SFT Microreactor

Thu, 02/12/2015 - 5:04pm Supercritical Fluid Technologies   Supercritical Fluid Technologies has introduced a new, high-pressure reactor specifically designed for small batch reaction chemistry. The HPR-Micro Reactor is a suitable high-pressure reactor for early, exploratory research. It is especially well suited for research, process development and screening applications when reagents, catalysts or other essential materials are expensive or available in very limited supply. The HPR-Micro Reactor comes standard with a 10-mL Iconel 718 reactor vessel for operation up to 10,000 psi (689 Bar/68.9 MPa), inlet and outlet valves and a pressure gauge. Optional 25- and 50-mL vessels are available. Depending upon the temperature option selected, operation from -40 C to 150 C is possible. The vessel closures are the hand-tight type where no wrenches are needed. The reactor is equipped with magnetically coupled stirring for optimal mixing. All high-pressure components are ASME compliant designed and overall assembly is protected by a rupture disc assembly for safe operation. The Micro Reactor is compact and can fit into a fume hood. The Micro Reactor can be easily removed from the mounting stand and brought to a glove box for reactant and reagent loading under an inert atmosphere. Multiple inlet ports are included for addition of solvents, reagents or gases. An optional Reagent Injection Manifold increases versatility by providing a means to add a precise amount of reagent at anytime during course of the reaction. Standard addition quantities include 2.0, 1.0 and 0.5 mL. The HPR-Micro Reactor is well suited for applications in green solvents such as supercritical carbon dioxide as well as traditional organic solvents. Supercritical Fluid Technologies, www.supercriticalfluids.com

Cradle ’n Swing allows parents to phone in the baby-rocking

Fisher Price's Smart Connect Cradle ’n Swing is remotely-controlled via a smartphone app Image Gallery (6 images) Rocking a fussing baby back to sleep is certainly a crucial part of the bonding process, but there are times when doing so just isn't convenient ... right? Well, regardless of your feelings about it, Fisher Price's new Smart Connect Cradle ’n Swing is on its way. It's a motorized rocking cradle that parents control via their smartphone. The idea is that when otherwise-occupied (or lazy) parents hear their infant start crying, they can use an app to remotely set the cradle rocking. They can choose between six speeds, plus they can instruct the device to play one of 16 songs, three nature sounds, or they can activate its rotating overhead mobile that features three light-up birds. The actual cradle itself can be manually rotated 90 degrees relative to the rest of the setup, allowing babies to be rocked either from side to side or head to toe. That cradle can also be removed and placed on the floor, then rocked by hand. Users can remotely control the Cradle ’n Swing from a distance of up to 164 ft (50 m). Should they be right near it and not want to bother with their smartphone or tablet, however, it can also be controlled using physical buttons on the device itself. Power is supplied either by a wall outlet or four D batteries. The Smart Connect Cradle ’n Swing should be available starting this fall (Northern Hemisphere), priced at US$200. Source: Fisher Price via Gizmodo

Review: Zeiss VR One virtual reality headset (for iPhone 6)

