TMAC helping businesses prevent pollution
EPA grant focuses on reducing and preventing pollution in environmental justice regions
2023-03-22
(Press-News.org) The University of Texas at Arlington-based Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC) has received a grant worth nearly $500,000 to assist manufacturers in developing and adopting pollution prevention practices that reduce costs and environmental impacts.
The $498,836 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Pollution Prevention Program allows both the TMAC Sustainability team and Process Automation Design Engineering (PADE) team to work with manufacturers to prevent pollution in areas considered environmental justice regions. An environmental justice region, or “overburdened” area, is defined as one that is home to minority, low-income, tribal and indigenous populations or communities that potentially experience disproportionate environmental harms.
“The focus is to find manufacturers that are eager to start reducing and preventing pollution,” TMAC Lean Business Advisor Eduardo Amezcua said. “This is a way the companies can give back to their local communities, by taking steps in pollution prevention and providing a cleaner and safer environment for all.”
Smart sensors deployed by the PADE team will provide real-time monitoring of selected environmental metrics before and after recommended improvements to measure reductions and savings. Smart sensors can monitor temperature changes, water consumption, air particulates, energy usage and the financial savings associated with achieving these reductions.
“Sensors can be thought of as the hands, eyes and ears that computers use to understand the world around them,” Amezcua said. “By using sensor technology, we can help clients make evidence-based decisions to improve their businesses.”
The real-time data collection will be directly linked to monitoring displays at the UT Arlington Research Institute Innovation Laboratory for the TMAC Sustainability and PADE teams’ review. This collection of actual data will help support the environmental impact reduction results with quantifiable numbers.
“In the past, TMAC engineers have been limited to a few hours observing and collecting manufacturing impact data during our site visits,” said Kurt Middelkoop, senior sustainability advisor for TMAC. “Once deployed, our sensors can now continuously collect data 24 hours a day for several weeks. This large measurement sample becomes a powerful tool for the organization’s management to have the confidence to make changes based on collected data that will bring significant cost savings and environmental impact reductions.”
TMAC is the Texas representative of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership National Network and works with businesses to help develop and improve their profits, products, processes, technology, and people. TMAC is currently seeking eight companies in the areas of food and beverage, automotive and metal manufacturing and fabrication to be a part of this cost-free training. For more information or to be a part of the training, contact E3info@tmac.org.
Written by Yesenia Zamora, project marketing manager
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2023-03-22
A University of Texas at Arlington researcher is working to optimize supply chain management to allow for flexibility from forces outside the supply chain, such as policy changes that can cause major disruptions.
Linda Wang, assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UTA, has earned a five-year, $503,000 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research. CAREER awards are the NSF’s most prestigious honor for early-career ...
2023-03-22
Cambridge University scientists have come up with a system of measuring animal welfare that enables reliable comparison across different types of pig farming.
This means that animal welfare can now, for the first time, be properly considered alongside other impacts of farming to help identify which farming systems are best.
This is vital for improving animal welfare in livestock production, at a time when demand for meat is rising globally and the way animals are farmed is changing - with concerns about the welfare of intensive and indoor systems.
Animal welfare assessments could also enable consumers to be better informed when choosing what to eat.
Britain ...
2023-03-22
Several scientific journals have amended their submission guidelines after an analysis identified numerous research studies that had been published with crucial information missing.
The finding emerged from an analysis by academics at the University of Cambridge, which reviewed reports from trials evaluating new school-based programmes to increase the amount of children’s physical exercise. It found that 98% of these reports left out key details about how teachers had been trained to deliver the interventions.
The trial reports ...
2023-03-22
New research has debunked the idea that there is an “obesity paradox”, whereby patients with heart failure who are overweight or obese are thought to be less likely to end up in hospital or die than people of normal weight.
The study, which is published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Wednesday), shows that if doctors measure the ratio of waist to height of their patients, rather than looking at their body mass index (BMI), the supposed survival advantage for people with a BMI of 25kg/m2 or more disappears.
The “obesity paradox” relates to counter-intuitive findings suggesting that, although people are at greater risk of developing ...
2023-03-22
Osaka, Japan – The Haber–Bosch reaction helps feed the world by converting nitrogen into ammonia, a fertilizer precursor. However, its carbon footprint is huge: this one reaction is the source of nearly 2% of global carbon emissions. Now, in a study recently published in ACS Energy Letters, researchers from Osaka University have helped re-imagine this reaction to improve the sustainability of the chemical industry.
Replacing the Haber–Bosch reaction with a more sustainable alternative has been an active area of research for many years. These efforts have led to a globally well-established electrochemical reaction for ammonia ...
2023-03-22
The rapid evolution and emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as the Omicron variant, renders it highly capable of evading the host immunity.
At the same time, vaccines based on original wild-type strain of SARS CoV-2 shows reduced protection against newer variants, particularly for the Omicron variant. This results in break-through infections among those vaccinated and highly infectious among non-vaccinated individuals.
Thus, it remains uncertain whether new emerging variants of the COVID-19 disease can escape the protective immune response ...
2023-03-22
Up-and-coming local biotech startup BetaLife Pte Ltd (“BetaLife”) is collaborating with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) to accelerate the development of next generation cell-based therapy for diabetes. BetaLife, a stem cell therapy company focused on developing regenerative medicine for diabetes, has acquired the rights to human induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) technology from A*STAR. This technology enables the generation of iPSCs, which are cells that have similar properties to embryonic ...
2023-03-22
The Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus) - also known as Black Vulture, Monk Vulture or Eurasian Black Vulture - is the largest bird of prey in Europe.
Globally classified as Near Threatened, its populations in southern Europe, once abundant, have been experiencing a dramatic decline since the late 1800s. So dramatic, in fact, that by the mid-1900s, these birds had already been nowhere to be seen throughout most of their distributional range across the Old Continent. In Bulgaria, the species has been considered locally extinct since 1985.
Thanks to the re-introduction initiative that was started in 2015 by three Bulgarian non-governmental organisations: ...
2023-03-22
Nine in ten women in England enter pregnancy with at least one indicator that may increase health risks to them and their baby, according to new research.
Common indicators were women not quitting smoking, failing to take folic acid before pregnancy or having a previous pregnancy loss.
Researchers from the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, hosted by University Hospital Southampton and University of Southampton, analysed data from over 650,000 mothers.
They created a first national picture of women’s health before ...
2023-03-21
"Have you ever wondered about life on a leaf?"
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) researcher Ashley Shade asks a simple question, but it’s one well worth investigation. The aboveground part of plants where microbes reside, or the phyllosphere, represents the largest environmental surface area on the plant. Much of this area is grown as cultivated agriculture, and understanding the interactions between plants and the microorganisms that live on their surfaces may help us develop agricultural management practices that can increase crop productivity and resilience. In their newly published study, Department ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] TMAC helping businesses prevent pollution
EPA grant focuses on reducing and preventing pollution in environmental justice regions
