract chemical pollut2 mm in diameter) widely dis- lect sediment from ten locations ants, including PCBs, which can
tributed across the bottom of the along a 320-km section of the be transferred to animals that
St. Lawrence River, the first time river from Lake St. Francis to ingest the plastics. “At present,
such pollutants have been found Québec City. Microbeads were we cannot predict the consein freshwater sediments.
sieved from the sediment, and quences of the accumulation of
The microbeads likely origi- then sorted and counted under a these non-biodegradable parnate from cosmetics, household microscope. “We found them in ticles in freshwater ecosystems”
cleansers, or industrial cleans- nearly every grab sample taken. added Prof. Ricciardi, whose lab
ers, all products in which they The perfect multicolored spheres is investigating whether the miare commonly used as abra- stood out from natural sediment, crobeads are being consumed by
Research Seeks To Minimize
Waste Product’s Harmful Impact
Page 4 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
fish in the river.
While no legislation has yet
been proposed in Canada, growing recognition of microplastics
as an emerging threat to waterways has led some U.S. states
(Illinois, New York, Minnesota,
Ohio, and California) to adopt
or at least consider legislation
that bans the use of plastic microbeads in cosmetics.
However, plastic waste contamination is unfortunately not
limited to the world’s oceans,
rivers, and other waterways.
It’s old news that opensource 3D printing is cheaper
than conventional manufacturing, not to mention greener and
incredibly useful for making everything from lab equipment to
chess pieces. Now another star
can potentially be added to the
3D printing constellation. More
widespread use may actually
help lift some of the world’s most
destitute people from poverty
while simultaneously cleaning
up a major blight on the earth’s
land surfaces.
“We are creating a new class
of material called ethical 3D
printing filament, like fair trade
coffee,” explained Joshua M.
Pearce, an associate professor in
Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer
Engineering at Michigan Technological University (Michigan
Tech). “It’s a way to help the
poorest of the poor up the economic ladder.”
Waste pickers in the developing world barely eke out a living
scouring landfills for trash to
sell. They usually don’t bother
with plastic, however, because it
has almost no value.
B u t
thanks to
an emerging market, waste
plastic
may soon
be a more
alluring
target; it
can serve
as a feedstock for
3D printer Michigan Tech's Joshua Pearce printed this DremelFuge
filament. chuck using 3D filament made from discarded plastic. Photo
W h a t courtesy:Sarah Bird/Michigan Technological University.
makes it
especially attractive is the cost • a regular work week of 48
of conventional filament made hours and a ban on child labor
from virgin plastic: about $35 to and forced labor;
• manufacturing practices that
$50 a kilogram.
Dr. Pearce’s group has al- are environmentally conscious;
ready developed a recyclebot • safeguards for workers’ health
that turns milk jugs and other and safety;
plastic trash into filament for • the right to unionize; and
pennies on the dollar. And next- • a ban on discrimination and
generation
commercial-grade sexual and physical harassment.
Businesses that make or use
recyclebots are creating opportunities for businesses. But for ethical filament could charge
waste pickers to truly benefit, a premium for their product,
Dr. Pearce emphasizes that the though it would still cost less
recycled filament industry must than conventional 3D filament.
adhere to certain fair labor and “Filament prices are so high that
places like Protoprint could sell
environmental practices.
Here’s how it would work. their filament at half that price
Under fair trade standards for and still give pickers a living
ethical 3D printing filament, wage while doing good for the
manufacturers would guarantee environment,” said Dr. Pearce.
Protoprint, a 3D printing
that their enterprise meets cerfirm
in Pune, India, is collaborattain conditions, which Dr. Pearce
and his colleagues published in ing with techfortrade, a Londonthe Journal of Sustainable Develop- based nonprofit that harnesses
technology to eliminate poverty
ment, including:
• minimum pricing to assure through economic development.
that workers receive fair wages; After working with Dr. Pearce,
• a fair-trade premium added techfortrade now plans to fully
to the filament’s price that supContinued on page 19.
ports development projects;
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 5
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
Researchers Examine
the Mechanics of Coiling
When one sends an email
from Boston to Beijing, it travels
through submarine optical cables that someone had to install
at some point. The positioning of
these cables can generate intriguing coiling patterns that can also
cause problems if, for instance,
they are tangled or kinked. The
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), has been collaborating on a project that, in
exploring these issues, bridges
engineering mechanics (Reis’s
group) and computer graphics (Grinspun’s group). The researchers, funded by a National
Science Foundation (NSF) MoMIDR
Collaborative grant
under CMMI,
combined precision
model
experiments
with computer
simulations
and examined
the
mechanics of coiling,
Discrete elastic rods, used for hair simulation here, are discovering in
also being used to predict the coiling of undersea com- particular that
munication cables. Image courtesy Eitan Grinspun/ the natural curColumbia Engineering.
vature of the
rod
dramatideployment of a rodlike struc- cally affects the coiling process.
ture onto a moving substrate is Their study was published recommonly found in a variety of cently in an online edition of
engineering applications, from “Proceedings of the National
the fabrication of nanotube ser- Academy of Sciences” (PNAS).
pentines to the laying of subma“This was a fun, fruitful colrine cables and pipelines, and laboration,” says Prof. Grinsengineers for years have been pun. “We did something totally
interested in predicting the me- new and different: we took a
chanics of filamentary structures computer algorithm that we had
and the coiling process.
designed for Hollywood, and,
A team led by Eitan Grin- by teaming up with Prof. Reis’s
spun, associate professor of group, discovered that this same
computer science at Columbia algorithm served as a predictive
Engineering, and Pedro Reis, tool for engineering mechanassociate professor of mechani- ics of thin filaments, rods, and
cal engineering and civil and pipes. It’s exciting to think that
environmental engineering at this computer model can serve
Page 6 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
both creative and engineering
enterprises.”
Prof. Grinspun’s simulation technology, Discrete Elastic
Rods, was originally developed
to animate hair and fur in film
and graphics applications, licensed and used in Photoshop
for realistic paintbrushes, and
by Weta Digital for use in films
such as The Hobbit and Planet of
the Apes series. Prof. Reis, who
is an experimental mechanician
at MIT, was studying how buckling of thin elastic structures can
be turned on its head: buckling
is normally feared by engineers
as a potential failure of a design,
but what if it could be used as a
functional component of a design? The two researchers decided to investigate how cables are
deployed, both at the nanoscale,
in stretchable electronics, and
the macroscale, such as the deployment of internet communication cables on the ocean floor.
The collaboration between
them began when Prof. Reis invited Prof. Grinspun to visit his
lab at MIT. “We wondered if our
seemingly distant worlds could
be bridged by a common vision,” says Prof. Grinspun. “We
both wanted to understand how
physical objects move by looking
at how their geometry, or shape,
affects their motion. Cables, being long and slender, were ideal
candidates for study. But could
the technology we built at Columbia Engineering for visually
striking film and special effects
be sufficiently accurate to agree
with Prof. Reis’s hard and precise experimental data?”
With support from the NSF,
Profs. Reis and Grinspun re-
cruited doctoral students Khalid
Jawed (MIT) and Fang Da (Columbia Engineering) to study
cable deployment in detail. In
their PNAS article, the researchers describe how seemingly benign decisions, such as the diameter of a spool, or the speed
at which a cable is deployed,
can dramatically affect the way
that the cable lies on the ground.
