Piumal, a final year mechanical engineering student passed away after suffering from serious cancer. We are very sorry about him. Our friends did lot of thing to save his life. But this is the world's nature. "May he attain to NIBBANA."*
*. This is a Buddist quote normally saying when somebody passed away.
A bright future to our nation by developing process industry to its peak
Process industrial sectors such as chemical process industry, pulp & paper, food, pharmaceutical, ammonia, sulfuric, caustic soda …etc are essential areas in an economy of any country. A country must convert raw materials into valuable & useful products rather than importing each & every thing in order to be a strong nation. Developed countries have very large scale process plants which convert their natural resources into commercial realities.
We had well established process industries in
Present day Sri Lankan process industry has not been able to satisfy our people’s needs. While we are having enough raw materials, production facilities & skilled workforce we are importing paper from other countries. We have the potential of sulfur as an intermediate product of petroleum refinery & enough oxygen in our atmosphere; but we are importing sulfuric acid from other countries. Ammonia & sulfuric production facilities are essential parts of fertilizer manufacturing. It would save a considerable foreign exchange & it will cut cost of fertilizer. Ammonia is also used for the production of plastics, fibers, explosives, and intermediates for dyes and pharmaceuticals. Sulfuric acid has principal uses include ore processing, fertilizer manufacturing, oil refining, wastewater processing, and chemical synthesis. Even for the basic operation of treating water, we have to import alum. This was a main product of the Ranala sulfuric acid plant. These two base materials can change our economy rapidly. We are producing salt yet not satisfying all our needs. Even in that process we are pumping back the valuable brine solution (an intermediate product of salt processing) to sea without getting any use from it. But Dow Chemicals started its production from making bromine from brine solution in 1900s & now they are the second largest chemical company in the world with a turnover more than the GDP of our country. They started to use brine solution to make money in hundred years ago; but in 2007 we are neglecting it with out getting any use. Brine is electrolyzed in the “chloralkali process” to make bromine, sodium hydroxide, chlorine and hydrogen, as well as the hypochlorite and chlorate. These are very valuable & essential chemicals in an industrial world.
Today we are quite confident that we have oil resources and hopefully we will start exploring it. But in order to get maximum use of it we must process crude oil within our county using our resources and must maximize product yield which is not happening today. We do have some process industries in our country but most of them are based on raw materials imported from foreign countries. It is acceptable to import if we do not have any resources. Anyhow we are a nation rich with resources but we are not doing anything to get the maximum output from our resources. We are wasting our foreign exchange to import every thing including food items. We depend 60% on foreign sources to fulfill our fundamental food needs and spend more than 2 billion rupees a year on importing food item. We are an agro based society & we are having so many sources of food & potentials for proper food industry. Yet we are importing food items. We are still depending on petroleum based fuels for transportation, power generation & household uses. We must develop renewable alternatives such as Bio diesel, bio gas, ethanol, etc if we want to decrease our fuel cost & electricity cost. We do not have any food & energy security in country. That means in an emergency such as a world war we only have 14 days of petroleum storage & considerably small food sources within the country. Even though the war will be elsewhere we may be defeated first!
In order to develop process industry in
Recently our government increased fuel prices again. Some of our people blame government but it is not the correct response. We must ask government to support research and implementations on alternative fuels. Our people blame government because of increased living cost. It is useless. We want to force government to develop industrial & services sector in
This worst case scenario is not completely a weakness of the technical background of
As a final year Chemical and Process engineering undergraduate I was evaluating our nation’s present status with a technical view. According to theories and concepts delivered to us by our lecturers I can see a very bright future for my nation with extending our present day industry to new profitable areas & tuning it to compliance with international standards and achieve sustainable efficiency.
Today our student society organized a “Katha Baha” program. Today Dr. Dammika Welhenge presented his experiences in his carrier in chemical & petrochemical industry. He presented a cased study on the Amonia production plant as well as the sulfuric plant. These plants have closed down now because of many reasons. He discussed the importance of the Ammonia other chemical industries for the development of the country. He has taken very big effort to collect all missing evidence of these factories. He show some pictures those were taken during production period of Ammonia plant. This “Katha Baha” session was very important to every one.
Non degradable polythene has been a heavy burden on environment. It causes decreasing soil fertility, clogging irrigation systems, affecting aesthetical beauty & destructive to wildlife & other biological system. So as chemical & process undergraduates we were delighted when we were given chance to engage with designing of biodegradable polymer.
Our country is basically agriculture based one. Because of too many reasons most of farmers loose profits from their yield. Same product comes into market in very large quantities in narrow time period. So farmers can not demand their product; unfortunately this scenario has been converted to grab the effort of farmers into intermediate traders’ wallet. We select cassava as the main row material in order to minimize the above tragic situation. When our research become a commercial reality it will help to give a high bid for farmers’ product.
