Membrane & Separation Technology News articles from June 2000

Membrane & Separation Technology News archives from June 2000

INDUSTRY INSIGHT Tailoring Membrane Properties Through Self-Organization.
June 1, 2000... J. F. Hester and A. M. Mayes, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 13-5066, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 Surface modification of polymer phase inversion membranes is...

Surface Segregation.
June 1, 2000... Significant surface segregation is observed during membrane coagulation, and surface coverage of the comb additive is substantially enhanced by subsequent heat treatment in water. In fact, an integrated near-surface coverage of roughly 60 vol%...

Fouling Performance.
June 1, 2000... Ultrafiltration experiments were performed using an Amicon 8010, stirred, dead- end cell with an effective filtration area of 4.1 cm2. Delivery of feed solution to the cell was provided by a stainless steel pressure vessel pressurized by a...

Surface Regeneration.
June 1, 2000... Membranes were immersed for 12 hr. at 20C in PBS containing 10.0 g/L BSA. The membranes were then rinsed thoroughly with PBS to remove unbound protein. The cationic protein was stained using anionic colloidal gold. The level of BSA fouling was...

pH-Responsive Pore Size.
June 1, 2000... The permeation rates of several solutions of various pHs were measured using the above-described ultrafiltration apparatus. The membrane was pre-wet with methanol and immersed in dW for 30 min. It was loaded into the cell and compacted for 30...

Conclusion.
June 1, 2000... Self-organizing blend systems can be used to prepare, with no post-coagulation processing, membranes with robust, engineered surface chemistries capable of providing enhanced fouling resistance and environmentally-responsive separation...

INDUSTRY NEWS: Plug Power Officials Fail To List Ties.
June 1, 2000... Four Plug Power, Inc. executives informed the Securities and Exchange Commission they plan to sell 140,000 shares of their company's stock, but they forgot to mention they work for the fuel-cell developer. Chief Executive Gary Mittleman, Chief...

Failed Bid Leaves Air Liquide Unscathed.
June 1, 2000... Air Liquide Chairman Alain Joly says the failed takeover bid it and Air Products and Chemicals made for British gases company BOC Group, plc would have no financial impact. "The transaction will be neutral in our accounts," Joly explains. ...

Pall, HemaSure Move Litigation to Colorado.
June 1, 2000... Pall Corp. and HemaSure, Inc. have agreed to in effect transfer all pending patent litigation involving HemaSure's r\LS filter to Colorado and consolidate it with the other litigation. Furthermore, the judge in Colorado has allowed Pall's...

HemaSure Investigates Patient Reactions.
June 1, 2000... HemaSure continues to work with the American Red Cross to study and evaluate a number of noncritical reactions in patients who had received a transfusion of blood filtered with the company's r\LS system. The Red Cross notified HemaSure in...

Kubota To Distribute Plug Power in Japan.
June 1, 2000... Kubota Corp. has agreed to distribute Plug Power's power and heating systems in Japan. Financial terms weren't disclosed by either company. Plug Power is developing fuel cells for homes in a joint venture with General Electric Co., GE...

Minntech To Open More Reprocessing Centers.
June 1, 2000... Minntech Corp. has plans to open its second and third dialyzer reprocessing plants in Boston and Atlanta by the end of August. The company opened its first reprocessing center in Orlando, Florida, in November 1999. Minntech CEO Thomas J....

Matthey, Cropper Reveal Fuel-Cell Deal.
June 1, 2000... Johnson Matthey has concluded exclusive development and supply agreements with Technical Fibre Products (TFP), the advanced composites subsidiary of James Cropper, plc, for key components in Johnson Matthey's Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA)...

Parker Completes Whatman Acquisition.
June 1, 2000... Parker Hannifin has completed its acquisition of Whatman's Industrial Business. Shareholders of Whatman, plc (Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent, U.K.) approved the deal on May 25. Whatman's Industrial Business in 19r cuad annual sales of $53.4...

RCAI Allies with MSS.
June 1, 2000... Recycling Centers of America, Inc. has signed a Strategic Alliance Agreement with Membrane System Specialists, Inc. (MSS). The agreement will provide RCAI with rapid market exposure to MSS clients in the dairy, food, beverage, and other...