They created a map of the different patterns that can arise, from
a wiggling meandering mode to
steady coiling and on to alternating loops, as the spool diameter
or deployment speed are varied. The researchers also identified factors that have relatively
little impact on the deployment,
among them the height from
which a cable is dropped.
“These findings have practical impacts on our everyday
lives,” Prof. Reis adds. “Take,
for instance, an email that travels along a transoceanic communication cable. By better understanding the variables that
impact the deployment of such
cables, we can better balance
considerations such as expense
(the length of the cable deployed,
the amount of time to deploy the
cable), signal quality (tangled
cables can be more prone to interference), and the resilience of
the connection (taut cables are
more prone to damage due to
external factors, such as seismic
activity).”
“Translating computer tools
from computers and validating
them against precision model
The Virginia Engineer
experiments has provided a
novel tool for engineering mechanics to tackle the design and
analysis of other rodlike structures, which are common in nature and technology,” Prof. Reis
continues.
“As we move to the next
stage, we would like to pursue
engineering problems that combine the mechanics of slender filaments with additional ingredients, such as drag, contact, and
friction,” adds Prof. Grinspun.
“We are looking, for example, at
locomotion of bacteria, tying of
shoelaces, and hair blowing in
the wind.”
This article reprinted from
materials provided by Columbia
University School of Engineering and Applied Science. ##
www.vaeng.com – Page 7
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
High-Tech Labels Are Newest
Tool To Fight Drug Counterfeiting
Almost magically, an outline
of Marilyn Monroe's iconic face
appeared on the clear, plastic
film when a researcher fogs it
with her breath.
Terry Shyu, a doctoral student in chemical engineering at
the University of Michigan (UM), was not actually performing
a magic trick, but rather demonstrating a new high-tech label
for fighting drug counterfeiting.
While the researchers don't envision movie stars on medicine
bottles, they used Monroe’s image to prove their concept.
Counterfeit drugs, which at
best contain wrong doses and
at worst are toxic, are thought
to kill more than 700,000 people
per year. While less than 1 percent of the U.S. pharmaceuticals
market is believed to be counterfeit, it is a huge problem in
the developing world where as
much as a third of the available
medicine is fake.
To fight back against these
and other forms of counterfeiting, researchers at U-M and in
South Korea have developed a
way to make labels that change
when you breathe on them, revealing a hidden image.
"One challenge in fighting
counterfeiting is the need to stay
ahead of the counterfeiters," noted Nicholas Kotov, the Joseph B.
and Florence V. Cejka Professor
of Chemical Engineering who
led the Michigan effort.
The method requires access
to sophisticated equipment that
Page 8 – November 2014
can create very tiny features,
roughly 500 times smaller than
the width of a human hair. But
once the template is made, labels can be printed in large rolls
at a cost of roughly one dollar
per square inch. That's cheap
enough for companies to use in
protecting the reputation of their
products—and potentially the
safety of their consumers.
"We use a molding process,"
Shyu said, noting that this inexpensive manufacturing technique is also used to make plastic cups.
The labels work because an
array of tiny pillars on the top
of a surface effectively hides
images written on the material
beneath. Shyu compares the texture of the pillars to a submicroscopic toothbrush. The hidden
images appear when the pillars
trap moisture.
"You can verify that you
have the real product with just
a breath of air," Prof. Kotov said.
Widespread use of the simple
phenomenon could make it easy
for buyers to avoid being fooled
by fake packaging.
Previously, it was impossible
to make nanopillars through
cheap molding processes because the pillars were made
from materials that preferred
adhering to the mold rather than
whatever surface they were supposed to cover. To overcome this
challenge, the team developed
a special blend of polyurethane
and an adhesive.
The Virginia Engineer
The liquid polymer filled the
mold, but as it cured, the material shrunk slightly. This allowed
the pillars to release easily rather than adhere. The pillars are
also strong enough to withstand
rubbing, ensuring that the label
would survive some wear, such
as would typically occur during
shipping. The usual material for
making nanopillars is too brittle
to survive handling well.
The team demonstrated the
nanopillars could stick to plastics, fabric, paper and metal, and
they anticipate that the arrays
will also transfer easily to glass
and leather.
Following seed funding from
the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps program
and DARPA's Small Business
Technology Transfer program,
the university is pursuing patent protection for the intellectual
property and is seeking commercialization partners to help
bring the technology to market.
This work was recently reported in a paper titled, "ShearResistant Scalable Nanopillar
Arrays with LBL-Patterned
Overt and Covert Images," published recently in the journal Advanced Materials.
It was funded by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects
Agency; the National Science
Foundation; the Korea Ministry of Science, Information and
Communications
Technology
and Future Planning; the Ministry of Knowledge Economy; and
the Korea Evaluation Institute of
Industry Technology.
This article reprinted from
materials provided by the University of Michigan. ##
Underwater Landslide Possible
Contributor To Deadly Tsunami
cently published in the journal
Marine Geology. Most assumed
that the massive size of the earthquake was enough to create the
An ocean engineer at the Uni- propagate the large waves that waves that were observed.
versity of Rhode Island (URI) struck Sanriku. So the URI engi“It raises questions about
has found that a massive under- neers and colleagues at the Brit- how we’ve been doing tsunami
water landslide, combined with ish Geological Survey and the predictions in the past,” he said.
the 9.0 earthquake, was respon- University of Tokyo went look- “We generally have just considsible for triggering the deadly ing for evidence that something ered the largest possible earthtsunami that struck Japan in else happened there.
quake, but we seldom consider
March 2011.
underwater
landslides
Professor
Stephan An ocean engineer at the University
as an additional source,”
Grilli, an international of Rhode Island (URI) has found that a
despite the fact that large
leader in the study of tsu- massive underwater landslide, combined tsunamis in 1998 in Papua
namis, said the generally with the 9.0 earthquake, was responsible New Guinea and in 1946
accepted explanation for for triggering the deadly tsunami that
in the Aleutian Islands
the cause of the tsunami struck Japan in March 2011.
were discovered to have
had been the earthquake,
been generated by a comthe fifth largest ever measured,
Reviewing surveys of the bination of earthquakes and unwhich created a significant uplift seafloor conducted by Japanese derwater landslides.
and subsidence of the seafloor. scientists before and after the
Prof. Grilli also said that his
While that adequately explains earthquake, the scientists found analysis is under considerable
the 10-meter surge that affected signs of a large slump on the scrutiny because it brings into
much of the impacted area, Prof. seafloor – a rotational landslide question whether Japan had adGrilli said it cannot account for 40 kilometers by 20 kilometers equately prepared for natural
the 40-meter waves that struck in extent and 2 kilometers thick disasters prior to the 2011 event.
a 100-kilometer area of Japan’s that traveled down the slope of
“There is a lot at stake in Jamountainous Sanriku Coast.
the Japan Trench, leaving a hori- pan,” he explained. “Tsunami
“Computer models have not zontal footprint the size of Paris scientists working for governbeen able to explain the large in- that could only have been cre- ment agencies use tsunami reundation and run-up on the San- ated by a 100-meter uplift in the turn periods that are much too
riku Coast using the earthquake seafloor. The earthquake only low in their calculations, leading
alone,” Prof. Grilli explained. raised the seafloor 10 meters.
them to underestimate the tsu“Our model could only get in“Underwater landslides tend nami risk. All of the safety proceundation up to 16 or 18 meters, to create shorter period tsunami dures they have in place, includnot 40. So we knew there must waves, and they tend to con- ing at nuclear power plants, are
be another cause.”
