There are two immutable laws: nothing lasts forever, and if something can break - it will break at the worst possible time. These two lessons come to mind in the moment that a critical piece of machinery fails. If you’re lucky, emergency repairs can restore...

Wastewater treatment systems throughout the United States suffer from lack of maintenance and the demands of a greater population.  Like roads and bridges, wastewater treatment plants have been allowed to age unattended in many instances.  Some estimates put the...

“A failure Wednesday morning of storage tanks belonging to Farmer’s Coop in Hemingford caused 210,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer to spill,” was the headline news in a Nebraska community. This is an all too common story, and the consequences for the tank owners...

Population increases and climate change are two of the major factors focusing attention and concern on the sustainability of the environment. Waste disposal is a significant challenge in the effort to achieve a more sustainable planet. Removing liquids from...

All Artists Have Their Preferred Medium The holiday season classic, A Christmas Story (1983), has enthralled countless fans for almost 35 years thanks to the title character’s continual narration to the audience (as an adult) reminiscing about what life was like...

Preventing Tragedy Through Competence In the overnight hours of December 2, 1984, a gas leak at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) chemical plant in Bhopal killed over 3,700 people while they slept and injured 558,000 more. The sheer havoc this industrial...

Anyone who has ever enjoyed dehydrated fruit will tell you that, without the water content present, the flavor is amplified because the sugars and other compounds that contribute to its taste are free to work their delicious magic. Indeed, a lot of people overlook...

Throughout the millennia, mankind has created an endless number of fascinating, useful, innovative - or just plain beautiful - objects that showcase our ability to design and build almost anything we think of. However, many of those creations have since...

We live in an age of innovation – In today’s highly competitive global economy innovation rate is a key measure of a company’s survival. In most instances, generating ideas for produce or process improvement isn’t the problem. The challenge lies in the translation...

The next time you have a desire to see how mesmerized you can become in one day, drive past a petroleum refinery! The sheer number of pipes that sprawl like veins over dozens of acres is quite the visual display. Indeed, classifying these facilities as one of...