MARKETS AND APPLICATIONS Centrifuge Subs Shows Promise.
June 1, 2000... An experimental filtering system being tested in the corn wet-milling process is showing promise. The desired payoff, in the form of added value to corn gluten meal, could be more incentive to produce ethanol and an expanded animal-feed...

Alfa Laval Touts Cheaper Desalination.
June 1, 2000... Alfa Laval has increased the economical viability of desalination by using plate heat exchangers. According to Alfa Laval Marketing Manager Carlos Legorreta, "The potential for cost reduction will allow distillation on plates to become...

Flawed Ceramics Fight Filth.
June 1, 2000... A University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison research effort led by engineer Marc Anderson has produced a plethora of environmental products using microporous ceramic materials. The porous nature of the materials would make for flawed pottery, but...

MICROFILTRATION: Aria Expands Treatment Plant.
June 1, 2000... Pall Corp. has received a contract to provide an Aria membrane microfiltration system for a 2-mgd expansion to an existing 4-mgd conventional water-treatment plant. The company says the modularity of the system simplified any future...

HYBRID SYSTEMS: Team To Make Smaller LC/MS.
June 1, 2000... Advanced BioAnalytical Services, Inc. (ABS) has signed an agreement with PE Biosystems Group, a PE Corp. business, to jointly pursue the development of a combined liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC/MS) interface in a single...

GAS SEPARATIONS: INEEL Sweeps Smokestacks Clean.
June 1, 2000... Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL, Idaho Falls, ID) researchers interested in tidying up the earth's atmosphere are devising ways to sweep up excess carbon dioxide - a potentially problematic greenhouse gas - and...

RO AND NANOFILTRATION MTBE Solution Gains Certification.
June 1, 2000... Kinetico, Inc. says its reverse-osmosis (RO) drinking water product has been certified by the NSFI for MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) reduction. The Kinetico Drinking Water System Plus VX reverse-osmosis system is available through...

EVS AND FUEL CELLS ABI Predicts 4% Market Share by 2010.
June 1, 2000... Automotive fuel cells will have nearly a 4% market share, with 608,000 vehicles by 2010, according to a study by Allied Business Intelligence (ABI, Oyster Bay, NY). Market penetration can rise as high as 1,215,000 fuel-cell vehicles, which...

IFC To Supply PEM Fuel Cell for SUV.
June 1, 2000... Enova Systems has been selected by Hyundai Motor Co. (HMC) to develop and supply the drivetrain and power management systems for their high-performance fuel-cell sport utility vehicle (SUV). HMC has signed an agreement with International Fuel...

BIOMEDICAL AND BIOMEMBRANES Antibacterial Polymer Delivers Antibiotic.
June 1, 2000... University of Washington (UW, Seattle, WA) researchers have developed a method of crafting medical implants from an antibacterial polymer that could keep thousands of patients from dying of hospital-acquired infections each year. The...

Bioartificial Liver in Phase II/Phase III Study.
June 1, 2000... Achilles A. Demetriou, the key developer of a system designed to extend the lives of patients suffering from liver failure, updated his colleagues on the device's success during Digestive Disease Week 2000, held last month at the San Diego...

NMR Probes Protein Signals.
June 1, 2000... Biophysicists at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, have discovered that membrane proteins give rise to unique patterns of signals in their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)...

MEMBRANE RESEARCH Absorption Tests Resonate with JRSE.
June 1, 2000... Jacobson Resonance Enterprises, Inc. (JRSE) released preliminary report data on the JRSE water resonation process, which was concluded at the University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center (HSC) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The experiments,...

Air Liquide Settles.
June 1, 2000... Air Liquide Settles. Air Liquide (Paris, France) has settled a patent suit against MG Industries (Malvern, PA) and MG Generon (Malvern, PA) related to the use of membranes and membrane systems for noncryogenic on-site production of nitrogen...

BOC Q2 Performance Strong.
June 1, 2000... BOC Q2 Performance Strong. British industrial gases company BOC Group, plc (Surrey, U.K.) reports second-quarter profits rose 19%. The company, which has watched its planned takeover by rivals Air Liquide (Paris, France) and Air Products and...

