Hello all!
It has been a while since I updated this blog about our experiments with Supercritical CO2. My students and collaborators were advised to hold off from blogging until the project ended. I'll be posting our archived blog entries over the next few weeks during this spring. But if you are interested to jump ahead and read our final report, you can do so here:
http://www.mtu.edu/social-sciences/research/reports/Scarlett_Caneba_Final_Report.pdf
Ms. Helen Tunnicliffe wrote a very nice piece about our work for The Chemical Engineer's May 2016 issue. You can see a copy of the article free for the next 30 days at this link:
http://www.thechemicalengineer.com/~/media/Documents/TCE/free-features/899interview.pdf
Showing posts with label Polymers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Polymers. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Project Team: Shubham Borole
My name is Shubham Borole. I am a graduate student at Michigan Technological University pursuing Master's degree in Chemical Engineering and I'm a research team member in MTU's Center for Environmentally Benign Functional Materials. I come from Vapi, Gujarat, India, a city evolving as a chemical & industrial hub. Growing up in such atmosphere, along with some family background, drew me towards chemical engineering studies. I completed my bachelors degree from Government Engineering College, Valsad (Gujarat, India) and worked for a year gaining experience in industry.
At Michigan Tech, I joined Dr. Gerard Caneba for research studies concerning oil spill control using surfactants. This included studies of foaming characteristics, dispersion effects in presence of crude oil and toxicity comparisons. I have just been introduced to Industrial Archaeology, specifically problems concerned with preservation of archaeological artifacts. I will apply my experience with supercritical carbon dioxide extraction at high pressures to museum and archaeology problems. This is a very exciting project since it involves applying chemical engineering to problems in art and history. Also, I get an opportunity to work and communicate with people from different educational disciplines. I hope to play my part in this project and supporting my colleagues to the fullest extent.
Connect with Shubham on LinkedIn.
Project Team: Stephanie Tankersley
My name is Stephanie Tankersley and I am a fourth year undergraduate student at Michigan Technological University. I am majoring in Materials Science and Engineering and minoring in Polymer Science and Engineering. I'm also completing a concentration in Michigan Tech's Enterprise Program. My interests are in sports and outdoor activities; eco-friendly processes; and textiles, polymers, and composite materials engineering. More about my interests and experience can be found on my LinkedIn account.
I'm new to the Supercritical Team. So far I have done research on polymers in conservation as well as readings about other supercritical treatments. I am very excited to start the process of experimentation with our various artifacts and I will be taking lots of photos and recording my findings along the way!
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Project Team: Gerard Caneba
I am pleased to introduce my chief collaborator on this project! Gerard Caneba and I had not worked together before this study, but when I read an article about the use of supercritical carbon dioxide treatments to dry waterlogged archaeological artifacts, I started looking for someone at Michigan Tech than could help me understand that process. Gerry and I spoke and something in our discussions sparked his interest.
Dr. Caneba is a chemical engineer and is the
director of Michigan Tech’s Center for Environmentally Benign Functional Materials. His expertise includes both polymer
composites and precipitation polymerization. Dr. Caneba’s main research
involves the process of free-radical retrograde-precipitation polymerization
(FRRPP) and the use of these polymers in oil recovery and remediation, adhesive
formulation, wood preservation, copper ore processing, silicone formulation, carbon nanotube/polymer composites, and many other applications. He has published many research articles and recently two
monographs with Springer Verlag: Free-Radical Retrograde-Precipitation Polymerization (FRRPP): Novel Concept, Processes, Materials, and Energy Aspects (Caneba 2010) and Emulsion Free-Radical Retrograde-Precipitation Polymerization (Caneba and Dar 2011).
Gerry and I have assembled a small team of undergraduate and graduate students at MTU to work on this project. Over the next few posts, the students will introduce themselves and I will continue to write updates on aspects of the background for our research project.
Want to connect with Gerry? Try LinkedIn, Pivot (Community of Science)
Gerry and I have assembled a small team of undergraduate and graduate students at MTU to work on this project. Over the next few posts, the students will introduce themselves and I will continue to write updates on aspects of the background for our research project.
Want to connect with Gerry? Try LinkedIn, Pivot (Community of Science)
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Conservation of Ferrous Metals for Industrial Heritage and Archaeology
I am reviving this blog so that one of my research teams can report on their work. We have been working on a project to solve a puzzle for industrial archaeologists and heritage managers, trying to add a new technique to the conservator's tool box for wrought and cast iron, steel, and other ferrous metal objects.
