The search for ecologically-friendly biodegradeable packaging materials has twisted down some rather unusual paths.  Sure, you’d like to come up with a replacement container for your restaurant leftovers, but have you ever thought of making packaging foam material from potato starch and fish parts?  A research team led by the Agricultural Research Service of the Read More

One of the ways to handle radioactive waste is through vitrification—kind of “glassifying” the waste. But before trying the vitrification process on real radioactive waste, the folks at the Savannah River National Laboratory verify it with “simulant” material. The simulant needs to—well—simulate the actual material.  They needed “to develop an improved understanding of the impact Read More

We’ve talked before about the difficulties associated with cleaning up (“remediating”) old nuclear facilities.  We’ve even talked specifically about the Savannah River remediation project.  Each time we discuss these projects we’re struck by two facets: the difficulty of performing them and the serious consequences if they’re performed incorrectly.  The chemicals used need to be exactly Read More

It’s kind of paradoxical that “chickens**t” is a term for a two-bit, inconsequential entity, because farming operations in the US produce about 18 million tons of chicken manure annually.  Which raises the question, what do you do with those mountains of manure?  Traditionally, it has been processed for inorganic fertilizer, composted for organic fertilizer, or Read More

To understand a chemical compound, you’d want to know the basic chemical and physical properties, such as molecular mass, density, and vapor pressure.  But if you really want to know about it, you’ll study its toxic effects on fish, its irritating effects on skin, and its debilitating effects on reproduction.  An example is the IUCLID Read More

The Multiphase Fluids Laboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is used to characterize radiologic suspensions and slurries.  They’ve got a variety of equipment, as they outline on their web page.  For example, they have a rheometer to characterize viscosity and associated fluid parameters, they have a zeta potential meter to measure “the electrostatic interaction Read More