Carbon Fiber Knife

 📢It's time for our segment Endless Possibilities!📢

Carbon fiber knives are awesome!

As a wise man once said: ''Carrying a CARBON FIBER KNIFE makes you 100% more self-sufficient.''

These knives are perfect for everybody, from the businessman to someone who lives in the jungle. They allow you to always finish the job WITH STYLE. After all, we know that there is nothing more beautiful than a carbon fiber look, right?

But be careful when buying one... Just because it looks like carbon, doesn't mean that it is actually carbon fiber!

Would you have one? Do you believe that they can have the same performance as other luxury knives? Let us know in the comments!

Fiberglass Manufacturing process

Today we will dive deeper into the fiberglass world! 🧐

As in a common soda-lime glass, the principal ingredient in all fiberglasses is silica (SiO2). Other oxides, such as B2O3 and Al2O3, are added to modify the network structure of SiO2 as well as to improve its workability. The internal structure of fiberglasses is a three-dimensional, long network of silicon, oxygen, and other atoms arranged randomly.

But how is fiberglass manufactured?

It all starts once raw materials are mixed and placed on a glass batch, which has a screw feeder that connects it to the tank, which is heated to melt the glass (>1370°C). The molten glass is fed into electrically heated bushings, which are generally made of platinum or metal alloy, with up to 3,000 very fine orifices. The molten glass passes through the orifices and comes out as fine filaments. Special binders are added and the strands are caught up on a high-speed winder.

The basic continuous commercial fiberglass is a strand. The strands can be turned into many different forms, such as rovings, woven fabrics, pre-impregnated fabrics, chopped strands, or even milled.

Bibliographical Reference:
Fiber Reinforced Composites – Materials, Manufacturing, and Design - Page 61

Chloroplasts enhanced with artificial dyes adsorb more solar energy

Modifying chloroplasts with aggregation-induced emission luminogens, known as AIEgens, makes them better at splitting water, separating electrons and generating adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The AIEgens, which were attached using click chemistry, enhance the chloroplasts by harvesting light that is normally inaccessible to regular photosynthetic pigments.

Chloroplasts are the light-driven metabolic factories of higher plant cells that produce carbohydrates and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water during photosynthesis. Chlorophyll A and Chlorophyll B are the main photosynthetic pigments within the chloroplasts. However, the adsorption spectrums of those pigments do not cover the whole solar radiation spectrum and means chloroplasts cannot harness all the solar energy available to them. Chloroplasts mainly adsorb blue and red light and are unable to harness light in the non-visible ultraviolet region, which can damage DNA and protein.

Now, a team led by Zhiyang Liu, Ryan Kwok and Ben Zhong Tang from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has created two AIEgens that can harvest both ultraviolet radiation and photosynthetically inefficient radiation, and convert that radiation into blue and red light.

AIEgens are molecules that emit intense fluorescence when they aggregate together. The AIEgens developed by Liu, Kwok and Tang’s team contain activated alkyne groups derived from tetraphenylethylene and triphenylamine. These groups allowed the team to attach the AIEgens to live chloroplasts using a metal-free click reaction, based on the high reactivity between alkynes and amines.
‘In comparison to the natural chloroplasts, the two AIEgen-modified chloroplasts showed 30% and 50% increases in ATP production under our experimental conditions. We are learning from nature and meanwhile trying to go beyond nature. This work demonstrates that we can modify photosynthetic units and enhance solar energy utilisation in common plants,’ says Tang.

Eva-Mari Aro, from the University of Turku in Finland, whose research focuses on photosynthesis and bioenergy, says the work highlights the importance of materials scientists and photosynthesis researchers working together. ‘Solar energy is the most promising option for displacing fossil resources and promoting the systemic transition to sustainable green and renewable chemicals and fuels, produced directly from sunlight. New materials presented here for broadening the solar spectrum, useful in photosynthetic energy conversion, are very inspiring and promote not only the design towards efficient bio-hybrid devices but also other solar energy conversion devices making use of natural photosynthesis.’

References

H Bai et al, Mater. Horiz., 2021, 8, 1433 (DOI: 10.1039/d1mh00012h) 

Europe’s food agency changes its mind on titanium dioxide in food

Titanium dioxide, which is used as a colorant in many common household items such as toothpaste, sunscreen, paint, and food coloring, ‘can no longer be considered as safe when used as a food additive’, according to an updated safety assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).

The Efsa expert panel concluded that the absorption of titanium dioxide particles is low after oral ingestion, but they can accumulate in the body, and genotoxicity concerns cannot be excluded.

This new evaluation revises Efsa’s previous assessment from 2016, which found that titanium dioxide was safe for food applications but that further research was needed to fill in the gaps. The agency said its new determination is based on a review of many thousands of studies that have become available recently, including new scientific evidence and data on nanoparticles.

The Titanium Dioxide Manufacturers Association, which represents the major producers of titanium dioxide, says it is currently ‘carefully evaluating’ Efsa’s opinion to ‘better understand the logic behind the outcome’.

In 2017, the European Chemicals Agency (Echa) concluded that titanium dioxide may cause cancer if inhaled, and last year the EU classified the substance as a suspected carcinogen by inhalation in certain powder forms. In France, it was banned as a food additive last year.

Any legislative or regulatory decision regarding phasing out titanium dioxide in foods in Europe will be made by the European Commission and EU member states.

Based on Echa’s new opinion, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is calling on the US Food and Drug Administration to quickly consider whether to phase out titanium dioxide in food use. After reviewing the ingredients of more than 100,000 products, EWG found titanium dioxide in more than 3000 ‘ultra-processed foods’, including the popular brands Jell-O, Little Debbie, and Tasty Cakes.

Source: Chemistry World

The European automotive composites market is showing substantial growth!

Research conducted by Graphical Research showed that the European automotive composites market share was USD 1,475.4 million in 2019 and will grow at a CAGR of 6.6% up to 2026. 

The European automotive composites market is expected to gain substantial growth owing to the presence of major car manufacturers. Europe is home to numerous car manufacturing companies with production facilities. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted automobile production due to a significant decline in sales of cars and other light commercial vehicles. The low demand has critically affected the region owing to stringent country-wide lockdowns to control the spread of coronavirus. However, this situation is expected to gain normalcy through continuous government measures and the automotive composites industry is expected to rebound after the upliftment of lockdown and transportation restrictions. 

This is the type of news we LOVE to see! We will do our best to help to make this growth possible! 

Reference:
Graphical Research's Europe Automotive Composites Market Share & Forecast, 2020 – 2026

New Contract has been signed for my Business consultancy

 I am glad to share that Gruntech Polymer Consultants has signed a two-year marketing contract with a major Rubber components manufacturer to promote their products in the domestic and international markets.

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Contact Gruntech Polymers Consultants for all your product sales needs.

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Medical uses of THC

 The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain cancer tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals; the first was a Virginia investigation 48 years ago. In both studies, the THC shrank or destroyed tumors in a majority of the test subjects.