centrate their energy in a small still based on underestimating
In a series of models, Prof. stretch of coastline,” said Prof. the maximum earthquake likely
Grilli and his former doctoral Grilli. “The train of waves from to strike Japan, and they understudent Jeff Harris worked back- the landslide, combined with the estimate the maximum tsunami,
wards in time to recreate the earthquake generated waves, to- too. Japan is working toward removement of the seafloor from gether created the 40 meter inun- vising their approach to tsunami
the earthquake and concluded dation along the Sanriku Coast.” hazard assessment, but this will
that an additional movement
Prof. Grilli said it has been take time.”
underwater about 100 kilome- difficult to convince his JapaThis article reprinted from
ters north of the earthquake’s nese colleagues of his research materials provided by the Uniepicenter must have occurred to group’s results, which were re- versity of Rhode Island. ##
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 9
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
Predicting Electric Power Blackouts
Prior To Actual Event
The 2003 Northeast blackout, Energy Systems Group are dethe largest power outage in Unit- veloping tools to improve grid
ed States history, began with one protection operation analysis
power line in Ohio going offline and prediction under different
and ended with more than 50 scenarios. These new grid promillion people without power tection tools are not only for
throughout the
Northeast and
the Canadian
province of Ontario.
Despite the
apparent failure of the electric grid during
such cascading
events, blackouts aren’t necessarily
grid
failures. In fact,
blackouts are
more often the
result of automated protec- High-voltage transmission lines. Photo; ORNL.
tion measures
put in place to
ensure power surges or downed familiar events like equipment
power lines don’t damage trees, failures, energy shortages or
people, appliances or other parts extreme weather, but they can
also protect against influxes of
of the grid.
In the past, utility engineers renewable energy sources and
have used static models of local “smart” grid components, such
electric grids to aim for single- as communication devices and
contingency, worst-case scenario sensors, which both pose new
protection strategies rather than protection challenges.
“We’re integrating existing
dynamic, real-time solutions to a
tools
to do an even better job at
unique grid disturbance.
Through advanced modeling what they already do,” Smith
and computer simulation, Tra- said. “We eventually want to
vis Smith and fellow R&D staff feed real measurements from the
members in the Department of grid into the model, which for
Energy’s Oak Ridge National utilities means a faster response
Laboratory (ORNL) Power and time because they can plan for
Page 10 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
individual scenarios.”
For decades, utility planning
engineers have used the Power
System Simulator for Engineering (PSSE) or comparable software to plan utility infrastructure and power distribution.
PSSE executes dynamic simulations of power transmission so
engineers can analyze and optimize the grid’s performance.
Once planning engineers
plan the grid,
protection engineers must
design protection strategies
that are based
on that plan.
“Protection
engineers ask,
‘If something
goes wrong, if
there’s a fault,
can we isolate
one part of
the system?’,”
said
Smith,
who worked
as a protection
engineer for multiple utilities
and consultant for more than 15
years before coming to ORNL.
To simulate faults, or changes in electric current that typically indicate something has gone
wrong on the grid, protection
engineers use Computer Aided
Protection Engineering (CAPE)
software. However, predicting
the protection strategy needed
for any number of events—from
a tree felling a power line during
a storm to an abrupt rise or fall in
consumer demand—is a much
heavier computational burden
than planning for the system to
work under normal conditions.
“When protection engineers look at the grid,
they are studying it under static conditions,”
Smith noted. “So they simulate a fault to see what
happens, but that simulation is not taking into account real-time dynamics on the grid.”
In the end, grid protection relies on a string of
automated protective relays, devices placed on
transmission lines and substations. If a relay registers a disturbance, such as a drop in voltage, it
will trip a switch and shut off local power. More
often than not, protective relays are older electromagnetic devices that cannot transmit data to the
utility company.
“Technicians often have to physically go to the
substation and pull out a data file to understand
what happened,” Smith explained.
When the first hours of a blackout are spent investigating what caused the outage, it can be difficult to prevent adjacent relays from tripping and
creating further problems.
For real-time solutions, Smith is developing a
detailed protection program for ORNL’s consolidated PSSE/CAPE software that analyzes changes in parameters such as current, voltage, frequency and impedance to coordinate protective relays
into a low-impact protection strategy as an event
is occurring.
He is refining the program and investigating
the impact of renewable energy on grid protection
using models of the Eastern Interconnection (EI),
one of the nation’s major grids, for the years 2008–
21. The models are provided by the Eastern Interconnection Reliability Assessment Group, which
analyzes and forecasts EI transmission conditions.
“The program script is automated so it can
quickly analyze all the contingencies and provide
a guidebook for a range of circumstances,” Smith
said.
One of the biggest R&D challenges is related
to the size of the computational problem, which
slows simulation times. For models that simulate
the grid five to 10 years from now, an infusion of
wind energy, small-system energy storage devices
and communicating sensors makes the amount of
computation even more daunting, and simulation
time steps shrink from milliseconds to microseconds to detect viruses or cyber-attacks.
“Once you have a faster, smarter grid, you need
protection for a faster, smarter grid,” Smith said.
“I’m working with computer scientists at ORNL
to see if we can push the model to run faster than
real-time speeds so we can predict what will happen before it happens.”
While Smith says he currently may be “the
only person in the world using this kind of program right now,” he predicts utility companies
worldwide will adopt real-time protection analysis in the next few years.
It will happen “soon, if we see a large blackout,” Smith said. “We’ll zoom into the model using EMT (Electro Magnetic Transients), see what
is happening among protective relays, and run
higher resolution time step simulations to solve
the problem before it gets out of hand.”
This research is funded by the DOE’s Office
of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Advanced Modeling Grid Research Program.
This article reprinted from materials provided
by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ##
The Virginia Engineer
EnerSys™ has the power
you want, where you want
it, with a complete range of
UPS batteries and a service
network to support your
mission critical 24-7-365
applications, worldwide.
2260 Dabney Road
Richmond, VA 23230
800-332-7316
www.ipsofva.com
www.vaeng.com – Page 11
ENGINEERS
and THEIR COLLEAGUES
On The Move ...
Additional coverage of Engineers and Their Colleagues On The Move
including photographs is available at www.vaeng.com
McKim & Creed, Inc. has announced that Kevin Worsham,
E.I.T., has joined the company’s
Norfolk office as a sewer system
evaluation survey (SSES) engineer in training. Certified with
the National Association of Sewer Service Companies (NASSCO), Mr. Worsham earned a B.S.
degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia
Tech. Prior to joining the firm, he
worked as a staff environmental
engineer with Environ-Civil Engineering, Ltd.
Draper Aden Associates is
pleased to announce that William F. Mason-Deese has joined
the Environmental Team as
a staff geologist in the firm’s
Blacksburg office. Mr. MasonDeese holds a B.S. degree in Geology from Guilford College and
an M.S. degree in Geology from
the University of Georgia.
Dewberry has announced
that Meaghan O’Brien, LEED
AP, has joined the firm’s Richmond office staff as a project
manager. With more than 16
years of civil engineering experience, including commercial
and industrial site plan development, Ms. O’Brien earned her
B.S. degree in Civil Engineering
from Virginia Tech.