We were given chance to select approach to the design project. We were given three alternatives to produce biodegradable polymer.
1. Using only starch
2. Using starch plus biodegradable polymer
3. Using starch plus non – biodegradable polymer (This alternative was given for worst case. That mans if we could not found any way to follow above two alternatives we would able to follow this option. )
Using only Starch
In environment lecture we were given a water bottle to observe which is made out of corn starch. Mervyn Dias from Plastic Packaging (Pvt) Ltd (PPCL) was introduced to us by our project coordinator. He discussed about his experiences in production of starch based polymers. These two junctures enhance our enthusiasm on this project & implies us to select total starch to produce our biodegradable polymer.
_ Pictures will come soon _
Student society of Chemical Engineers Society Sri Lanka, ChESS organized a workshop for Advanced Level student of Embilipitiya area. This is organized in order to increase the interaction in between school & university community. We covered up industrial chemistry part of the Advanced Level syllabus. We present some of industrial chemistry practical using recorded video clips. All video clips were made up in university with our equipment & student. We did a presentation with a little video clip on bio gas generation additionally.
This program was totally funded by IRQUE project. So we were able to perform that workshop in ultimate condition with out warring about money. We gave them high quality education material. We additionally distribute some books on Bio Gas Generation which were given by Prof. Ajith de Alwis. Finally we gave them a MCQ paper with 15 questions related to areas which were covered up in work shop. Three Students with highest marks were gifted with special prizes.
This program was a success because of our unity, commitment of our lectures & our department staff. Every one in our department did their best towards this program. We scarify lot of our academic works to do this program. But finally we realize the value of our program by reading feed back forms.
There is a factory now in
This is somewhat high end approach to solid waste management. This is done using extremely hot flame generated by a plasma torch. This will be trusty way to get rid of some hazardous waste such as PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls). The temperature of the flame is in a range of 10000 0F. Quite unbelievable temperature which is generated by special electrode consuming about three megawatts range electricity. But today prof. Ajith de Alwis said in Solid Waste Management lecture that the emitting gasses of this plasma reactor can be used to produce electricity which covers the consumption of electrical energy of reactor. In that case we only need a back up source of 3 megawatts electricity for considerably short time period. The rest of energy to run the plasma arc furnace can be obtained using emitting gasses. This is a good approach on solid waste management because this kind of high end technology will boost interest on environmental engineering & other related fields.
This video will give you a nice idea on plasma reactor which convert waste into valuble energy
When we mix concentrated sulfuric with suger what will happen? See this video.
tags
smoke bomb, how to make a smoke bomb, make a smoke bomb, make a easy smoke bomb,
Bio gas can be used as fuel for generators to produce elecricity or to use for other useful work such as water pumping. This two video shows such a project in Sri Lanka
Tags
biomass electricity, renewable energy generation, biogas energy, biogas production , methane biogas, renewable electricity, natural gas electricity, bio gas heat potential,
My blog is now reading by lot of our department past student who live & study or work in other countries. I am sure they would like to see our prof. Ajith de Alwis even from this little video clip. This video clip was extracted from one of video documentary on biogas project. He is doing a lecture on biogas for rural community.
“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope." Prof. Wangari, Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
We cut down trees for several needs. Although trees involved in our life cycle in numerous ways we do not mind on planting trees. But pioneers who see this world with a widen & perspective vision have started several campaigns to save this planet behalf of us.
United Nations Billion Tree Campaign is a brainchild of professor Wangari Mathai who is the first African woman won the Nobel Peace Prize. She is also the founder of
Professor Wangari Mathai expressed her idea on her campaign by saying “People talk too much. We are no longer talking, we are working. The challenge now is to tell the world to go dig holes and plant seedlings. I've no doubt we will achieve our goal.”
Herbert Henry DowAlthough the beginning of DOW is dated back to 1897, the success story of DOW is very interesting. It was founded by dedicated chemical industrialist Herbert Henry Dow. He showed his capabilities of innovation by making an incubator for chicken eggs before he was 12. After several years his father and he innovated a small steam turbine for US Navy. After graduating from high school he enrolled into Case School of Applied Science (Now it is known as
Herbert Henry Dow continued his researches in
A government-supported German bromine cartel, Bromkonvention began to sell bromine which was the main product of DOW at a very low cost than DOW price. This was planed tactic to eliminate DOW from
Now DOW is the second largest chemical company in world. It is known as Chemical Companies’ Chemical Company.
The most interesting thing is in
.png)