Gizmag reviews the Zeiss VR One, a virtual reality headset with a slide-out tray for the iPhone 6 (Photo: Will Shanklin/Gizmag.com) Image Gallery (10 images) Any company that's been making lenses for 169 years is probably good at adapting. So perhaps it makes sense that German company Carl Zeiss AG (better known today simply as "Zeiss") didn't waste time jumping into the new frontier of virtual reality. Gizmag has been playing with the company's VR One headset for the iPhone 6 – read on for our review. Considering the company's pedigree, we never doubted that the Zeiss VR One would have a great pair of lenses (it does). But the entire headset is solidly built, looking and feeling more than a little like the Samsung Gear VR. Pick up the VR One and you'll see that this is no cheaply-built Google Cardboard kit: solid-feeling plastic, comfortable foam padding and durable adjustable bands make it clear that this is consumer-grade gear. While the Gear VR requires you to plug a Galaxy Note 4 into a microUSB port, and Google Cardboard headsets have adjustable arms to hold a variety of phones in place, the Zeiss VR One uses a slide-out tray. It's a nice touch that makes it easier to get your phone in and out: just put your phone into the tray, then push the tray into the front of the headset (from either side) and wait for it to snap into place. Zeiss says that the tray also allows for ideal positioning of each handset (more precise, at least, than those retractable arms on Cardboard headsets). This also means that, as long as Zeiss keeps making new trays for new phones, the headset itself won't become obsolete. The company has support for more phones in the pipeline, though this headset won't work with any phones with displays larger than 5.2-in (more on that in a minute). Right now the list of compatible phones only includes two models: the iPhone 6 (only the 4.7-in model, not the iPhone 6 Plus) and the Samsung Galaxy S5. We tested the VR One with the iPhone. Turning the most popular phone on the planet into a virtual reality headset could have its perks, but in this case it carries some drawbacks too. For starters, there isn't much VR content in the App Store right now. Zeiss offers a media launcher app that suggests a group of third-party apps to download (most are quick and basic demos), as well as two more apps straight from Zeiss. Those include a cinema app (it lets you watch videos stored on your iPhone while sitting in a virtual movie theater ... similar to several apps available for Oculus Rift developers) and an augmented reality app that combines the iPhone's camera with a bundled cardboard cube to make animated characters appear to be walking in front of you. How can you use the iPhone's camera, you ask? Well, the phone's tray has a cut-out for it to peek through, and the covering on the front of the headset – which looks mostly opaque in pictures – is transparent enough for the camera to view your environment. This element works well, and the augmented views of your real environment don't look cloudy or distorted. The VR One is also compatible with Google Cardboard VR content, as the VR fundamentals (two side-by-side horizontal images/videos displayed on your phone's screen) are the same here as on any other headset. That still doesn't mean it has a great selection on iOS, but it does mean that the Zeiss VR One unofficially doubles as a consumer-grade Google Cardboard kit, and should continue to play nicely with all Cardboard content moving forward (in addition to new content supported by Zeiss or any other VR app maker). The other big compromise with an iPhone 6-powered VR headset is that 4.7 inches is a little small for a virtual reality screen. The field of view isn't great. The product page says it's around 100 degrees, but we consistently saw two indentations on the right and left sides of your view that take away from the illusion. We mocked up the image below to give you an idea of what this looks like (note the little black dead zones on either side): If you're new to virtual reality, then maybe the small screen's limitations won't bother you much. But if you go from the Gear VR or Oculus Rift DK2 to the Zeiss VR One, you're probably going to be let down in this respect. It simply doesn't match their "magical" immersive quality. We weren't able to test the VR One with a Galaxy S5, but its 5.1-in screen should fare better in this respect. That's still, however, a far cry from the 5.7-in displays found in the Gear VR and Oculus Rift DK2 ... and, again, even when new trays come into play, the Zeiss headset isn't designed to support phones with screens larger than 5.2 inches. Unlike the Gear VR, the Zeiss headset doesn't have any built-in navigation controls. Of the App Store's limited VR content, many of them are either non-interactive demos or videos, or they use a head-tracking-based cursor for navigation. But for present and future apps that need "real" controls, you'll need to use a compatible Bluetooth gamepad. Zeiss hasn't cracked the case for lens fogging. Like every other virtual reality headset we've used, the VR One's lenses fog up after a few minutes of use, so you'll want to look into something like Clarity Defog It wipes or defogging sprays designed for scuba gear to deal with that (and for your eyes' sake, don't even think about using defogging sprays or wipes designed for car windshields). Right now the Zeiss VR One with iPhone tray is a well-built headset that's good for giving iPhone owners a little glimpse into the world of VR. Neither its content nor overall experience come close to being on par with the Oculus Rift or Gear VR, but the good news is once we start seeing more Google Cardboard apps (and other universal VR content) popping up in the App Store, the VR One will only get better. The iPhone 6's screen will never be as ideal as something bigger and sharper like the Note 4, and you'll still miss out on native controls, but the VR One is probably about as good as any iPhone 6-based virtual reality headset can be (right now). For whatever that's worth. The Zeiss VR One retails for US$99, including one phone tray of your choice. An additional tray will cost you $10, and the company is planning on releasing trays for other handsets, as long as their screen sizes fall between 4.7 and 5.2 inches. Product page: Zeiss (on Tumblr)

More human-friendly antibacterial coating made from gold

Research team member Dr. Katarzyna Wybranska, with a wound dressing treated with the gold nanocomposite (Photo: ICHF) We've been hearing a lot about the antibacterial qualities of silver, with silver nanoparticles finding use in everything from water filters to food packaging. Unfortunately, there are also concerns about the toxicity of those particles, particularly when they enter our bodies. Now, however, Polish scientists have developed what they claim is a safer alternative – an antibacterial coating that kills microbes using gold. Developed at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the coating can reportedly be applied to a wide variety of surfaces. It's said to be very chemically stable, and is able to withstand repeated washings with detergent. The coating initially takes the form of liquid boron compounds which contain colloidal gold nanoparticles. The object to be coated is immersed in the solution, and a polymerizing agent is then added. This causes the liquid to form into a nanocomposite polymer, coating the surface of the object within about 12 minutes. In lab tests, populations of E. coli and Staph. aureus bacteria decreased by up to 90 percent within 12 hours of exposure to the nanocomposite. Unlike some other antibacterial coatings, however, this one doesn't kill bacteria by releasing anything into their environment. Instead, the gold nanoparticles stay put, and only affect microbes that come into direct contact with them. Not only is this quality claimed to make the coating safer for people and the environment, but it should also allow it to remain effective for longer. Additionally, the nanocomposite so far appears to be harmless to human cells. After being exposed to it for several months, four lines of human cells reportedly remained unharmed. In fact, cells even started growing on cotton wool fibers treated with it. It is hoped that once developed further, the coating could be used on things like wound dressings and other medical applications, along with consumer goods such as sportswear, socks and underwear. Source: Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences

System to turn wastewater into fresh water developed

Dr. Jianmin Wang, professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Missouri S&T, has developed multiple wastewater treatment technologies that produce freshwater that is not only cleaner than wastewater treated using traditional methods, but also requires less maintenance and energy. Additionally, his inventions can be used to retrofit existing wastewater treatment plants. On Feb. 6, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced nearly $1.1 million in grants for the Small Community Engineering Assistance Program, implemented through the Department of Natural Resources to help communities with wastewater engineering costs, whether it's commissioning a report or making repairs and upgrades. Although his technology is too new, in regulatory terms, to be of use in the grant recipient communities, Wang says his technology is superior to existing ones in terms of cost and treatment efficiency. Wang will discuss his treatment systems during a presentation titled, "Harnessing Energy and Freshwater from Wastewater: Reversing the Environmental Footprint" on Feb. 27 at the Missouri S&T campus. Part of his talk will focus on comparing how much energy existing systems use and how much his can save. Wang says 0.8 percent of America's energy use is spent on wastewater treatment. Much of that energy is used to aerate the tanks where wastewater is treated. The energy is used to feed oxygen to the microorganisms that consume the waste, and traditionally wastewater treatment plants maintain an oxygen concentration of 2 milligrams per liter to feed the bugs in the tanks, "which makes them happy," Wang says. The prevailing thought has been that providing less than 2 milligrams per liter of oxygen would make the microorganisms "unhappy." But Wang does not believe that is an issue, saying that if you feed them at a lower concentration, such as 0.5 milligram per liter, it makes them a little less happy, but the microorganisms will live longer and enrich more -- plus you use 30 percent less energy during oxygen infusion to produce the same results. "You can make them a little unhappy," Wang says, "because bugs do not have a union." He has also developed another treatment system called an Alternating Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic (A3O) process that "can achieve superior effluent quality since it can remove organic pollutants plus nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients," Wang says. It does this without chemicals, and its effluent contains only 5 milligrams per liter of total nitrogen and 0.5 milligram per liter of total phosphorus. It also saves more than 10 percent of energy compared to the conventional pre-anoxic process, which has significantly less total nitrogen and total phosphorus removal. With its high performance, high energy efficiency and low operational costs, on a large scale the technology could help curb global surface water eutrophication, which is one of the National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenges -- the accessibility of freshwater. Eutrophication is the enrichment of an ecosystem with chemical nutrients, typically nitrogen, phosphorus or both. When excessive nitrogen and phosphorus levels are present, undesirable side effects such as algae blooms can occur. When algae die, they decompose. The decomposition consumes oxygen, and with less oxygen, naturally occurring aquatic plants, fish, crustaceans and other organisms can die. Algae blooms also produce algal toxins that directly pollute the source of drinking water intake. "It is happening in Lake Erie, many other places in the nation and throughout the world," Wang says. Wang has also developed a self-mixing anaerobic digester, which can effectively convert wastewater sludge and other organic waste to biogas energy. It improves environmental quality by removing the sludge, and it also recovers a useful resource during the process. Additionally, his high-rate digester operates itself, without an external energy hookup. Based on his calculations, Wang says a combination of his technologies can produce a net 10 percent energy gain in contrast to the 27 percent net energy use the wastewater industry currently operates on. Although the water his systems produce is suitable for irrigation, making it potable is also possible. "People are dying for the technology that turns wastewater into freshwater," Wang says. Sometimes, literally dying. In military battlefield camps, water must be hauled in by convoy, resulting in casualties along the known convoy routes. That's where Wang's small-scale deployable baffled bioreactor (dBBR) could make a difference, and that's why it is being tested at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Carderock, Maryland. The unit has been 88 percent more energy efficient than military guidelines when tested with municipal wastewater, and it produces high effluent quality with both low biochemical oxygen demand and suspended solids. In addition, it achieves tertiary treatment quality instead of the required secondary treatment guidelines with minimal operator attention. Wang, who also co-funded Frontier Environmental Technology for technology demonstration and promotion, says he has received a military request to develop an operator training course for the dBBR. "Advances such as these demonstrated by Professor Wang represent the next wave of wastewater management," says Dr. Glen Daigger, past president of the International Water Association, a recognized authority in wastewater technology and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, "Given growing water and resource constraints on the planet, we must turn to sources such as used water -- to both supplement our water supply and to do this with a reduced environment footprint."