Dewberry has also recently
announced the promotions of:
Page 12 – November 2014
Maxwell P. Chance, P.E.,
to senior associate in the firm’s
Richmond office. With more
than 15 years of engineering and
project management experience
in water/wastewater projects, as
well as site/civil design projects
for energy infrastructure clients,
he earned his B.S. degree in Civil
Engineering from the Virginia
Military Institute; and
Jeff Gangai, CFM, has been
promoted to senior associate in
the firm’s Fairfax office. With
more than 15 years of experience, he is a national expert in
coastal flood hazard analyses
and mapping and has presented
at numerous industry conferences around the U.S. Mr. Gangai
has a bachelor’s degree in Maritime Systems Engineering from
Texas A&M University.
Anderson & Associates,
Inc. welcomes Derek Harris as
Blacksburg Survey Technician.
Virginia Tech’s Ted and
Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology
has named Jonathan Black as
its first associate director of research for aerospace systems.
He is an associate professor of
aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech and a member of the
Center for Space Science and Engineering Research, also known
as Space@VT. Prior to joining
The Virginia Engineer
the faculty at Virginia Tech, Prof.
Black served as an associate professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department at the Air
Force Institute of Technology,
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,
Ohio, where he was the founding director of the Center for
Space Research and Assurance.
Xueyang Feng has been appointed assistant professor of
biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech’s College
of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Dr. Feng received his Ph.D.
from Washington University in
St. Louis in Environmental and
Chemical Engineering, and B.S.
degrees in Environmental Engineering from Hauzhong University of Science and Technology, and Biology from Wuhan
University. During his graduate
career, Dr. Feng was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department
of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Ram B. Gupta, Ph.D. recently assumed his position as the
new associate dean for research
with the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering. Previously serving as
program director for energy for
sustainability with the National
Science Foundation, Dr. Gupta ‘s
academic background includes
nearly two decades as professor of chemical engineering at
Auburn University. He earned
his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1993 from the University
of Texas at Austin, followed by
two years of postdoctoral work
at the University of California,
Berkeley. Dr. Gupta also holds
the position of professor with
the Department of Chemical and
Life Science Engineering. ##
World’s Thinnest
Electric Generator
Developed
pocket,” explained James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia and co-leader of
the research.
“Proof of the piezoelectric effect and piezotronic effect adds new functionalities to these twodimensional materials,” added Zhong Lin Wang,
Researchers from Columbia Engineering and Regents’ Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Mathe Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia terials Science and Engineering and a co-leader of
Tech) have reported that they have made the first the research. “The materials community is excited
experimental observation of piezoelectricity and about molybdenum disulfide, and demonstrating
the piezotronic ef- the piezoelectric effect in it adds a new facet to the
fect in an atomi- material.”
cally thin material,
Prof. Hone and his research group demonmolybdenum di- strated in 2008 that graphene, a 2D form of carsulfide (MoS2), re- bon, is the strongest material. He and Lei Wang,
sulting in a unique a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Hone’s group, have
electric
genera- been actively exploring the novel properties of
tor and mechano- 2D materials like graphene and MoS2 as they are
sensation devices stretched and compressed.
Prof. Zhong Lin Wang and his research group
Cartoon showing positive and that are optically
ex- pioneered the field of piezoelectric nanogeneranegative polarized charges are transparent,
squeezed from a single layer of tremely light, and tors for converting mechanical energy into electricatoms, as it is being stretched. very bendable and
Image courtesy of Lei Wang/ stretchable.
Power & Heat Systems, LLC.
Columbia Engineering.
In a paper re10005 Whitesel Road • Ashland, VA 23005
cently published
online in “Nature”, research groups from the two
Your Boiler Specialists
institutions demonstrate the mechanical generaFeaturing quality multi-fuel, horizontal and vertical
tion of electricity from the two-dimensional (2D)
MoS2 material. The piezoelectric effect in this material had previously been predicted theoretically.
Piezoelectricity is a well-known effect in which
stretching or compressing a material causes it to
The best features of Scotch marine and
generate an electrical voltage (or the reverse, in
Firebox boiler design are combined
which an applied voltage causes it to expand or
to produce a compact and durable
contract). But for materials of only a few atomic
wetback boiler.
thicknesses, no experimental observation of pi• Welded Construction
ezoelectricity has been made, until now. The ob• Compact size
servation reported provides a new property for
• U-type Flex Joint
two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum
• Removable Smokeboxes
disulfide, opening the potential for new types of • Structural Steel Skid
mechanically controlled electronic devices.
• Reversing Chamber Design
“This material—just a single layer of atoms—
• Single Source Responsibility
could be made as a wearable device, perhaps integrated into clothing, to convert energy from your If it deals with Combustion, we have your solution!
804.798.1318 • 800.552.6661
body movement to electricity and power wearable
[email protected]
sensors or medical devices, or perhaps supply
www.powerandheatsystems.com
enough energy to charge your cell phone in your
“Scotch Box” Boilers
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 13
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
ity. He and postdoctoral fellow
Wenzhuo Wu are also developing piezotronic devices, which
use piezoelectric charges to control the flow of current through
the material just as gate voltages
do in conventional three-terminal transistors.
There are two keys to using
molybdenum disulfide for generating current: using an odd
number of layers and flexing
it in the proper direction. The
material is highly polar, Prof.
Zhong Lin Wang noted, so an
even number of layers cancels
out the piezoelectric effect. The
material’s crystalline structure
also is piezoelectric in only certain crystalline orientations.
For the “Nature” study, Prof.
Hone’s team placed thin flakes
of MoS2 on flexible plastic substrates and determined how
their crystal lattices were oriented using optical techniques.
They then patterned metal electrodes onto the flakes. In research done at Georgia Tech,
Wang’s group installed measurement electrodes on samples
provided by Prof. Hone’s group,
then measured current flows as
the samples were mechanically
deformed. They monitored the
conversion of mechanical to
electrical energy, and observed
voltage and current outputs.
The researchers also noted
that the output voltage reversed
sign when they changed the direction of applied strain, and
that it disappeared in samples
with an even number of atomic
layers, confirming theoretical
predictions published last year.
The presence of piezotronic effect in odd layer MoS2 was also
Page 14 – November 2014
observed for the first time.
“What’s really interesting
is we’ve now found that a material like MoS2, which is not
piezoelectric in bulk form, can
become piezoelectric when it is
thinned down to a single atomic
layer,” said Lei Wang.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Columbia
Engineering have made the first
experimental observation of piezoelectricity and the piezotronic effect
in an atomically thin material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). Shown
is a sample of the material that was
tested as part of the research. Image courtesy of Rob Felt/Georgia
Tech.
To be piezoelectric, a material
must break central symmetry. A
single atomic layer of MoS2 has
such a structure, and should be
piezoelectric. However, in bulk
MoS2, successive layers are oriented in opposite directions, and
generate positive and negative
voltages that cancel each other
out and give zero net piezoelectric effect.
“This adds another member
to the family of piezoelectric materials for functional devices,”
noted Wenzhuo Wu.
In fact, MoS2 is just one of
a group of 2D semiconducting materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides, all
of which are predicted to have
The Virginia Engineer
similar piezoelectric properties.
These are part of an even larger
family of 2D materials whose
piezoelectric materials remain
unexplored. Importantly, as has
been shown by Prof. Hone and
his colleagues, 2D materials can
be stretched much farther than
conventional materials, particularly traditional ceramic piezoelectrics, which are quite brittle.
The research could open the
door to development of new applications for the material and
its unique properties.