HemaSure Boosts Sales, Net Loss.
June 1, 2000... HemaSure Boosts Sales, Net Loss. HemaSure, Inc. (Marlborough, MA), reports increased production and sales of the company's newly commercialized r\LS Red Blood Cell Filtration System, as well as increased revenues for the first quarter of $1.8...

Restructuring Pays Off.
June 1, 2000... Restructuring Pays Off. Pall Corp. (East Hills, NY) reports sales for the third quarter of fiscal 2000 of $318.0 million, an increase of 6% compared to $299.9 million in the prior year. Sales for the nine months grew 6.5% to $879.9 million,...

CoorsTek Sales Up 58%.
June 1, 2000... CoorsTek Sales Up 58%. CoorsTek, Inc. (Golden, CO) sales grew 58% to $120.8 million, and operating income increased 40% to $13.0 million compared with 1999 figures. The company earned $5.2 million in the first quarter of 2000, which was...

CUNO International Sales Strong.
June 1, 2000... CUNO International Sales Strong. CUNO, Inc. (Meriden, CT) reports results for the second quarter ended April 30, including worldwide sales of $58.9 million, up 9% from $54.0 million in the same period in 1999. Net income for the second quarter...

Minntech Earnings Improve.
June 1, 2000... Minntech Earnings Improve. Minntech Corp. (Minneapolis, MN) says its fourth- quarter net earnings were $1.84 million compared to net earnings of $1.76 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1999. Earnings as a percentage of revenue increased...

Plug Power Revenue Doubles.
June 1, 2000... Plug Power Revenue Doubles. Plug Power, Inc. (Latham, NY) reports revenues for its first quarter ended March 31 were $2.9 million, as compared to $1.7 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 1999. Net loss for the first quarter of 2000...

Praxair Makes Brazil Tender.
June 1, 2000... Praxair Makes Brazil Tender. Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, CT) reports preliminary results of its tender offer for the outstanding shares of S.A. White Martins, its affiliate in Brazil. At the close of the tender, about 210 million shares were...

Pall Promotion Effected.
June 1, 2000... Pall Promotion Effected. Pall Corp. (East Hills, NY) has promoted John Miller to senior vice president and technical director. Miller became Pall's director of research and development in 1999. He has assumed added the responsibility for...

Minntech Picks VP.
June 1, 2000... Minntech Picks VP. Minntech Corp. (Minneapolis, MN) has named Michael Petersen to the position of vice president of research and development. Petersen joins Minntech from Medtronic, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN), where he served as director of...

Ionics Elects Two Directors.
June 1, 2000... Ionics Elects Two Directors. Ionics (Watertown, MA) announced William K. Reilly and Stephen L. Brown have been elected directors of the company. Reilly, who was the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1989-1993, is the CEO of...

Praxair Names Controller.
June 1, 2000... Praxair Names Controller. George Ristevski, formerly finance director for Praxair Distribution, Inc., has been named vice president and controller of Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, CT), reporting to James S. Sawyer, interim chief financial officer....

Recent Patents.
June 1, 2000... Spirals Increase Efficiency. The Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, TX) has described a method for increasing the power of PEM fuel cells without a substantial increase in resistance. One problem encountered in dealing with PEM fuel...

Selected Abstracts.
June 1, 2000... Fluidity Affects Permeability. In the Journal of Membrane Biology [175(53-62), 2000], G.-J. Zhang, et al. suggests the proton permeability of lysosomes can be modulated finitely by the alterations in their membrane physical state. The research...

Calendar.
June 1, 2000... July 29-August 3, 2000, The Gordon Research Conference on Membranes: Materials and Processes, New London, CT. Contact: R. D. Noble; Email: nobler@spot.colorado.edu, Website: www.grc.uri.edu. November 12-17, 2000, The AIChE Annual Meeting,...

Ionics Revenues Up 18%.
June 1, 2000... Ionics Revenues Up 18%. Ionics, Inc. (Watertown, MA) reports revenues for the first quarter of 2000 were $102.8 million, up 18% compared to the first quarter of 1999. Net income of $3.6 million was down 24% from the year-earlier period. CEO...