ATI has developed a completely new approach to on-line monitoring of ammonia that is far less expensive and much simpler than conventional monitoring equipment. The Q45N Dissolved Ammonia Monitor uses reaction chemistry that converts ammonia in solution to a stable monochloramine compound equivalent in concentration to the original ammonia level. The chloramine concentration is then measured with a unique amperometric sensor that responds linearly to chloramines while eliminating interference from excess free chlorine in solution.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Q45N Dissolved Ammonia Monitor
Continuous monitoring of ammonia in water and wastewater streams is becoming increasingly important for plant operations and process control. Unfortunately, on-line ammonia monitors are generally very expensive, complex, and labor intensive instruments. Most are automated versions of ammonia selective ion electrodes methods better suited to laboratory measurements. Others are automated colorimetric devices or instrumental methods that are difficult to justify on a cost basis.
Hurricane Sandy speeds towards landfall
A superstorm threatening 50 million people in the most heavily populated corridor in the nation gained strength Monday, packing winds of 90 mph and picking up considerable speed just hours before it is expected to make landfall, forecasters said.
The National Hurricane Center said Monday morning that the Category 1 hurricane is moving northwest at 28 mph - up from 18 mph a few hours earlier. At 2:00 p.m. ET the storm was centered about 175 miles south-southeast of New York City, or about 110 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J. Hurricane-force winds extend up to 175 miles from the storm's center, with tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 485 miles.
Maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, with higher gusts, were measured.
Gale/tropical storm-force force winds were reported from North Carolina to southern New England.
Hours before the storm made landfall, high winds had already knocked out power to more than 100,000 customers in several states by mid-day Monday.
Sandy is expected to hook inland Monday, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic. Forecasters say the storm's center will make landfall along or just south of the Southern New Jersey coast Monday evening.
CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard reports that wind gusts of 38 mph and 41 mph have already been reported in New York City and Boston, respectively.
Sandy is likely going to strengthen even more as it approaches the East Coast, Bernard reports, with hurricane-force winds reaching land by Monday afternoon. The storm's pressure is dropping, which means it's growing in strength.
Flooding will be a huge threat, with many areas potentially seeing rainfall amounts between 5 and 8 inches over a 48-hour period.
The full moon will make storm surges worse, as high tides along the Eastern Seaboard will rise about 20 percent higher than normal.
Correspondent Chip Reid reports from Ocean City, Md., that sea levels could rise 8 feet above normal - enough to flood much of the city.
In addition to rains and flooding, about 2 to 3 feet of snow is forecast for mountainous parts of West Virginia.
The tempest could endanger up to 50 million people for days. "This is the worst-case scenario," said Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
President Barack Obama delivered a sober warning to millions in the path of the storm on Monday, appealing to those who have not evacuated to do so.
"Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Don't delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm."
From Washington to Boston, big cities and small towns were buttoned up against the onslaught of Sandy, with forecasters warning that the New York area could get the worst of it -- an 11-foot wall of water.
"There's a lot of people that are going to be under the impacts of this," Federal Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate said on "CBS This Morning" Monday.
"You know, we've got blizzard warnings as far west as West Virginia, Appalachian Mountains, but I think the biggest concern right now are the people in the evacuation areas. They're going to face the most immediate threats with the storm surge."
"The biggest challenge is going to be not knowing exactly where the heaviest-hit areas are going to be," said Fugate, "and the fact the storm's going to take several days to move through the area with heavy rain and wind, so that's going to slow down recovery activities like utility crews getting out and putting power back up."
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 14 members of a crew forced to abandon a tall shipabout 90 miles off the North Carolina coast and continued to search for two other crew members. The storm lashed barrier islands and rendered several homes and businesses nearly inaccessible.
Forecasters said the hurricane could blow ashore Monday night along the New Jersey coast, then cut across into Pennsylvania and travel up through New York State on Wednesday.
Forecasters said the combination of Sandy with the storm from the west and the cold air from the Arctic could bring close to a foot of rain in places, a potentially lethal storm surge of 4 to 11 feet across much of the region, and punishing winds that could cause widespread power outages that last for days. The storm could also dump up to 2 feet of snow in Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Water Funding May Help Avoid Drought Losses, Analyst Says
The worst U.S. drought in more than five decades shows a global need to improve water management to prevent crop disasters, university researchers and policy experts said.
Governments should encourage investment in irrigation, which is more costly than the improved seeds and fertilizers often advocated to increase food production, Roberto Lenton, a professor of water management and head of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska, said today at the World Food Prize Conference.
“Those farmers who were already using conservation techniques to conserve water, they fared best in the drought,” Lenton said during a panel discussion at the conference in Des Moines, Iowa. “One of the clear lessons is the importance of irrigation.” Farming without tilling, which keeps more water in the soil, drought-resistant crops, and technology that irrigates plants with less water all preserved yields this year, he said.
