Modifying project properties

Compaction is the oldest, and in its many forms the most used, method for modifying soil properties. On large projects, shallow compaction processes begin with laboratory tests which define the related water content and density that will provide adequate support for the proposed use. Economic factors then determine the type of equipment to be used, from among those which can produce the desired results. Field density tests are then used to measure the progress of field work, and to verify that design values have been attained. 

Asphalt can be blended with tire rubber to modify the properties of the asphalt. This is an important market for use of GRT. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, an estimated 120, 100, and 175 million pounds, respectively, were used in the United States (Read, 2012). Mostly, these were consumed in California, Arizona, and Florida. Other states are also recognizing the benefits of the modified asphalt. It was projected that asphalt industry can adsorb up to 40% of scrap tires (Anonymous, 1993). 

The objective of the project described is to obtain insight in the relation between the chemical fine-structure of polysaccharides from soy bean cell walls and their functional properties in industrial products and how they effect processing. Soy meal is of great importance in the feed industry. The application of the (modified) soy bean cell wall polysaccharides as a food additive will be investigated. The obtained knowledge of the polysaccharide structures will also be used in studies concerned with the improvement of the in vivo digestibility of these polysaccharides. 

Two different methods have been presented in this contribution for correlation and/or prediction of phase equilibria in ternary or mul> ticomponent systems. The first method, the clinogonial projection, has one disadvantage it is not based on concrete concepts of the system but assumes, to a certain extent, additivity of the properties of individiial components and attempts to express deviations from additivity of the properties of individual components and attempts to express deviations from additivity by using geometrical constructions. Hence this method, although simple and quick, needs not necessarily yield correct results in all the cases. For this reason, the other method based on the thermodynamic description of phase equilibria, reliably describes the behaviour of the system. Of cource, the theory of concentrated ionic solutions does not permit a priori calculation of the behaviour of the system from the thermodynamic properties of pure components however, if a satisfactory equation is obtained from the theory and is modified to express concrete systems by using few adjustable parameters, the results thus obtained are still substantially more reliable than results correlated merely on the basis of geometric similarity. Both of the methods shown here can be easily adapted for the description of multicomponent systems. 

A still lower-cost route to PHAs is genetic modification of plants to directly produce the final polymer. Monsanto (and others) pursued this approach and is currently being cofunded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in a collaborative research project led by Metabolix. Switchgrass will be modified to produce PHAs, which can then be extracted from the plant material and processed to obtain a consistent composition and the desired material properties. The plant material remaining after PHA extraction can be used to produce fuels, power, or other products, creating the opportunity for a "plants as factories" biorefinery. Applications for polymers with properties similar to those of PHAs consume on the order of 13.6 million metric t annually, and it is possible that in the future PHAs will figure prominently in the plastics market. 

The surface Fuchs-Kliewer modes, like the Rayleigh modes, should be regarded as macroscopic vibrations, and may be predicted from the bulk elastic or dielectric properties of the solid with the imposition of a surface boundary condition. Their projection deep into the bulk makes them insensitive to changes in local surface structure, or the adsorption of molecules at the surface. True localised surface modes are those which depend on details of the lattice dynamics of near surface ions which may be modified by surface reconstruction, relaxation or adsorbate bonding at the surface. Relatively little has been reported on the measurement of such phonon modes, although they have been the subject of lattice dynamical calculations [61-67],... 

The bio-oil used in the tests was delivered from the project partner BTG in April 2000. For the chemical and physical analysis of bio-oil we used modified standard fuel oil methods. Table 1 shows the chemical and physical properties of the oil. The analysis was carried out in the Institute s chemical laboratory. 

The research described here is a selection of related projects dealing with "immobilizing" a homogeneous catalyst or modifying properties of materials in order to design a catalyst with the correct catalytic function. These functions are... 

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