"Rusting" is the colloquial term for the chemical reactions that decay metal artifacts. Rust causes big problems for archaeologists. When excavating on a site, archaeologists become excited discovering humble artifacts, such as iron nails. While nails aren't as exciting as coins, armor, bullets, rings, buttons, bottles, and the dramatic artifacts featured on TV shows about digging for treasure, but the unassuming nails teach us a great deal about places. Did you know that if you sort out and count the nails according to the way they were manufactured, then by comparing those counts, a researcher can estimate when a building was built? This seems to work, even if the building burned, leaving only a soil layer of ash and charcoal (and lots of nails!).
Of course, for industrial archaeologists, ferrous metals don't just include artifacts that were purchased and used in one place or another, but also includes manufacturing waste. While digging at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York, our research teams encountered hundreds of gallons of metallurgical waste over the years. Examples ranged from curls of iron cut while rifling cannon barrels, lathing and boring waste from giving cannon precisely smooth surfaces; blacksmithing waste from forging; ferrous tap slag from the blast furnace; discarded sprues, gates, and risers from the casting house; and tons of scrap iron left around the shops for making rods, bolts, spikes, brackets, and all manner of other hardware. This list only includes waste products, not the hundreds of other iron and ferrous metal objects manufactured at that site-- including shells and shot; architectural iron; and machinery parts for example. Most industrial heritage sites have this problem.
These artifacts all teach us a great deal about the past, including issues such as the technical creativity of people at work during their daily lives in the nineteenth century. Yet they present a difficult problem for long term care and storage once the archaeological fieldwork is over. Unlike brass, gold, and aluminum, iron does not stabilize once it has developed it's rusty patina. The process of chemical decay continues underneath the surface rust. Without some intervention, a bag of ferrous metal objects removed from the ground, cleaned and bagged, then put into storage in a controlled environment, continues to decay. After a decade passes, the bag will be full of nodules of corrosion product and rusty dust instead of nails, screws, and hardware.
Conservators and museum staff have several tools available to counter iron's tendency toward chemical decay, but most of them are unsatisfactory for different reasons. My colleagues and I proposed to develop a new technique for stabilization and conservation that will help solve these problems, and we were generously awarded a grant in support of our efforts by the National Park Service's National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.
Over the next few posts, I will introduce our research team members, discuss existing techniques of iron and ferrous metals conservation, the nature of decay, and lay out our proposed technique. If this subject interests you, please stay tuned!
"Rusting" is the colloquial term for the chemical reactions that decay metal artifacts. Rust causes big problems for archaeologists. When excavating on a site, archaeologists become excited discovering humble artifacts, such as iron nails. While nails aren't as exciting as coins, armor, bullets, rings, buttons, bottles, and the dramatic artifacts featured on TV shows about digging for treasure, but the unassuming nails teach us a great deal about places. Did you know that if you sort out and count the nails according to the way they were manufactured, then by comparing those counts, a researcher can estimate when a building was built? This seems to work, even if the building burned, leaving only a soil layer of ash and charcoal (and lots of nails!).
Of course, for industrial archaeologists, ferrous metals don't just include artifacts that were purchased and used in one place or another, but also includes manufacturing waste. While digging at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York, our research teams encountered hundreds of gallons of metallurgical waste over the years. Examples ranged from curls of iron cut while rifling cannon barrels, lathing and boring waste from giving cannon precisely smooth surfaces; blacksmithing waste from forging; ferrous tap slag from the blast furnace; discarded sprues, gates, and risers from the casting house; and tons of scrap iron left around the shops for making rods, bolts, spikes, brackets, and all manner of other hardware. This list only includes waste products, not the hundreds of other iron and ferrous metal objects manufactured at that site-- including shells and shot; architectural iron; and machinery parts for example. Most industrial heritage sites have this problem.
These artifacts all teach us a great deal about the past, including issues such as the technical creativity of people at work during their daily lives in the nineteenth century. Yet they present a difficult problem for long term care and storage once the archaeological fieldwork is over. Unlike brass, gold, and aluminum, iron does not stabilize once it has developed it's rusty patina. The process of chemical decay continues underneath the surface rust. Without some intervention, a bag of ferrous metal objects removed from the ground, cleaned and bagged, then put into storage in a controlled environment, continues to decay. After a decade passes, the bag will be full of nodules of corrosion product and rusty dust instead of nails, screws, and hardware.
Conservators and museum staff have several tools available to counter iron's tendency toward chemical decay, but most of them are unsatisfactory for different reasons. My colleagues and I proposed to develop a new technique for stabilization and conservation that will help solve these problems, and we were generously awarded a grant in support of our efforts by the National Park Service's National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.
Over the next few posts, I will introduce our research team members, discuss existing techniques of iron and ferrous metals conservation, the nature of decay, and lay out our proposed technique. If this subject interests you, please stay tuned!
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