Incentives, material

Clearly, the potential hazard from runaway reactions is reduced by reducing the inventory of material in the reactor. Batch operation requires a larger inventory than the corresponding continuous reactor. Thus there may be a safety incentive to change from batch to continuous operation. Alternatively, the batch operation can be... 

One possible route is to make formaldehyde direcdy from methane by partial oxidation. This process has been extensively studied (106—108). The incentive for such a process is reduction of raw material costs by avoiding the capital and expense of producing the methanol from methane. 

Ethers, such as MTBE and methyl / fZ-amyl ether (TAME) are made by a catalytic process from methanol (qv) and the corresponding isomeric olefin. These ethers have excellent octane values and compete on an economic basis with alkylation for inclusion in gasoline. Another ether, ethyl tert-huty ether (ETBE) is made from ethanol (qv) and isobutylene (see Butylenes). The cost and economic driving forces to use ETBE vs MTBE or TAME ate a function of the raw material costs and any tax incentives that may be provided because of the ethanol that is used to produce it. 

Responsible Care is the incentive sponsored by the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA). Any CMA company must embrace the philosophy of continuous improvements of health, safety, and environmental efforts accompanied by an open communication to the pubHc about products and their production. Thus the total impact of any product on the environment, from the extraction of raw materials, their beneftciation, transportation, production of final product, and disposal of the product at the end of its useful life, must be taken into consideration. 

Maturation as a technology does not mean that advancement and innovation has ceased. Adhesive bonding is so essential to the aerospace field that as long as there is a desire to go higher, faster and farther more efficiently, there will be an incentive to develop new materials and processes for adhesive bonding. Areas of particular interest for future applications are high-temperature adhesives, fiber-reinforced metal laminates and more efficient bond assembly techniques. 

Potential advantages of both thermoplastics and cellu-losic materials combined with the economic and environmental viewpoint have lead to a promising utilization of both these materials in various forms of composites. Although various branches of cellulosic-thermoplastic composites industries are booming in recent years, their growth rate is very slow. In order to achieve the full potential of such valuable materials as various engineering materials and commodity products more incentives from academic, industrial, and governmental authorities are needed. 

The trends dcinoiistratc the capability of industiy to improve energy efficiency when it has the incentive to do so. Energy requirements can be cut by new process development. In addition, the amount of raw materials demanded by a society tends to decline as countries reach certain stages of industrial development, which leads to a decrease in industrial energy use. The accounting of trends in structural shift, material intensity, and technical energy efficiency... 

The oil industry frequently uses stainless steels or exotic bonded alloys for the processing of crude oil in the temperature range 200-600°C. These materials are very expensive and there is a strong economic incentive for finding cheaper alloys which are resistant to HjS and some gaseous organic sulphides arising from the S content of the crude oil". ... 

Many of the waste streams from U.S. process industries are water containing small quantities of metal ions that the law requires be removed before the wastewater is disposed of There is an economic incentive to recoup at least some of the cost of wastewater treatment by recovering and selling the metal content instead of merely disposing of the metals as sludge. Because the waste streams are dilute in desired materials, research is needed to devise efficient extraction and separation processes. 

Research on materials can lead to more economical processing under extreme conditions and to reduced capital and operating costs. There are strong incentives to find constraction materials for process units that are derived from domestic resources, that are less contaminating of process and environment, and that have the following properties ... 

There are comparable incentives to develop new process-related materials that are more selective as catalysts, extractants, or separation membranes and more effective in controlling flow in porous media. In addition, the development of materials that are less energy intensive in terms of production and use is a goal equivalent to other means of energy conservation. 

Re-use, remanufacture and recycle. Focusing on re-use, remanufacture and recycling comes from a number of trends and drivers in society. Because of problems with waste disposal, many companies are trying to work towards a zero to landfill policy. As waste disposal costs rise, this trend will accelerate. At the same time, where raw materials are difficult or expensive to obtain, there is a real commercial incentive to recycle and reuse. Regulators also continue to push for the minimisation or elimination of the release of hazardous materials... 

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