Powerland Medellin: Wheels of Change
01.01.70
Medellin, Colombia — Around the world, discarded tires are piling up in backyards, gullies and landfills. They take decades to decompose unless they are burned, which releases toxic gases.
It’s a global problem, but a possible solution is taking shape in a warehouse outside of Medellín. That’s where Diego Castaño and small team of colleagues at a company called Procellantas are developing a method to recycle tires using microwaves.
He cooked up the idea six years ago when he owned a business selling tires. Searching for a way to recycle used tires, he found his only option was to send them to a landfill. So Castaño, a chemical engineer, started running tests in household microwaves and found that small pieces of tire material could be melted down.
Since winning a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank two years ago, Castaño has developed the technology further and has designed an entire microwave system with parts he’s had custom-made abroad.
Source: GlobalPost
Gmt'S Steady Hand Holds South Pole 'Telescope'
01.01.70
Even for a company accustomed to building things for stressful work in harsh conditions, the task assigned one recent shipment is extreme.
Bristol’s GMT Composites was hired to build the carbon fiber support tubes for a Keck Array “telescope” that recently began watching the cosmos from the South Pole.
The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had high expectations for these tubes.
They needed to be strong enough to hold heavy mirrors in the wildest of weather without budging. Winds can be strong there but it’s the cold that really stands out — average temperature is minus 57 degrees, the record low is minus 117 degrees, and the record high is plus 7.5 degrees. Months pass without sunshine.
They needed to be precise, down to tolerances of five-thousands of an inch.
Source: EastBayRI.com