BY KENNETH MAINORD M any are familiar with "cleaning with heat" whether they realize it or not. Abandoning their rubber gloves, scrub brushes, and chemical cleaners, millions of households across America have been quick to accept a better and easier way to clean their kitchen ovens. This ready acceptance has made the self-cleaning oven one of the most successful new products introduced to the c...

Biofouling is still a major challenge in the application of nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes. Here we present a platform approach for environmentally friendly biofouling control using a combination of a hydrogel-coated feed spacer and two-phase flow cleaning. Neutral (polyHEMA-co-PEG10MA), cationic (polyDMAEMA) and anionic (polySPMA) hydrogels have been successfully grafted onto pol...

One application of physical acoustics is the development of ultrasonic dental instruments for cleaning purposes including descalers and endosonic files. The vibration characteristics of these instruments have been measured by scanning laser vibrometry, SLV. One possible contribution to the cleaning processes is cavitation and we have been using sonochemical methods to characterize cavitation ar...

The implementation of the Montreal Protocol, the Clean Air Act, and the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 has resulted in increased awareness of organic solvent use in chemical processing. The advances made in the search to find "green" replacements for traditional solvents are reviewed, with reference to solvent alternatives for cleaning, coatings, and chemical reaction and separation processes...

The process cleaning rate theorem holds that the static rate (chemical forces) plus the dynamic cleaning rate (mechanical forces) equals the process cleaning rate. New lead-free flux residues result from more demanding soldering drivers created by high soldering temperature, surface tension effects, and miniaturization. Lead-Free flux compositions require thermal stability, resistance against b...