Material handling is a loose loop in most assembly plants. Jiist-in-time (JIT) is a management philosophy that strives to eliminate sources of manufacturing waste by producing the right part in the right place at the right time. We propose to apply JIT principles to material handling in assembly plants. Material Kanbans are introduced as an effective means to control and balance the physical ma...

The center post (CP) is the most critical in-vessel component in spherical tokamaks (ST). Advanced ST power plant designs normally call for high neutron wall loads (>5 MW/m) forcing the CP to operate in a high radiation environment. Radiation degrades the physical properties of the current carrying conductor and severely affects the overall performance of the CP. An unshielded CP does not appea...

The center post (CP) is the most critical in-vessel component in spherical tokamaks (ST). Advanced ST power plant designs normally call for high neutron wall loads (>5 MW/m) forcing the CP to operate in a high radiation environment. Radiation degrades the physical properties of the current carrying conductor and severely affects the overall performance of the CP. An unshielded CP does not appea...

Membrane-associated Cytochromes P450 (P450s) are one of the most important enzyme families for biosynthesis of plant-derived medicinal compounds. However, the hydrophobic nature of P450s makes their use in robust cell factories a challenge. Here, we explore a small library of N-terminal expression tag chimeras of the model plant P450 CYP79A1 in different Escherichia coli strains. Using a high-t...

This paper presents recent operating results of Coal Tech s second generation, air cooled, slagging coal combustor, and its application to power plants in the 1 to 20 MW range. This 20 MMBtu/hour combustor was installed in a new demonstration plant in Philadelphia, PA in 1995. It contains the combustion components of a 1 MWe coal fired power plant, a 17,500 lb/hour steam boiler, coal storage an...

There is so far no consensus on how to develop a reliability model of safety-related digital instrumentation and control (I&C) in a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of a nuclear power plant. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate different approaches to model digital protection systems in a PSA for a nuclear power plant. This is accomplished by the development of a fault tree model of...