“This is the first experimental work in this area and is an elegant example of how the world
becomes different when the size
of material shrinks to the scale
of a single atom,” Prof. Hone
emphasized. “With what we’re
learning, we’re eager to build
useful devices for all kinds of
applications.”
Ultimately, Prof. Zhong Lin
Wang notes, the research could
lead to complete atomic-thick
nanosystems that are self-powered by harvesting mechanical
energy from the environment.
This study also reveals the piezotronic effect in two-dimensional materials for the first time,
which greatly expands the application of layered materials
for human-machine interfacing,
robotics, MEMS, and active flexible electronics.
The study was supported by
the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE), Office of Basic Energy
Sciences (BES) and U.S. National
Science Foundation.
This article reprinted from
materials provided by Columbia
University School of Engineering and Applied Science. ##
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 15
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
Fighting the Spread of Ebola
A quiet solution amidst the
rising clamor for answers in the
current Ebola crisis comes from
a surprising corner of America’s
federal laboratory system.
Scientists at a U.S. Army research lab in Natick, Mass., have
developed and patented a novel chemical system that is now
being used to sterilize medical
equipment and electronic items
used in the treatment of patients
on the front lines of the war on
Ebola in West Africa. This capability was made possible through
the transfer of the technology
from the Army lab to a privately
held company, ClorDiSys Solutions, which now produces,
packages, and markets the solution on a worldwide basis.
One of the key research
thrusts at the U.S. Army Natick
Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center
is the discovery and development of decontamination technologies to keep the Warfighter
healthy and safe from bioterror
attack. Natick’s invention is a
portable “no power required”
method of generating chlorine
dioxide (ClO2) gas, one of the
best biocides available for combating contaminants that range
from benign microbes and food
pathogens to Category A Bioterror agents.
The starting ingredients used
to generate ClO2 are now produced and marketed by Lebanon, New Jersey-based ClorDiSys Solutions, and they can be
Page 16 – November 2014
quickly mobilized and applied
as a gas to decontaminate or sterilize equipment and surfaces.
Dr. Christopher Doona, the
lead inventor of this field-portable method for generating ClO2,
is a senior research chemist at the
center known locally as Natick
Labs with extensive experience
in ClO2 reaction chemistry. Dr.
Doona and his team are credited
with inventing and perfecting
this process of converting dry
powder chemicals into ClO2.
Dr. Doona says an important
exponent of ClO2 is its versatility
as a disinfectant suitable for any
industry ranging from textiles,
medicine, wastewater treatment
and public health, to food safety,
personal hygiene, and household uses. ClO2 can be activated
in small or large quantities and
in varying strength levels from
potent enough to sterilize medical instruments to mild enough
to use in toothpaste to fight off
germs in the mouth.
This technology could have
ended up like many military
technologies, in a Warfighter-only product. However, the Army
patented it and the technology
transfer specialists at TechLink
in Bozeman, Mont., collaborated
with Natick’s Technology Transfer Office, to transfer the technology to ClorDiSys, so it could be
commercialized and made widely available. Technology transfer
such as this, from a government
lab to private enterprise, is mandated by Congress and ensures
The Virginia Engineer
that useful technologies don’t
just gather dust on a shelf, but
find application in U.S. industry.
Jeff DiTullio, business development lead at Natick, is always
searching for opportunities
where military innovation can
be licensed for commercial application. Natick is one of dozens of Department of Defense
(DoD) laboratories actively involved in research and technology aimed at benefitting the U.S.
Warfighter and giving the military unrivaled operational capability. Working as a conduit between the DoD and the private
sector, Montana-based TechLink
assisted ClorDiSys in navigating
the Army’s licensing process.
“It was a perfect scenario.
We needed something and the
Army had it. TechLink helped us
get to the finish line,” explained
Paul Lorcheim, ClorDiSys Solutions’ director of operations.
“This transfer would not have
happened without TechLink,”
added DiTullio.
ClorDiSys Solutions is a
spinout of Johnson & Johnson.
The company focuses on generating and using ClO2, providing
both powered and unpowered
solutions for a variety of applications, and in particular for
decontamination and sterilization of pharmaceutical, medical,
veterinary, and food facilities.
When the opportunity came
along to provide ClO2 on the
Ebola front, ClorDiSys was willing and ready.
“ClorDiSys is proud to be
helping to fight the spread of
Ebola in Africa,” Mark Czarneski, ClorDiSys Solutions’ director
of technology added. “Various
“Americans hear in the news
world health organizations, in- Postal Facility.
Unlike other methods of about outbreaks of E. coli, Liscluding the U.S. government, are
preparing
chlorine dioxide, no teria, and Salmonella from fresh
using ClorDiSys’s gaseous chlorine dioxide to sterilize medical electricity or caustic acids are fruits and vegetables. ClO2 holds
equipment contaminated with needed to activate the pow- promise for the food industry
Ebola. It has been tested and is dered ClO2, nor is clean water but also, on a smaller scale as a
being utilized by these organi- required, making it ideal for use home sanitizer for rinsing fresh
zations for a number of appli- in remote field locations. Pack- produce or appliances,” Dr.
Doona says.
cations.” The
The
succompany’s ulcess of ClO2 in
traviolet light
combating Ebdisinfection
ola and other
system, called
pathogens folTORCH, was
lows collaboalso utilized
ration between
by the Unithe DoD and a
versity of Nebiotech compabraska Mediny that yieldcal Center to
ed a potential
perform the
treatment for
terminal disvictims sickinfection after
ened by Ebola.
the release of
The Ebola antheir first Ebotibody that is a
la patient.
key component
Chlorine
Researchers
Dr.
Christopher
Doona
and
Ms.
Florence
Feeherry
of
the
of the experidioxide is a
U.S.
Army
Natick
Soldier
Research,
Development,
and
Engineering
Cenmental drug
yellow-green
ter developed next generation decontamination technologies that safely,
called ZMapp
gas with a
conveniently, and controllably generate chlorine dioxide (ClO2) without
was developed
faint odor simacids or power. ClO2 kills bacterial spores, viruses, and vegetative cells,
ilar to chlorine while minimizing hazards to the user and the environment. Photo courtesy in the Army
Medical
Rebleach
but of David J. Kamm, U.S. Army.
search
Instiotherwise it is
tute of Infecvery different.
It has been recognized as a disin- ets of ClorDiSys’s ClO2 prod- tious Diseases and subsequently
fectant since the early 1900s and uct, which until recently did not transferred with assistance from
has been approved by the U.S. exist, are portable enough to be TechLink to Mapp Biopharmaceutical of San Diego, Calif.
Environmental Protection Agen- carried in backpacks.
Chlorine dioxide is a broad- ZMapp is credited with having
cy (EPA) for many applications.
In the modern age, the effec- based biocide that kills spores, saved the lives of two Ameritiveness of ClO2 was confirmed bacteria, viruses, and fungi. To can medical missionaries who
at the dawn of the new millenni- date no organism tested against contracted Ebola last July, and
um. In the weeks after the 9/11 ClO2 has proved resistant. It has is regarded as one of the most
attacks when terrorists sent an- effectively been used to kill bac- promising treatments for Ebola
thrax in letters to public officials, terial spores, which are much currently under development.
This article reprinted from
hazmat teams used ClO2 to de- more difficult to kill than viruscontaminate the Hart Senate Of- es, such as Ebola, according to materials provided by Montana
State University TechLink. ##
fice Building and the Brentwood Dr. Doona.
