Swagelok Northern California Blog

Keep costs down but safety high by ensuring your fluid systems components will last. There are several ways to do this. To begin with, make sure the components you choose are appropriate for every possible application of your system. Then you’ll want to design your system for minimal stress to its components.

Researchers at Tufts University have developed material composites that can perform complex movements in response to light. They can be formed into films, sponges, monoliths, and hydrogels, and can be activated extremely precisely by using focused light.

Nanoporous metals are lightweight, have high surface area, high electrical conductivity, and a uniform pore structure, properties make them ideal for electrochemical reactors, sensors and actuators, among other applications. The traditional machining process wastes a lot of material and time. A new process (using hierarchical 3D printing)  solves those problems as well as allowing the formation of the material into complex structures.

After over 50 years of teaching students how to design and operate process analyzer systems, Tony Waters details 5 key revelations that stand out. These are the “aha” moments students have gotten over and over again. Perhaps the top epiphany is, “Time delay is often much longer than I expected.”

A University of Cambridge team believes they can finally explain the “hydraulic jump,” a phenomenon that has stymied scientists since it was first described by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Our comprehensive product range lowers costs and increases productivity 

As a plant manager, you are responsible for running your plant safely and efficiently, maximizing throughput, reducing costs, and avoiding downtime. Swagelok engineers can help with our go-to strategies for preventing, preparing for, identifying, and addressing fluid power system inefficiencies—without increasing your workload.

The amount of data being produced around the world is outstripping our ability to store it. DNA has the potential to solve our storage problem, but methods to harness its capabilities have been slow and relatively inefficient. Now scientists at Columbia University and the New York Genome Project think they have hit on a method to efficiently store, retrieve, and copy—error-free—all human data in one room.

Computational materials modelling is shortening the time needed to design new alloys for the fossil energy plants of the future. Ultra-supercritical steam plants and oxyfuel combustion boilers will use much less fuel than current models, and thus be much more efficient. However, their higher temperatures and pressures will create corrosive conditions that current alloys can’t handle.

The pretty-to-look at and oddly-named metal bismuth has been found to hold an almost magical property that will help convert CO2 into liquid fuels and industrial chemicals. The University of Delaware researchers tout their result as a “paradigm shift” for renewable energy, fuel production, and catalysis in general.

Essential info on our grab sampling systems + a selection matrix

Fluid system leaks are a common occurrence in most plants. But even the smallest leak can result in major safety and profitability costs. Swagelok engineers have documented a combination of human error and unsuitable components as the causes of most leaks. Learn the types of leaks to look for, how to detect them, and how to prioritize their repair.

You have a choice of materials and connections to match your specific needs

Graphene, a 2D material made from a layer of carbon one atom thick, is the strongest material known to date, but not very practical in its 2D form. Scientists at Virginia Tech and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have devised a way to 3D print graphene that would make it easier to use yet preserve many of its 2D mechanical and conductivity properties.

A single source for everything from assessment through assembly and training

Although of varying designs, all nuclear engines built to date have had at least one thing in common: their only output is heat. They all apply that heat to a medium, such as water, to convert heat to electricity using a turbine. A new design would bypass the medium and use nuclear heat directly, dramatically lowering costs and waste byproducts.

A machine can perform only as well as the weld parameters set by the operator

Scientists from South Australia’s Flinders University have developed a super sponge composed of two waste products that can absorb boatloads of oil, be wrung out and reused, and is cheap to make.

You'll need the right type of closed loop sampling system to get the most useful results

Sequestering carbon—capturing carbon and storing it long-term—is a critical part of the strategy for mitigating or slowing global warming. Minerals that do it naturally tend to be very slow about it—on the order of hundreds or thousands of years. Now researchers in Canada think they have found a way to cheaply speed up the process.

Look for a program that has instructors who have spent time in the field

The chemistry of sulfur, manganese and carbon chemistry all come into play

Dislocations, atomic-scale line defects that allow everything from metal forging to the protective crumple zones in cars, can now be manipulated on the atomic scale. German researchers have succeeded in building a model for studying plasticity that uses two flat, atomically-thin sheets of carbon and robotic arms that can apply heat or electrical current with nanometer precision.

As we’ve featured in other stories, the mass manufacture of carbon nanotubes has proved notoriously difficult. A new technique that solves the clumping and twisting that usually results from attempts at mass production also results in a new substance with surprising properties.