#65 - Experts

What does it take to be an expert on something?

My handy on-screen dictionary says that an expert is ‘a person who is very skillful or highly trained and informed in some special field.’ The word ‘expert’ is linguistically linked with the word ‘experience’, which makes sense. One becomes an expert partly through experience.

Strangely though, the word also draws its root from a Latin term for danger or risk. I suppose the idea is that any new experience carries with it some degree of risk. That risk may be physical danger, failure to succeed, failure to comprehend, personal dislike, or some other outcome that we may define as potentially negative.

Whether we succeed or fail, some useful experience will be gained, although we can reasonably assume that ‘expert’ is usually more closely associated with successful experience.

In your experience, you may have noticed varying degrees of expertness in people, or different types of ‘expert.’ We will discuss some of these in the next post.

Here at Nova, we have gained some expertise in gas analysis over the years. Some of it has been through failure, and much of it has been through success. Some of it has come from books, but much of it has come from talking and working with other helpful people.

Nova website “About us…”

We make gas analyzers for oxygen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, and many other atmospheric gases. We provide gas analysers for syngas, landfill gas, purity gas, biogas, and others.

Give Mike or Dave at Nova a call, or send us an e-mail.

1-800-295-3771

sales at nova-gas dot com

websales at nova-gas dot com

www.nova-gas.com

http://www.linkedin.com/company/nova-analytical-systems-inc-/products?trk=tabs_biz_product

If you have a LinkedIn account, search for Nova Analytical Systems under Companies and follow us if you want.

Photo © 2008 Tack-O-Rama Collection

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#64 - Tenova Lands on South Korean Shores by Acquiring Envita

Milan, April 6th 2012 – Tenova's growth strategy continues with the acquisition of Envita Co. Ltd. The South Korean company, founded in 1995 and with headquarters in Incheon (near Seoul), is active in the fields of industrial furnaces, processing lines, and heat treatment furnaces for aluminum components in the automotive industry. Its people, over 100, are operating in three locations in South Korea, Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City), and China (Yantai).

The company is well known to Tenova, who began working with Envita in 2007. Thanks to the collaboration with Envita, Tenova has been awarded contracts in the country with major steelmakers such as Hyundai Steel and Posco.

The acquisition marks Tenova's first step into South Korea, the 6th highest crude steel producer in the world with 68.6Mt in 2011. This is a +16.2% increase over 2010. South Korea has the highest density per capita production of steel in the world: a strategic market in the global post-crisis scenario.

The Tenova Iron & Steel division achieves the goal of entering South Korea through an engineering hub with excellent references and manufacturing centers. The combination of these factors allows the expansion of our commercial and operating network in Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Laos, and Cambodia. It also provides an expansion of the Tenova Iron & Steel product portfolio in the business of cold rolling and aluminum for the automotive industry.

Tenova is a worldwide supplier of advanced technologies, products, and services for the iron & steel and mining industries. With about 3,100 people, Tenova operates through more than 30 companies located in 22 countries on 5 continents.

THIS TRANSACTION STRENGTHENS TENOVA IRON&STEEL DIVISION'S GROWTH OF COMMERCIAL AND OPERATING NETWORKS IN ASIAN COUNTRIES AND AN EXPANSION OF ITS PRODUCT PORTFOLIO

 

If you are a steel maker interested in higher productivity and lower costs, contact Tenova for more information about their award-winning products and systems.

For information on gas analyzer systems, give Mike or Dave at Nova a call, or send us an e-mail.

1-800-295-3771

sales at nova-gas dot com

websales at nova-gas dot com

http://www.nova-gas.com/

http://www.tenovagroup.com/

If you have a LinkedIn account, search for Nova Analytical Systems under Companies and follow us if you want.

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#63 - Oxygen Deficiency Monitoring in Ambient Air

The average human breathes more than 20,000 times per day. Under normal conditions most people can only survive for a few short minutes without oxygen. After this, damage to the brain will result. Breathing is therefore a serious matter.

Being without oxygen does not always imply that the person is not breathing. Respiration of oxygen deficient atmospheres is potentially even more dangerous than obvious cessation of breathing. This is because the person may continue to function while possibly advancing more deeply into an area deficient of oxygen. Without warning, the person may be over-come by asphyxia, which is a loss of consciousness caused by too little oxygen in the blood.

In industry, a common cause of oxygen deficiency is oxygen displacement. This can occur where another denser gas has leaked and settled into an area, creating a stratum of O2 deficient atmosphere. The leaked gas may not be poisonous in itself. But its displacement of oxygen makes it extremely dangerous. In some applications, gas toxicity and O2 deficiency risks are both present.

For example, I recently toured an electric arc furnace (EAF) installation at a steel plant. In the analyzer shed, there are two large gas analyzer systems which monitor the process gas for O2 / CO / CO2 / H2. These are gases of interest in the EAF application. A sample of these process gases is continuously piped into the analyzers in the shed for analysis. A feed of nitrogen (N2) is also piped into the shed for calibration and automatic filter blow-back.

If any of the piping, valves, or other components in the analyzer shed were to start leaking, this would pose a toxic gas risk or an O2 deficiency risk (depending on what was leaking). Therefore, there are two ambient air monitors in the analyzer shed. One for carbon monoxide and one for oxygen. (The carbon monoxide is monitored because it has the highest toxicity of the major gases being produced in this application.)

Nova Model 510 Continuous Oxygen Monitor and Model 580 Continuous Carbon Monoxide Monitor have been designed for this application.

These analyzers may be purchased in the following configurations:

• Without a pump for monitoring the diffuse atmosphere around the monitor.
• With a pump for pulling a sample from another area.
• With multiple remote sensors for monitoring several areas.

  

Model 510 brochure...

We make monitors for other gases such as:

• Carbon Monoxide (CO)
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
• Nitrogen Oxide (NO)
• Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)
• Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)
• Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
• Chlorine (Cl2)
• Ammonia (NH3)
• Hydrogen Chloride (HCL)

For some examples, please see:
http://catalog.nova-gas.com/category/ttent-hazardous-wall-mounted-ambient-air-analyzers?&plpver=10

Give Mike or Dave at Nova a call, or send us an e-mail.
1-800-295-3771
sales at nova-gas dot com
websales at nova-gas dot com
www.nova-gas.com
http://www.tenovagroup.com/
If you have a LinkedIn account, search for Nova Analytical Systems under Companies and follow us if you want.
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