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 17
Now
more
than
ever ...
reaching your
market audience
is imperative.
The 2015 Annual Directory of
Consulting Engineering Services
in Virginia
As the only reference source of its kind in Virginia, the directory provides professional consulting engineering
firms a unique opportunity to highlight their services and areas of specialization for tens of thousands of potential
clients each year.
Preparations for the 2015 directory are already underway, so make plans now to have the most current information
about your firm — office locations and contact information, areas of specialization, description of services, key
personnel, and website address — available for those who specify or contract consulting engineering services.
For over 50 years, helping our clients to more effectively market their services has been our only business. Call
us today at 804.779.3527, or fax a note to 804.779.3032, or send an email to [email protected]. This year, make
sure the most comprehensive information about your firm is always available and kept close at hand.
www.vaeng.com
vaeng.com has gone mobile! Find us at m.vaeng.com.
Virginia’s ENGINEERING Address
Page 18 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
Continued from page 5.
implement his fair trade standards for filament in the Ethical
Filament Foundation.
The paper, “Evaluation of
Potential Fair Trade Standards
for an Ethical 3D Printing Filament,” is coauthored by Dr.
Pearce, Savanna R. Feeley of
Michigan State University and
Bas Wijnen, a PhD candidate in
materials science and engineering at Michigan Tech and was
published recently in the Journal
of Sustainable Development.
Concurrent research focusing on alternative power generation systems to advance energy
independence and eliminate
pollution from fossil fuels continues to show great promise.
For example, the promise of
fusion energy seems almost too
good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no longlived radioactive waste, and a
nearly unlimited fuel supply.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is economics. Fusion power
designs simply aren’t cheap
enough to outperform systems
that use fossil fuels such as coal
and natural gas.
University of Washington
(UW) engineers hope to change
that. With funding from the U.S.
Department of Energy, they have
designed a concept for a fusion
reactor that, when scaled up to
the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a
new coal-fired plant with similar
electrical output.
The team has published its
reactor design and cost-analysis
findings and presented results at
the International Atomic
Energy Agency’s Fusion
Energy Conference in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
“Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of
any current concept,” said
Thomas Jarboe, a UW
professor of aeronautics
and astronautics and an
adjunct professor in physics.
The UW’s reactor, Pictured is the University of Washington’s
called the dynomak, start- current fusion experiment, HIT-SI3. It is
ed as a class project taught about one-tenth the size of the power-proby Prof. Jarboe two years ducing dynomak concept. Photo courtesy:
ago. After the class ended, University of Washington.
Prof. Jarboe and doctoral
student Derek Sutherland, who crucial to keeping a fusion reacpreviously worked on a reactor tor going. The UW’s design is
design at MIT, continued to de- known as a spheromak, meaning it generates the majority of
velop and refine the concept.
The design builds on exist- magnetic fields by driving elecing technology and creates a trical currents into the plasma itmagnetic field within a closed self. This reduces the amount of
space to hold plasma in place required materials and actually
long enough for fusion to oc- allows researchers to shrink the
cur, allowing the hot plasma to overall size of the reactor.
Other designs, such as the
react and burn. The reactor itself
would be largely self-sustain- French experimental fusion reacing, meaning it would continu- tor project, Iter, have to be much
ously heat the plasma to main- larger because they rely on sutain thermonuclear conditions. perconducting coils that circle
Heat generated from the reactor around the outside of the device
would heat up a coolant that is to provide a similar magnetic
used to spin a turbine and gen- field. Comparatively, the UW’s
erate electricity, similar to how a is less expensive, roughly onetenth the cost, while producing
typical power reactor works.
“This is a much more elegant five times the amount of energy.
The UW researchers facsolution because the medium in
which you generate fusion is the tored the cost of building a fumedium in which you’re also sion reactor power plant usdriving all the current required ing their design and compared
that with building a coal power
to confine it,” Sutherland said.
There are several ways to plant. They used a metric called
create a magnetic field, which is “overnight capital costs,” which
The Virginia Engineer
www.vaeng.com – Page 19
THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER
includes all costs, particularly results were published recently sorption capacity of unprocessed
startup infrastructure fees. A in the American Chemical So- raw cotton. The work also examfusion power plant producing ciety’s journal Industry & Engi- ined the basic mechanisms be1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of neering Chemistry Research.
hind oil sorption by nonwoven
power would cost $2.7 billion,
This multidisciplinary proj- cotton webs.
while a coal plant of the same ect involved scientists from
“We believe nonwoven cotoutput would cost $2.8 billion, Cotton Incorporated and Texas ton webs as an oil sorbent have
according to their analysis.
Tech’s Departments of Mechani- tremendous potential for appli“If we do invest in this type cal Engineering and Environ- cation in real-time oil spill sceof fusion, we could be rewarded mental Toxicology, including narios along with environmental
because the commercial reactor Vinitkumar Singh, a doctoral sustainability and commercial
unit already looks economiacceptability,” Prof. Ramkucal,” Sutherland said. “It’s
mar said. “In this study, we
very exciting.”
have used low-grade cotton
Currently the UW’s conas well as mature cotton, and
cept is about one-tenth the
it was observed that lowsize and power output of a
grade cotton performs better
final product, which is still
than regular mature cotton
years away. The researchin the oil sorption capacers have successfully tested
ity. Nonwoven cotton batts
the prototype’s ability to
consisting of immature and
sustain a plasma efficiently,
finer cotton fibers showed 7
and as they further develop
percent higher oil sorption
and expand the size of the Texas Tech researchers recently discovered capacity than cotton batts
device they can ramp up to that low-grade cotton made into an absorbent developed using mature and
higher-temperature plasma nonwoven mat can collect up to 50 times its coarser fibers. Cotton batts
and get significant fusion own weight in oil. Photo credit: Texas Tech.
could be used to clean up oil
power output.
spills on land as well as any
The team has filed patents on candidate working under Prof. oil-water system.”
the reactor concept and plans to Ramkumar, who performed the
“Our research shows cotton
continue developing and scaling experiments in this study.
as a high-performance fiber that
up its prototypes.
“With the 2010 crude oil spill can be deployed to clean up toxic
And in efforts to mitigate in the Gulf of Mexico, which re- oil spills,” Prof. Ramkumar said.
environmental pollution associ- sulted in the major spill of about “More importantly, the oil sorpated with fossil fuel production, 4.9 million barrels of oil, it be- tion by environmentally friendly
specifically oil, researchers at came apparent that we needed and natural sorbents like aligned
Texas Tech University recently new clean-up technologies that nonwoven cotton made from
discovered that low-grade cot- did not add stress to the envi- raw unprocessed cotton and corton made into an absorbent non- ronment,” Prof. Ramkumar said. relation with its characteristics,
woven mat can collect up to 50 “This incident triggered our in- such as cotton quality, fineness
terest in developing environ- and maturity, are not reported at
times its own weight in oil.
The results strengthen the mentally sustainable materials all to our best knowledge.”
use of cotton as a natural sorbent for environmental remediation.”
