Control Engineering

It's nice to know that Illinois has a few politicians that aren't running for president or wondering if they will be indicted. Peter J. Roskam, representative for the Control Engineering office complex and your correspondent, seems to be keeping the home fires burning, and he responded to my letter/blog posting:

"Dear Peter:

"Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts about the environment. I am honored to be your representative in Washington, and passionate about finding solutions to America's energy needs.

"Just recently, I was pleased to begin taking some legislative steps to promote our energy independence and encourage development of alternative fuels. The House of Representatives passed H.R. 547, the Advanced Fuels Infrastruct...Read More

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Last February, I wrote a post about an organization called EnergyTomorrow.org. This is an industry group comprising "the people of America's oil and natural gas industry." I think they have been quiet for a while (or maybe I just wasn't paying attention), but now they're back. In a new run of TV and newspaper ads, the group is making sure you know where all that money goes that you're parting with at your local gas station.

According to the ad, citing U.S. DOE data for March, 2008, 72% of our gasoline dollars goes to pay for crude oil; 16% goes to refining, distribution, and service stations; and 12% goes to taxes. The ad also says that "in 2007, the industry earned 8.3 cents on each dollar o...Read More

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During this time of evaluating energy sources and effects, nuclear power is back in the limelight. An article in today's Chicago Tribune points out that while the cost of producing nuclear power ($1.72/ kW hour) has become even cheaper than coal (not to mention one-third the cost of burning natural gas and one-fifth the cost of burning oil) the cost of building nuclear plants has become clearly the most expensive.

Indeed, over the last year the price of building a nuclear reactor has effectively doubled and is now around $9 billion. Nonetheless, the NRC is currently reviewing nine applications that will involve 15 plants throughout the U.S. The federal government has set aside $18.5 billion in loan guarantees, but given the costs involved, th...Read More

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A while back I made a posting or two about the Galvin Electricity Initiative. This is an organization that is advocating for major upgrades of our electric power distribution systems. I contacted their press office asking for some technical information on the nature of the upgrades the organization is suggesting, and they responded some time ago. (It is reassuring to know that it doesn't involve cold fusion, antimatter, or perpetual motion technology.)

In fact, if you have some time on your hands, they have published a major paper in cooperation with EPRI on some of their specific ideas. You can download it as a PDF. I've read parts of it, and what I've ...Read More

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Representative Peter Roskam, 6th district of Illinois

Dear Mr. Roskam:

While the presidential primaries have been entertaining, I am disappointed to hear all three candidates making noises about trying to find artificial means to get the price of gasoline down again. While I certainly like to be pandered to once in a while, I think I would vote for the candidate who would say something like, "Here's how your government will help you find ways to use less gasoline. And while we're at it, we will change the subsidy system to stop propping up ethanol production from food grain feedstocks and shift it to other sources that are non-edible. Plus, we will remove tariffs on imported ethanol from places like Brazil (and maybe even Cuba) where it can be made cheaply without serious impact on food supplies." The real solution for our energy problems is to quit wasting it.

Your faithful constituent,
Peter Welander

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Earlier this week I attended the ABB user group meeting in Houston. It was a gathering with few big stories, but there was a consistent pull that brought many of the discussions back to the idea of saving energy. One ABB official said that the company is well positioned in the "sweet spot" of offering a critical combination of products and services that allow companies to save energy.

One of ABB's well kept secrets is a quarterly magazine it publishes called ABB Review. While that isn't exactly a catchy title, it is a very interesting and often thought provoking publication. Since it is published by ABB it contains everything from the company's slant, but...Read More

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I remember the first Earth Day. It was back in 1970, and we discussed it in our IPS class at Calvin Coolidge Junior High School in Moline, Illinois. Back in those days, in Moline, junior high covered grades 7-9. IPS was Introductory Physical Science and covered basics of chemistry and physics as preparation for more advanced high school classes. It was a class I had been looking forward to because it was only open to ninth graders and we got to do real lab type experiments.

Our teacher, Wes Johnson, led a discussion of ecology which was not exactly a household word back then. We had an idea of something called pollution, but that was about it. Mr. Johnson was one of those young, cool science teachers, but we didn't call him Wes. He was ...Read More

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Over the last couple of days, there have been charges and counter charges as to the source(s) of heparin contamination. As evidence emerges, Baxter thinks it originated early in the process, among the small, nameless and unregulated shops in China that process pig intestines to gather the raw material.

Chinese officials are dubious and suggest that it actually happened here. They want to send officials to inspect U.S. plants in hopes of proving their point, or at least trying to offer reasonable doubt. The best defense is a good offense and all that. (As a purely political aside, that kind of action gives one little hope to think that China will respond ...Read More

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Last November, Jack Bolick, CEO of Honeywell Process Solutions did a podcast interview with Marc Moschetto. One of the topics of conversation was that process manufacturers are having to deal with a greater level of variability in materials and feedstocks given that suppliers are having to hunt for new sources in new places. All these things are related to growing shortages and resource redistribution given industrial development in Asia and other areas.

Well, here's another one: Variability due to changing crop growing conditions. This isn't exactly news for companies that use agricultural products as raw materials. On the contrary, the ebbs and flows of bounty and famine are as old as history itself. However, I suspect the degree of global interc...Read More

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Today I'm working on my notes for next week's Webcast, The Top 5 Things You Need to Know About Process Safety, which is April 23, 1:00 eastern time.

This is an interesting day to think about safety, because it is the anniversary of the largest industrial/maritime disaster in U.S. history, the explosions of the ships Grandcamp and High Flyer in Texas City which began April 16, 1947. If you don't know that story, I suggest you read it. About 570 people perished in the explosions and fires, and thousands were left homeless. Both ships were loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and exploded in the harbor. Nearby chemical plants were set on f...Read More

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Back when I was studying economics in the mid 70's, the most common universal economic trade-off was guns vs. butter, intended to suggest that an emphasis on military spending precluded consumer goods and the larger thought that you can't have everything. Many advances in production efficiencies and the growth of the economy in general (not to mention the scarcity of wars on the scale of WWII) have effectively eliminated many of the economic trade-offs we must make. However, a new one has emerged which could be with us for a while: food vs. fuel.

Driving to work in the morning I typically listen to NPR, and yesterday I heard an interesting statistic: the amount of grain used to produce 25 gallons of ethanol (which they characterized as one tankful for a typical SUV) can feed a human being for a year. I haven't r...Read More

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From time to time this blog has discussed the early space programs and how they affected training for today's generation of engineers. As part of that, I'd like to mention a well-deserved new memorial to the first astronaut (or more accurately, cosmonaut) who was, in fact, female.

Last Friday, Russia unveiled a new memorial in Moscow to Laika, the first major living thing in space. Laika was a two-year-old mongrel dog, taken off the street, and chosen little more than a week before the flight. Soviet scientists believed that strays were more used to harsh conditions and adaptable. After spending three days in the capsule waiting for technical problems to be resolved, Laika went into space on November 3, 1957, only one month after Sputnik. She su...Read More

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