Competition for increasingly scarce water in the next decade will fuel instability in regions such as South Asia and the Middle East that are important to American national security, according to a U.S. intelligence report released this year. As nations increase water-related projects to gain influence, vulnerable dams, irrigation projects and reservoirs could become targets for terrorists or military strikes, the authors of the report said.
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-18/water-funding-may-ease-drought-losses-analyst-says
Thursday, October 25, 2012
What We Really Save by Recycling
1. Americans use billions of aluminum beverage cans every year. The good news is that aluminum can be infinitely recycled back into new cans, and a great deal of energy and other resources can be saved by recycling it.
Last year, Americans recycled 61 billion aluminum cans, saving the energy equivalent of 17 million barrels of crude oil. That's a whole lot of recovered resources!
So, how was all that energy saved? To put it simply, manufacturing cans from recycled aluminum consumes 95 percent less energy than using virgin materials.
To put those figures in perspective, recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for almost four hours or run your television for three hours.
2. Producing new plastic from recycled material uses only two-thirds of the energy required to manufacture it from raw materials, meaning we can save a whole lot of energy by recycling plastic.
The energy conserved by tossing just one plastic bottle in the blue bin can light a 60-watt light bulb for six hours or power a computer for 25 minutes, according to the EPA.
3. According to the American Petroleum Institute, more than 600 million gallons of motor oil is purchased in the U.S. each year. Most auto shops recycle used motor oil, but about half of all motor oil sold is to "do-it-yourself" car owners.
If you change your own oil, don't forget to recycle the leftovers when you're finished. Recycling a mere 2 gallons of used motor oil can:
- Power an average home for one day
- Cook 48 meals in a microwave oven
- Blow dry a person’s hair at least 216 times
- Vacuum a house for 15 months
- Power a television for more than seven days straight
4. The environmental footprint of clothing and textiles is substantial. Americans throw away a whopping 68 pounds of clothes on average each year, and we only buy 10 pounds of recycled clothes annually.
But on the brighter side of things, reclaiming clothing and textiles for reuse and recycling saves staggering amount of energy and natural resources.
Remanufacturing or reusing textiles can save up to 85 percent of the energy required to produce the same product from virgin materials, according to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ideally, clothing that is still wearable should be donated or "freecycled" to a friend so the product can achieve the longest life-cycle possible.
5. On average, each person in the U.S. discards eight dry-cell batteries per year. Recycling both rechargeable and single-use batteries saves water, energy and natural resources. But the No. 1 reason to avoid tossing batteries in the trash is to prevent potentially toxic metals from contaminating local ecosystems.
Batteries that are thrown in the trash produce most of the heavy metals that are found in household waste, including lead, arsenic, zinc, cadmium, copper and mercury. If discarded batteries end up in landfills, these metals can seep into the ground water and harm local plants, animals and even humans.
For this reason, both rechargeable and single-use batteries should be taken to your local household hazardous waste (HHW) facility or recycled through available mail-in and take-back programs.
6. Like aluminum, glass can be infinitely recycled back into new containers. An estimated 80 percent of reclaimed glass is processed through bottle-to-bottle recycling, and it can take as little as 30 days for a glass bottle to go from the recycling bin to a supermarket shelf.
Recycled glass is substituted for up to 70 percent of raw materials in manufacturing. Bottle-makers benefit from recycling in several ways - it reduces emissions and consumption of raw materials, extends the life of plant equipment, such as furnaces, and saves energy.
Recycling just one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours, power a computer for 30 minutes or a television for 20 minutes, according to the Glass Packaging Institute.
7. According to the EPA, approximately 33 percent of the municipal solid waste stream is paper and paperboard products. Paper makes up the largest portion of the municipal waste stream and is also one of the most recovered materials in the nation.
Producing recycled paper requires about 60 percent of the energy used to make paper from virgin wood pulp, but energy isn't the only thing we save through paper recycling.
By recycling 1 ton of paper, we save: 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and enough energy to heat an average home for 6 months.
8. Americans dispose of more than 200 million tires every year, adding up to a whole lot of trashed rubber - not to mention wasted energy. But we can change all that simply by recycling.
On average, 22 gallons of oil are required to create one new truck tire. However, to retread a tire (a process in which a new tread is applied to a used tire casing), only seven gallons of oil are required.
Retreading a tire also costs anywhere from 30 to 70 percent less than manufacturing a new tire, reducing the cost to the consumer.
9. Americans use 100 million steel cans every day, amounting to a whole lot of potential landfill waste. Luckily, steel is one of the nation's most recycled materials, with more than 65 percent of steel produced in the states recycled into new steel each year.
Recycling steel saves 75 percent of the energy that would be used to create steel from raw materials, meaning the steel we recycle saves enough energy to power 18 million homes annually.
Recycling 1 ton of steel also saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.
10. Electronics are made from valuable natural resources, including metals, plastics and glass - all of which require loads of energy to mine and manufacture.
For example, if the 100 million cell phones ready for end-of-life management in 2006 were recycled, we would have saved enough energy to power approximately 194,000 U.S. households for a year.