Article adapted from mateIn the four-year project, sci- rials provided by McGill Unifor oil, said Seshadri Ramkumar,
a professor in the Department entists tried to create a funda- versity, Michigan Technological
of Environmental Toxicology at mental understanding of the ef- University, Texas Tech UniverTexas Tech who led the research fect of fiber structure and basic sity, and the University of Washand a creator of Fibertect®. The characteristics of cotton on oil ington. ##
Page 20 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
ABOUT 210 MILLION YEARS AGO when the
supercontinent of Pangea was starting to break
up and dog-sized dinosaurs were hiding from
nearly everything, entirely different kinds of reptiles called phytosaurs and rauisuchids were at
the top of the food chain. It was widely believed
the two top predators didn’t interact much as
the former was king of the water, and the latter
ruled the land. But those ideas are changing,
thanks largely to the contents of a single bone.
In a paper recently published online in the German journal Naturwissenschaften, Stephanie
Drumheller of the University of Tennessee and
Michelle Stocker and Sterling Nesbitt, vertebrate paleontologists with the Virginia Tech's
Department of Geosciences, present evidence
the two creatures not only interacted, but did so on purpose. “Phytosaurs were thought to be dominant aquatic
predators because of their large size and similarity to modern crocodylians,” said Stocker, “but we were able to
provide the first direct evidence they targeted both aquatic and large terrestrial prey.” The evidence? A tooth. Not
just any tooth, but the tooth of a phytosaur lodged in the thigh bone of a rauisuchid, a creature about 25 feet long
and 4 feet high at the hip. The tooth lay broken off and buried about two inches deep in bone, and then healed
over, indicating the rauisuchid survived the attack. “Finding teeth embedded directly in fossil bone is very, very
rare,” Drumheller said. “This is the first time it’s been identified among phytosaurs, and it gives us a smoking
gun for interpreting this set of bite marks.” The researchers came across the bone by chance at the University of
California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. Shown in the photo are teeth from phytosaurs, a reptile from the
Triassic Period about 210 million years ago in what is now the western United States. The blue tooth on the left
is a 3-D printed replica of a tooth embedded in the thigh bone of a rauisuchid, another Triassic period carnivore.
The details of the tooth were digitally extracted using CT scans. Photo courtesy of Virginia Tech.
Bits & Pieces
Numerous other, continuously updated, news items are available at www.vaeng.com and m.vaeng.com
Manufacturing Process Holds
Unparalleled Potential
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory have demonstrated an additive manufacturing method to control
the structure and properties of
metal components with precision unmatched by conventional
manufacturing processes.
Ryan Dehoff, staff scientist
and metal additive manufacturing lead at the Department of
Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL,
presented the research recently
at the Materials Science & Tech
nology 2014 conference held in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“We can now control local
material properties, which will
change the future of how we
engineer metallic components,”
Dehoff said. “This new manufacturing method takes us from
reactive design to proactive design. It will help us make parts
that are stronger, lighter and
function better for more energy-efficient transportation and
energy production applications
such as cars and wind turbines.”
The researchers demonstrated the method using an ARCAM
electron beam melting system
The Virginia Engineer
(EBM), in which successive layers of a metal powder are fused
together by an electron beam
into a three-dimensional product. By manipulating the process
to precisely manage the solidification on a microscopic scale,
the researchers demonstrated
3-dimensional control of the microstructure, or crystallographic
texture, of a nickel-based part
during formation.
“We’re using well established
metallurgical phenomena, but
we’ve never been able to control the processes well enough
to take advantage of them at this
scale and at this level of detail,”
www.vaeng.com – Page 21
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
Air Quality • Water Quality • EMS
• Audits • Training • Spill Plans • Modeling
• Soil & Groundwater Investigations
• Remediation Design
Join The
Conversation
facebook.com/pages/
The-Virginia-Engineer/
126203254067844
Page 22 – November 2014
said Suresh Babu, the University
of Tennessee-ORNL Governor's
Chair for Advanced Manufacturing. “As a result of our work,
designers can now specify location specific crystal structure orientations in a part.”
The research at ORNL was
supported by the Advanced
Manufacturing Office in DOE's
Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy.
Device Developed To Analyze
Dolphin Health
More than just “fish breath”:
Engineers at the University of
California, Davis (UC Davis),
have developed a new device
for collecting dolphin breath
for analysis, which could make
it easier to check the marine
animals’ health and be used in
studying dolphin biology and
medicine as well as in wildlife
conservation. The work was
published recently in the journal
Analytical Chemistry.
Professor Cristina Davis and
colleagues at the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering worked
with researchers at the National
Marine Mammal Foundation in
San Diego and the Chicago Zoological Society’s Mote Marine
Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida,
to develop the device and test
it on both wild bottlenose dolphins and a population under
human care.
Invasive techniques such as
skin biopsies and blood sampling are difficult to perform
on wild, free-ranging dolphins.
Prof. Davis’ team has worked on
techniques for analyzing exhaled
human breath, which contains
compounds called metabolites
that can hint at a person’s diet,
The Virginia Engineer
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
Find more
news articles at
vaeng.com!
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
For More
Complete Information,
Including Links,
Visit the
Consulting Firms’
Directory at
www.vaeng.com
activity level, environmental
exposures or disease state. The
researchers wanted to develop
a way to capture dolphin breath
so they could gather similar information on marine mammals.
Dolphins are “explosive
breathers” that can exchange
up to 90 percent of their lung
capacity in less than a second.
Consequently, the ability to collect one exhalation can provide
a comprehensive picture of the
animal’s physiology.
The researchers designed
an insulated tube that traps
breath exhaled from a dolphin’s
blowhole and freezes it. They
analyzed samples to create profiles of the mix of metabolites
in breath, established baseline
profiles of healthy animals and
were able to identify changes in
the breath of animals affected by
disease or other factors. The researchers concluded that breath
analysis could be used to diagnose and monitor problems in
marine mammals -- and, by extension, in ocean health as well.
The work was funded by the
Office of Naval Research, The
Hartwell Foundation and the
National Center for Advancing
Translational Sciences.
Activity Trackers For Older
Adults Questioned
Commercially
available
activity-monitoring apps, Web
sites, and wearable devices allow for easy self-management
of health and wellness. This
technology may be particularly
helpful for older adults, who can
improve their cognitive function
through proper diet and exercise. Despite tracking monitors’
growing popularity and potential benefits, product designers
The Virginia Engineer
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
Opening a
NEW office?
Relocating an
existing office?
Send your
announcements
to
[email protected]!
www.vaeng.com – Page 23
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
m.vaeng.com
is available 24/7
for your reading
convenience
Page 24 – November 2014
rarely consider those over 65 to
be a viable user group, and new
human factors/ergonomics research indicates that the technology presents several usability
challenges for this population.
“Many older adults have
chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension that require them to self-manage their
health,” said Kimberly Preusse,
coauthor of “Activity Monitoring Technologies and Older
Adult Users: Heuristic Analysis
and Usability Assessment” and
Georgia Tech engineering psychology graduate student. “Research has shown that they want
to track their diet and exercise,
but most don’t use activity-monitoring technologies to do so.”
In research presented at the
2014 International Symposium
on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care, authors
Preusse, Tracy Mitzner, Cara
Fausset, and Wendy Rogers designed a study assessing the usability of two popular Web-based
and wearable activity trackers.
Older adult participants were
asked to track their diet and
exercise over two weeks and
report on usability issues they
experienced, as well as their attitudes toward the technology.
The authors also conducted a
separate analysis of both trackers to uncover any design issues
that could be problematic.
