Read the full story at SatNews.
Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and the Swedish mining and metals company, Boliden, have entered into a partnership to track and reduce emissions from smelters.
Category: Metal fabricating
TURI releases guide to safer alternatives for halogenated solvents
TURI’s new Alternatives to Halogenated Solvents Used in Surface Cleaning Guide provides insight into safer options for specific applications, shows how to evaluate those alternatives, and determine information needed from equipment vendors. Links to case studies sprinkled throughout showcase safer alternative chemistries and equipment used, performance testing process, and return on investment.
NMU project aims to minimize material waste in industrial production
Read the full story from Northern Michigan University.
Northern Michigan University associate professor Jeffrey Horn has been awarded $92,500 from the Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) Innovation Hub for Advanced Computing for a next-generation computing project. Horn received the funding for a Deep-Scale Evolution (DSE) algorithm that he invented that has practical implications for minimizing material waste in industrial production.
“We plan to bring DSE to bear on the real-world shape nesting problems in industry,” said Horn. “Businesses such as automotive manufacturing, textiles and sign making all involve cutting out shaped pieces from a sheet of expensive material, such as steel, glass, leather or titanium. The act of cutting these materials is done by nesting the cutouts close together in an effort to reduce the wasted trim. So DSE maximizes the material usage.
“Our specific goal is the development and deployment of DSE on a powerful server specially designed to run DSE with massive population sizes yet short computation times. To do this, we’ll take advantage of the latest revolution in processing power—the graphics processing unit or GPU—originally developed to render 3D graphics for games and animations but now used for massively parallel algorithms, like Deep Learning, Bitcoin mining, and simulated evolution like DSE.”
Cutting oil recovery: Are you in the 1%?
MnTAP engineer Daniel Chang details one company’s successful cutting oil reclamation project in this article for Precision Manufacturing (article on p. 18).
Poisoned: A Tampa Bay Times investigation
This three-part investigative series looks at the environmental impact of a lead smelter in Tampa and how it affected the health of workers and the surrounding community.
‘A trash heap for our children’: How Norilsk, in the Russian Arctic, became one of the most polluted places on Earth
Read the full story at Inside Climate News.
A smelting company has poisoned rivers, killed off boreal forest and belched out more sulfur dioxide than active volcanoes. Now it wants to produce more metal for the “green economy.”
New chemical safety assessment tools developed to help the electronics sector clean up its supply chains
Read the full story at Environment + Energy Leader.
Last week, green chemical solutions advocate Clean Production Action unveiled GreenScreen Certified for Cleaners & Degreasers in Manufacturing, a tool to assess chemical safety in the industrial sector.
Why aren’t more big bike firms tracking their environmental impact?
Read the full story in The Guardian.
Trek’s sustainability report appears to be the first of its kind in a sector that has had a free ride on the issue.
PowerTech Water, manufacturer of ElectraMet™ brand water treatment technologies, closes $6 million in venture capital to expand operations in Lexington, KY.
PowerTech Water announced the closing of its oversubscribed Series B financing round led by HG Ventures. The funds will be used to meet the rising demand for sustainable industrial water treatment, accelerate corporate partnerships, and expand operations in Lexington, Kentucky.
Webinar: Safer alternatives for solvent applications
May 26, 2021, 11:30 am-1:00 pm CDT
Register here.
A range of many different types of solvents are used in diverse ways by thousands of companies in the nation. Find out how you can help those companies adopt pollution prevention (P2) measures by guiding them to safer alternatives. Get ideas on where and how to focus P2 efforts.
The US EPA P2 grant program describes several National Emphasis Areas (NEAs) and solvents are used extensively by companies in these NEA sectors. This webinar, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC), will identify nine major solvent applications used in two or more of the NEAs. They will describe:
- How the solvents are used in the application
- The types of solvents used
- The safer alternatives that can be used in their place
Webinar attendees, including P2 program grantees, will have the opportunity to provide input on which solvent application areas they would like to learn more about. Additional webinars may be scheduled in the future that will cover the applications of interest and their alternatives in greater detail.
During the webinar, Dr. Wolf will answer questions on the solvents, safer alternatives, and implementation strategies.
Who should attend this webinar?
- P2 program grantees
- State and local government agency P2 technical assistance providers
- EPA regional P2 staff
- Industry representatives
Speakers
- Jean Waters, Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center (PPRC)
- Katy Wolf, Ph.D., Consultant
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