Like batteries, electronics also contain heavy metals that are potentially hazardous if leached into the environment. Although e-waste only accounts for about 4 percent of municipal waste, it may be responsible for as much as 70 percent of the heavy metals in landfills, including 40 percent of all lead.
To save energy and natural resources - and prevent potentially hazardous metals from entering local ecosystems - be sure to donate, reuse or recycle your unwanted electronics every time.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Chlorine Leak at La Grange Pumping Station Tuesday Morning
A Hazmat team responded to a chlorine leak at the La Grange pumping station at 5038 East Ave. on Tuesday morning between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.
La Grange personnel said that elevated chlorine levels came from a leak on one of the fittings on the chlorine gas system.
“The reason to initiate a box alarm was just to manpower in just to make sure everything was safe,” said La Grange fire chief Bill Bryzgalski. “There was no harm to any residents; no need for evacuation. This was just a small, minor leak.”
Bryzgalski said that only a trace amount of chlorine would have escaped the building, posing no danger, and that crews had repaired the problem before 9:00 a.m.
“There was no danger to anyone in the area,” Director of Public Works Ryan Williamson told the La Grange Suburban Life.
The Doings La Grange reported that traffic was rerouted around the corner of East Avenue and Plainfield Road for about two hours.
Ammonia leak poisons
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Legionnaires warning over cleaning of swimming pools and AC in the UAE
Swimming pools and air-conditioning systems are being treated with chemicals that could allow deadly diseases to persist and even thrive in the summer, experts warn.
Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/health/legionnaires-warning-over-cleaning-of-swimming-pools-and-ac-in-the-uae#ixzz2A8FIpX00
Many still use chlorine in liquid form, as sodium hypochlorite or calcium hypochlorite solution, rather than the safer powdered chlorine dioxide.
Chlorine cannot only fail to kill disease-causing bacteria but cause harmful side effects.
Hypochlorites react with any organic matter, especially in swimming pools or cooling systems, to form by-products, most notably carcinogenic trihalomethanes (THMs).
"Powdered chlorine dioxide is safer than [hypochlorite] chlorine in terms of generating less by-products," said Prof Walid El Shorbagy, the director of the water resources programme at UAE University.
"Chlorine has more by-products which are more hazardous."
For that reason, the chlorine dose is limited to stop it reaching the level where THMs form.
But at low doses it does not work as well as a disinfectant.
It also leaves room for more serious bacteria such as Legionella pneumophila, which causes Legionnaires disease. Legionellathrives in water and in humans is caught by inhaling its droplets.
Dormant in winter, the bacteria thrives at temperatures above 25°C, making it a hazard during summer.
And with the countless air-conditioning systems, the bug has more chance of growing in roof tanks, taps, pipes and showers.
In 2010, 80 of 100 samples from Dubai households where people had suffered unexplained health complaints tested positive for Legionella.
Chlorine dioxide can be used as a preventative measure against the bacteria.
"If the dosage of chlorine dioxide is enough, then it can definitely take care of Legionella," said Prof El Shorbagy.
"When it comes to cooling systems and fountains, it can be very useful and safer than chlorine. The UAE should really consider adopting it in the future."
But chlorine remains the disinfectant of choice for many, including the Wild Wadi Waterpark.
"Chlorine is the preferred and safest method of disinfectant for the rides at Wild Wadi Waterpark," said Gary Pogharian, its director of engineering.
"We can create what we need onsite when we need it. As long as the proper operating conditions and applications are adhered to, each will do the job well."
The Wonderland theme park still uses chlorine for its nine pools and nine slides, but plans to start testing chlorine dioxide within the next couple of months.
"Chlorine dioxide might be more expensive but it is better and safer," said Shaji Rajan, Wonderland's maintenance manager.
"Our plant is treated by Metito, [a wastewater company in Dubai], so if they switch to chlorine dioxide, then so will we."
Metito is pushing the switch on many of its clients.
"Using chlorine as a disinfectant is becoming increasingly difficult because there are many restrictions on its import, export and handling," said Bassem El Halabi, its group business development director.
"Being such an aggressive and dangerous material - chlorine gas by itself is poisonous - we had to look for alternatives."
Powdered chloride dioxide is sold as Metoxide, two powders that are mixed on-site. It avoids the harmful by-products of traditional chlorine and kills Legionella.
It can also be continuously applied at a single point in a water circuit, unlike chlorine, which has to be applied at several points to prevent microorganisms from building up throughout the whole system.
"Its handling is very easy," said Mr El Halabi. "It can be used anywhere needed for disinfection, from household to industries."
So far, its most common application is in district cooling, including chillers, coolers and cooling towers, which are the most exposed to the atmosphere and microorganisms.
"Metoxide will be very effective in treating that," said Mr El Halabi.
"It can also be used in aquaparks. It is not dangerous like normal chlorine products if swallowed."
Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/health/legionnaires-warning-over-cleaning-of-swimming-pools-and-ac-in-the-uae#ixzz2A8FIpX00
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