The researchers found a
number of usability problems,
including low color contrast between icons and the background
screen, small fonts, and inconsistent navigation bars across Web
sites. Participants perceived
the technology to be inaccurate
when tracking step counts and
sleep patterns. Many of them
The Virginia Engineer
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
www.timmons.com
Send Bits and Pieces
or Engineers
On The Move
Announcements
to [email protected]
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
RICHMOND VIRGINIA BEACH
FAIRFAX
BLACKSBURG NEWPORT NEWS LYNCHBURG
Get your news
on the go at
m.vaeng.com
also reported difficulty remembering to log their information
and use the device, which could
be mitigated by more prominent
reminder options.
“Activity-monitoring technologies can make tracking diet
and exercise easier because they
gather some data automatically and display trends over
time,” said Preusse. “Companies
should market their products directly to older adult users so that
they understand how the technology can be beneficial in managing their health.”
Computing Cluster Acquired
Its name is Rivanna, and
it’s the University of Virginia’s
(U.Va.) new $2.4 million Cray
computing cluster, a high-performance machine – really a combination of linked high-power
computers (hence, “cluster”) –
designed to greatly enhance and
establish computationally intensive and data-intensive research
at the University.
Rivanna combines massive
processing capacity with large
amounts of memory to enable
U.Va. to effectively compete
with other research universities
that are increasingly focusing on
the big data and big computing
projects that attract federal research funding. It is part of the
University’s Cornerstone Plan,
which seeks to enhance faculty
recruitment, invest in research
infrastructure and facilitate
cross-school collaboration.
The cluster was acquired
through the collaboration of several schools and units, with support from the College, the School
of Engineering and Applied Science, the U.Va. Libraries and the
Data Science Institute. ##
The Virginia Engineer
DIRECTORY
OF ENGINEERING SERVICES
Firms Providing Professional
Consulting In Virginia
For Complete
Company Profiles,
Including Site Links
and
Areas of
Specialization
Visit the
Consulting Firms’
Directory
at
www.vaeng.com
Index to Advertisers
Air Mechanical Sales
. . . . IFC
Chromalox, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Engineered Systems & Products . . IBC
Integrated Power Sources . . . . . . 11
Power & Heat Systems, LLC . . . . 13
Sterling-ES . . . . . . . . . . 7
Wood Equipment Company . . . BC
www.vaeng.com – Page 25
The Outer Edge
of Engineering Research
Oil and gas produced through hydraulic frac- ing fluid injected in subsequent wells, significantturing, or fracking, is considered a boon for meet- ly reducing the water needed from other sources.
ing U.S. energy needs. But one byproduct of the
Prof. Lienhard explained that in trying to make
process is millions of gallons of very salty water.
pure water, electrodialysis becomes less and less
Now researchers at the Masefficient as the water gets less sasachusetts Institute of Technology
line, because it requires that elec(MIT) and in Saudi Arabia say they
tric current flow through the water
have found an economical soluitself: Salty water conducts electriction for removing the salt. The new
ity well, but pure water does not.
analysis was presented in a paper
Ronan McGovern, a postdoc in
published recently in the journal
MIT’s Department of Mechanical
Applied Energy.
Produced water can be Engineering and lead author of the
The method they propose is one cleaned using electrodialysis, paper, says another advantage of
that has been known for decades, and then reused. This dia- the proposed system is “flexibility
but had not been considered a vi- gram shows the process, with in the amount of salt we remove.
able candidate for extremely high- the electrodialysis process il- We can produce any level of output
salinity water, such as that pro- lustrated inside the circle. Il- salinity.” The costs of installing an
duced from oil and gas wells. The lustration: Jose-Luis Olivares/ electrodialysis system, he said, aptechnology, electrodialysis, “has MIT (inset image courtesy of pear to compare favorably to other
been around for at least 50 years,” the researchers).
widely used systems for dealing
says John Lienhard, the Abdul Lawith produced water.
tif Jameel Professor of Water and Food as well as
It’s not clear at this point, Dr. McGovern notdirector of the Center for Clean Water and Clean ed, what the optimal salinity is for fracking fluids.
Energy at MIT and King Fahd University of Petro- “The big question at the moment is what salinity
leum and Minerals (KFUPM).
you should reuse the water at,” he said. “We offer
“Electrodialysis is generally thought of as be- a way to be able to control that concentration.”
ing advantageous for relatively low-salinity waBefore reaching the desalination stage, the reter,” Prof. Lienhard noted, generally with salinity searchers envision that chemical impurities would
around one-tenth that of seawater. But electrodi- be removed using conventional filtration. One realysis also can be economically viable at the oth- maining uncertainty is how well the membranes
er end of the salinity spectrum, the new analysis would hold up after exposure to water containing
shows, although development of some new equip- traces of oil or gas. “We need some lab-based charment would be required.
acterization of the response,” Dr. McGovern said.
Produced water from fossil-fuel wells can have
If the system works as well as this analysis
salinity three to six times greater than that of sea- suggests, it could not only provide significant savwater; the new research, supported by KFUPM ings in the amount of fresh water required, but
through the Center for Clean Water and Clean En- it would also significantly reduce the volume of
ergy, and benefitted from a Hugh Hampton Young contaminated water requiring disposal.
Memorial Fellowship and undergraduate student
“If you can close the cycle,” Prof. Lienhard
support from the MIT Energy Initiative, indicates noted, “you can reduce or eliminate the burden of
that this salt can be effectively removed through a the need for fresh water.” This could be especially
succession of stages of electrodialysis.
significant in major oil-producing areas already
The idea would not be to purify the water suf- experiencing water scarcity, such as Texas, he said.
Article based on materials provided by the
ficiently to make it potable, according to the researchers. Rather, it could be cleaned up enough Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The origito enable its reuse as part of the hydraulic fractur- nal article was written by David L. Chandler. ##
Page 26 – November 2014
The Virginia Engineer
The World’s Largest Manufacturer of Controlled Volume Pumps
Since the invention of the metering pump by Milton Roy in 1936, and still today as a global leader of highly
engineered products and equipment, Milton Roy continues to expand its initial product offering of metering pumps to include fluid control and odorization equipment in a wide range of industries including water
treatment, wastewater, oil and gas, and photovoltaic markets.
MILROYAL® Series
Metering Pumps
The MILROYAL® Series has been
widely recognized as the most
reliable and robust industrial duty
metering pump.
MAXROY® Series
Metering Pumps
The MAXROY® Series is designed for
applications up to 232 GPH (732 l/hr)
at pressures up to 150 psi (10 bar).
SOLAROY® Series
Solar Powered Metering Pumps
mROY® Series
Metering Pumps
The SOLAROY® Series, driven by
solar power, will keep working day
and night, even in the most remote
locations and harshest environments.
The mROY® Series sets the metering
pump standard for durability and
performance in a compact and cost
effective design.
PRIMEROYAL® Series
Metering Pumps
MACROY® Series
Metering Pumps
The PRIMEROYAL® Series sets the
standard for durability and dependability in critical chemical dosing
applications.
The MACROY® Series is designed for
outstanding reliability and value for
applications up to 175 psi (12 bar).
For Complete Specification and Installation Information, contact the professionals at
Improving process efficiency with engineered equipment packages, components, and service.
Blacksburg — Richmond — Fairfax — Norfolk
Telephone: 804-271-7200 • Fax: 804-271-8317
[email protected] • www.esp-richmond.com
Represented in Virginia by
10540 Northlake Park Drive • Ashland, VA 23005
Tel: 804-798-8844 • [email protected] • Fax: 804-798-7610