Engineering ideals

P. Pauly, Controlling Life Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology (New York, 1987). 

Let us use the concept of a contradiction in discovering our next reason to learn inventive engineering. Imagine that you are in a hypothetical situation. As a student of engineering, ideally you would want to study as little as possible. Yet at the same time you also desire to make a lot of money after you graduate. We have here a clear contradiction. Usually a person s income in the engineering profession is proportional to the amount of knowledge acquired, not inversely proportional, as your dream would require. To succeed, you need to resolve this absolutely critical contradiction, which just may determine the course of your life. 

Pauly PJ (1987) Controlling life Jacques Loeb and the engineering ideal in biology. Oxford... 

The concept is that such scaffolds will mimic to a certain extent the extracellular matrix surroimding cells in living tissue. The extracellular matrix is known to have a broad range of tasks to accomplish. It embeds the cells of which die particular tissue is composed, it offers points of contacts to them, provides for the required mechanical properties of the tissue. So, the expectation is that cells seeded on adequate porous scaffolds experience an enhanced proliferation and growth, covering finally the whole scaffold. A further task is to define the three-dimensional shape of the tissue to be engineered. Ideally, such a scaffold may then be reimplanted into the living body provided that an appropriate selection of the nature of the seeded eells was done. 

Recyclability and disposabOity issues are important in the context of materials sdenee and engineering. Ideally, a material should be at best recyclable, and at least biodegradable or disposable. 

Figure 2.1 The idealized models used for reactor design. (From Smith and Petela, Thz Chemical Engineer, Dec. 17, 1991 reproduced by permission of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.)...

Carnot s cycle A hypothetical scheme for an ideal heat machine. Shows that the maximum efficiency for the conversion of heat into work depends only on the two temperatures between which the heat engine works, and not at all on the nature of the substance employed. 

The diesel engine operates, inherently by its concept, at variable fuel-air ratio. One easily sees that it is not possible to attain the stoichiometric ratio because the fuel never diffuses in an ideal manner into the air for an average equivalence ratio of 1.00, the combustion chamber will contain zones that are too rich leading to incomplete combustion accompanied by smoke and soot formation. Finally, at full load, the overall equivalence ratio... 

Minimum work for an ideal separation at first glance appears unrelated to the slender vertical vessel having a condenser at the top and a reboder at the bottom. The connection becomes evident when one calculates the work embedded in the heat flow that enters the reboder and leaves at the condenser. An ideal engine can extract work from this heat. 

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