Technology differentiation, future

MBR technology is probably the membrane process that has had most success and has the best prospects for the future in wastewater treatment. Trends and developments also indicate that this technology is becoming accepted and is rapidly becoming the best available technology (BAT) for many wastewater-treatment applications. The cost of an MBR plant for secondary treatment is still higher than that for a CAS plant, but as the numbers of MBR plants increase, and as membrane costs fall, the life cycle cost differential will soon disappear, and the process advantages should lead to rapid uptake of the MBR system by the... 

The quasi-thermodynamic approach outlined above will obviously remain applicable to future coal conversion technologies as well, because the underlying thermodynamic principles are universal and invariant. Figure 2 is illuminating in this context it shows that by-product waters of liquefaction processes can be differentiated from their gasification counterparts by their redox potential and pH characteristics (13). 

The size differential between a large peptide of 100 residues and a small protein, or perhaps a protein domain, is a purely arbitrary distinction. However, both (1) the technology-driven acceleration in the rate of new peptide generation and (2) the increased size limit from 50 to 100 residues will vastly increase the number of sequences that need to be accommodated within the PRF databases. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is a temporal continuum to peptide production. Thus, it is impossible to know how many bona fide peptides are missing for the existing databases. Many of these sequences will have been erroneously produced and immediately discarded or simply never reported in the scientific literature. Some of these unaccounted-for peptides have no doubt been physically lost and now exist only in a virtual sense. Should peptide databases include ghosts Unfortunately, such questions are relatively trivial when one considers future implieations. The total number of all possible peptides must be finite, but what a number Moreover, it is entirely reasonable to speeu-late that the sequenees eontained within the two eurrent PRF databases are but a tiny fraetion of this total. 

In many respects, the chemical industry is a mature industry. Many basic patents will soon expire. The fundamental manufacturing technologies will become purchasable. In future, most commodities will be ubiquitously available. Thus, most of the differentiation characteristics that were decisive in the past will no longer play a role. 

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