New NIST Tools to Help Boost Wireless Channel Frequencies and Capacity

From NIST Tech Beat: February 18, 2015 Contact: Laura Ost 303-497-4880 Smartphones and tablets are everywhere, which is great for communications but a growing burden on wireless channels. Forecasted huge increases in mobile data traffic call for exponentially more channel capacity. Boosting bandwidth and capacity could speed downloads, improve service quality, and enable new applications like the Internet of Things connecting a multitude of devices. To help solve the wireless crowding conundrum and support the next generation of mobile technology—5G cellular—researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are developing measurement tools for channels that are new for mobile communications and that could offer more than 1,000 times the bandwidth of today’s cell phone systems. Like pioneers who found land by going west, telecom researchers can find open spectrum by going up—to higher frequencies. Mobile devices such as cell phones, consumer WiFi devices and public safety radios mostly operate below 3 gigahertz (GHz) (see infographic). But some devices are starting to use fast silicon-germanium radio chips operating at millimeter (mm) wavelengths above 10 GHz. Researchers at NIST and elsewhere are eyeing channels up to 100 GHz and even beyond. The metrology infrastructure for telecommunications at these frequencies is incomplete. NIST’s challenge is to develop tools and test methods that are far more precise than today’s versions to optimize device performance. Because high-speed digital circuits can easily distort mm wave signals, even tiny errors can result in erroneous bits of information. In addition, mm waves don’t travel around corners as well as lower frequency waves, so channel models will be complex. Possible solutions include development of complex antenna arrays that may provide novel capabilities such as beam steering—the capability to transmit in many different directions to point the beam directly at the receiving device, and even track mobile devices. This would strengthen signals and cause less interference to neighboring devices. “We want to provide U.S. industry with the precision measurement methods needed to develop innovative millimeter-wave wireless technologies and associated standards,” NIST project coordinator Kate Remley says. “This work can advance the state of the art in telecommunications and help meet the expected increases in demand for wireless capacity.” So far, Remley and her colleagues have developed a calibrated, modulated signal source to test mm wave instruments such as receivers* and “channel sounders” to support modeling of mm wave communications channels in indoor and outdoor environments. Other NIST researchers have demonstrated a new probe for making the first calibrated measurements of electric fields above 100 GHz** and a new facility for characterizing antennas operating above 100 GHz.*** The new calibrated signal source, demonstrated at 44 GHz and 94 GHz, enables measurements of modulated signals to be traced to fundamental physical quantities. The source is based on commercial parts so that companies and other users can easily put together their own systems. The mobile channel sounder, demonstrated at 83 GHz so far, provides calibrated received signal strength and additional data for analysis of signal scattering and reflections, to help researchers develop network protocols that account for distortions. As part of the same project, NIST researchers are also developing a millimeter-wave instrument to measure the nonlinear characteristics of the transistors and amplifiers that will be used in mm wave receivers, transmitters and other devices. All of this research is being done in NIST’s new Communications Technology Laboratory. The signal source was funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Credit: Irvine/NIST To support wireless communications at higher frequencies offering more channel capacity, NIST engineer Kate Remley led development of this new 94 gigahertz calibrated signal source for testing receivers and other devices. Credit: NIST   *K.A. Remley, D.F. Williams, P.D. Hale, C.-M. Wang, J.A. Jargon and Y. Park. Measurement uncertainty in error vector magnitude at millimeter-wave frequencies. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. Forthcoming. **See 2014 NIST Tech Beat article, “NIST Quantum Probe Enhances Electric Field Measurements,” at www.nist.gov/ctl/20141007_efield_meter.cfm. ***See J.A. Gordon, D.R. Novotny, M. Francis, R. Wittmann, M. Butler and J. R. Guerrieri,. “The CROMMA Facility at NIST Boulder: A Unified Coordinated Metrology Space for Millimeter-Wave Antenna Characterization”; and D.R. Novotny, J.R. Guerrieri and J.A. Gordon, “Antenna Alignment and Positional Validation of a mm Wave Antenna System Using 6D Coordinate Metrology.” Both papers were presented at the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association Conference, Tucson, Ariz., Oct. 13-17, 2014.