Staff

Fast-Tracking with 3D CAD

When officials at Wyckoff Inc., a chemical manufacturer with facilities in South Haven, Mich., wanted to expand production capacity by building an additional 18,000-square-foot plant, they challenged the project team to design, build and commission the new facility in nine months. The result was a fast-track project with design and construction efforts running in parallel.

Building Corporate Backbone

When the owners of ING Investment Products Group decided to build a new headquarters in West Chester, Pa., cabling infrastructure was a big concern. Recognizing the fast pace of technological developments and how difficult it is to avoid rapid obsolescence, they wanted a voice and data infrastructure that gave them not only reliable performance, but also longevity.

Clean Lamps = Big Savings

The results are in. Commercial building owners in the United States could save between $2.7 and $3.6 billion dollars per year by simply cleaning fixtures on a regular basis, according to a federally-funded four-year building-lighting study conducted by the InterNational Association of Lighting Management Companies (NALMCO), Des Moines, Iowa.

Taking Lighting to Extremes

Die-casting plants are hot, dirty environments that require frequent cleaning with high-power water jets to produce quality castings. The combination can take its toll on lighting systems. At the Abeco die-casting plant in Lewisburg, Tenn., low-bay luminaires were not tolerating the harsh and demanding environment and could not withstand the heavy cleaning-water spray without breach or ingress.

The Need for Steam

As is the case with many health-care institutions, Kaiser Hospital in Sunnyside, Ore., periodically requires large amounts of steam for heating and sterilization. However, in the past, the difficulty was that one boiler was not sufficient to handle the sudden load swing. "In the wintertime, our two 300-hp fire-tube boilers would not hold the load, so we'd have to run our 500-hp boiler with a 30...

Best of the Web – Editor’s Pix – 1970-01-01

Valuable Internet resources for engineers.EPA Upgrade Analysis Softwarehttp://yosemite1.epa.gov/estar/business.nsf/content/multiarea_tools_softwaretools_main.htmA variety of analysis tools assess the feasibility of variable-air-volume, chiller and lighting upgrades.Library of Continuing Education Courseswww.

New products literature

Magnetic-drive pumps are specifically designed to handle difficult fluids such as corrosives, pollutants, ultrapure liquids and toxics. This seamless pump can handle flows up to 1,500 gpm at 2,900 rpm and 1,760 gpm at 3,500 rpm. (Model ICM by Goulds Pumps) Circle 1 Structured cabling system doubles the bandwidth of the proposed category-6 standard, tested to perform at up to 400 MHz.

Software Helps Tidy Up Clean Rooms

Concern over cross-contamination between different cleanliness classes within a clean-room garment-changing area led an in-house engineering team at the Belgium facilities of Alcon Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company based in Ft. Worth, Texas, to carry out a design study simulating air movement, heat transfer and distribution of contaminants through the rooms.

Log On For Lamp Recycling

Engineers and lighting designers can now access useful information on fluorescent and high-intensity-discharge lamp recycling at a new Web site—www.lamprecycle.org—sponsored by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Rosslyn, Va. The Web site includes information about federal and state regulatory lamp management requirements, state regulatory contacts, a list of compan...

ARI Sees Flaws in DOE’s Energy-Efficiency Plan

If the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) fails to reconsider its decision to mandate a 30-percent energy-efficiency increase for central air conditioners and heat pumps, 84 percent of all central air conditioners and 86 percent of all heat- pump models on the market will be rendered obsolete, according to Ed Dooley, director of communications for the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute ...