A market research company predicts that sales of coal equipment are going to get a big boost from an unlikely source—green energy. Ethanol is seen as a promising fuel
made from renewable sources. It comes from grain, and that grows in a field. President Bush's remarks about kicking the oil addiction have only increased the public buzz about alternative fuels.

U.S. companies, according to the McIlvaine Co. in Northfield, Ill., are building hundreds of ethanol plants, and many of them, especially newer ones, are likely to use coal-fired steam generators. The coal-fired ethanol plants will add billions of dollars in equipment revenues to suppliers of boilers, material handling systems, fabric filters, non-selective catalytic reduction for NO_x, and dry scrubbers for SO₂ removal, McIlvaine said.

The conclusions are based on research contained in a report that the McIlvaine Co. sells, World Markets for Your Products.

The Lincolnland ethanol plant runs on natural gas. Coal is a growing option for others.

The company estimates that a coal-fired plant with an output capacity of 50 million gallons of ethanol a year has a capital cost about $18 million higher than a gas-fired plant. Five plants in operation or under construction in the U.S. are using coal-fired boilers with a cost of $45 million each.

Coal-firing in new plants is also expected to increase demand for wastewater separation equipment, pumps and valves, and lime for SO₂ removal.

McIlvaine pointed out that some companies are experimenting with alternatives to building dedicated small coal generators. Blue Flint Ethanol and Great Rivers Energy have entered a deal to run a new ethanol plant near the Coal Creek power plant in North Dakota. Waste steam will supply the ethanol plant. The arrangement will greatly reduce the capital cost of the ethanol plant and increases the theoretical efficiency of the coal power station.

McIlvaine estimates current worldwide production capacity of ethanol at 13 billion gallons per year and predicts double-digit annual growth over the next 10 years.

There are more than 300 plants under construction and planning worldwide.

UGS won't be renewing its contract with MSC Software that bundled Femap simulation software with the MSC.Nastran analysis program.

Instead, UGS Corp. of Plano, Texas, has announced a free offer to move MSC.Nastran for Windows users to the UGS Femap with Nastran finite element analysis software.

The Femap with Nastran product couples simulation with pre- and post-processing.

The UGS offer came after a company decision to terminate its agreement with MSC Software Corp. of Los Angeles. MSC Software bundled Femap—for graphics—with MSC.Nastran, for finite element analysis. Because that contract ended, MSC no longer provides Femap inside MSC.Nastran for Windows or offers upgrades, according to a UGS statement.

UGS terminated its agreement with MSC because Femap upgrades weren't being delivered to customers on a timely basis, according to Alastair Robertson, Femap marketing manager at UGS.

Customers who move to the UGS product will receive software support from both UGS and MSC through September and exclusively from UGS after October 2006.

MSC had no comment on the UGS offer.

In some circles, the word "biodiesel" conjures up images of
powering cars and trucks with a green, environmentally benign fuel. But while biodiesel may well be made from plant oils, there are some unsavory aspects to its production. For instance, catalysts such as sodium hydroxide must be added to the raw vegetable oil. The process is also slow, requiring more than 12 hours for the chemicals to react completely.

That all might change, however, thanks to a device that can fit in the palm of one's hand. Developed by researchers at the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute and Oregon State University in Corvallis, the device causes a reaction between vegetable oil and alcohol to make biodiesel in minutes, rather than hours.

The microreactor consists of a block around the size of a credit card. Etched into the block are a series of parallel channels, each less than a millimeter wide. When the ingredients are forced through the tiny passageways, they react almost immediately, creating biodiesel.

The research team, led by Oregon State engineer Goran Jovanovic, hopes to coat the microchannels with a metal catalyst in order to reduce the number of chemicals needed to run the reaction. The current design calls for mixing in a chemical catalyst in addition to the oil and alcohol.

Although each microreactor can process only a small stream of oil at a time, larger-scale production can be accomplished through the use of banks of microreactors connected in parallel. The researchers envision farmers using small-scale setups to make the fuel they need to power their equipment, while commercial producers could run much larger plants.

Is a French engineer cooler than an English engineer? Not necessarily. But the way a nation perceives its engineers definitely differs from country to country, said Gary Downey, a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg.

Downey, a professor of science and technology in society, is at work on a book that will discuss how engineers help define a nation. The work will compare the varied roles that engineers play in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States.

His coauthor is Juan Lucena, a former Virginia Tech graduate student and now an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

By examining how engineers in each country respond to the idea of progress, the authors want to show that engineers are key in defining how a nation perceives itself. The pair interviewed and observed engineers in each country, then coupled those observations with what they learned from magazine and newspaper articles and other documents.

"Engineers in France value mathematical knowledge and seek to work for the state, where they've constituted the country's highest-ranked occupation," Downey said. "Whereas engineers in the United Kingdom have valued practical knowledge and worked primarily in the private sector, where they constitute a relatively low-ranked occupation.

"In Germany, the status of engineering rose after unification in 1870 when precision Technik came to be seen as a new way of achieving progress by emancipating the German spirit," he added.

The idea of German engineer extends beyond Germany's border. Yes, it's a stereotype, but German engineers define their nation to the world.

One of the challenges of the contemporary experience is to redefine engineering education in the face of globalization. It's difficult to talk about en- gineering on a global level, when the profession is viewed so differently from one country to another, Downey said.

The two started researching the topic to gather material for students in their Engineering Cultures course at Virginia Tech, which seeks to identify and value others' perspectives. Their
research is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The deal announced last month for Dassault Systèmes to purchase MatrixOne Inc. brings together two well-known names in computer-aided design and product lifecycle management.

Dassault is best known for its SolidWorks 3-D CAD and Catia product definition management software. It also sells two collaborative PLM tools, Enovia and Smarteam. MatrixOne provides Web-based collaborative PLM software.

The companies' products are seen as offering different capabilities to different markets.

Dassault's customers tend to be large manufacturers, especially in the aerospace and automotive arenas. MatrixOne supplies more than 850 companies, primarily in the high-tech, consumer packaged goods, and medical device industries.

Michael Burkett, vice president of Boston-based AMR Research Inc., compared Enovia with MatrixOne.

Burkett, a former mechanical engineer, said Dassault created its Enovia PLM offering to help engineers collaborate and manage CAD-based projects. "It handles the work flow and change management," he said. "If five guys working on an auto mirror all pull out the model at the same time, Enovia is intelligent enough to track all of the changes to all of the versions."

MatrixOne "lets users design unique work flows for business approvals," Burkett said. "It also lets them build intelligence into product definitions, so if you're building a regulated product like a medical device, you follow the correct approval process."

Ken Amann, research director of CIMdata Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich., said that MatrixOne software supports compliance in regulated industries, which is one reason it has developed a following among medical device makers. It also features a robust dynamic data model that users can update without shutting down, Amann said.

The purchase, for $408 million cash, is to be completed by the end of the second quarter of this year. MatrixOne, with 488 employees, had total revenues of $124.1 million for the fiscal year ended July 2, 2005, but had not turned a profit in more than three years.

Dassault has promised "synergies" worth $7 million in 2006 and $25 million in 2007. "We're positive about this deal, but the caveats we have are about how Dassault integrates MatrixOne into its offerings and where those cuts will come from," Amann said.

A trade association representing companies in the insulation business is trying to bring its message to mechanical engineers,
so the group has prepared presentations that it's offering as programs for meetings of ASME sections and a few other organizations.

According to the group, the National Insulation Association, headquartered in Alexandria, Va., the programs address technical questions about the engineering and maintenance of mechanical insulation. The talks also discuss ways to calculate the value of insulating piping, pressure vessels, and other mechanical systems. The association will also distribute software to calculate energy gains and losses and return on investment.

The presenter, Ron King, a past president of the association, said the presentations will be an hour long, but can be expanded to 90 minutes. The content qualifies each program as a professional development hour for engineers who attend.

King had two meetings in Texas in March. His schedule includes one with the Chicago Section on June 9 and another with the Central Pennsylvania Section on Oct. 10.

A company in Buffalo, N.Y., WSF Industries Inc., has received certification from China as an approved manufacturer of pressure vessels for use as components of equipment shipped into China. WSF is a manufacturer of ASME Code-approved autoclaves, retorts, and pressure vessels for a variety of industrial applications.

Delphi Corp. of Troy, Mich., has announced a new line of remanufactured engine control modules and powertrain control modules for the independent automotive aftermarket.

More than 100 suppliers from the fastener industry are expected to demonstrate their latest technologies and services to 20,000 buyers at the 2006 International Fastener Technology Exhibition for China (Fastener China 2006) in Shanghai from Sept. 25-28.

Flomerics Inc. of Marlborough, Mass., will sell the T3Ster and other thermal testing products gained through its acquisition of MicReD Ltd. of Budapest, Hungary.

CD-adapco of New York has released Star-Cat5, a flow and simulation tool for Catia version five from Dassault Systèmes of Paris. The software includes product-lifecycle-management capabilities.

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