Ordinarily, trucks have to travel up ramps to deliver coal to Krupp's crushing plants, but at the Rudnik Pljevlja mine, the plant is located in a specially dug hollow that is surrounded on three sides by concrete walls. This enables heavy trucks, capable of carrying 100 metric tons, to approach the hopper at ground level and unload material from three sides, a safer and speedier process than using ramps.

Installing this Krupp crushing plant in a hollow with concrete walls enables trucks to feed it from ground level, eliminating the need for ramps.

After coal is dumped into the crushing plant's 200-cubic-meter feed hopper, an apron conveyor delivers the coal to a Krupp H-BRN 20220 double-roll crusher. The rolls are 2,000 mm in diameter and are 2,200 mm long. Each roller is equipped with two 400-kilowatt electric motors that turn the massive components to crush the coal. A 30-meter-long belt conveyor transfers the crushed coal to the mine's existing conveying system for shipment.

The Rudnik Pljevlja crusher is able to reduce up to 2,400 metric tons of coal per day. Krupp engineers designed the steel structure of the crushing plant to accommodate hydraulic transport units that are attached to move the plant around the mine site as needed.

Newgold Inc., formed in 1993 as a precious metals mining company, has struck a deal to sell its last mine, at Relief Canyon in Nevada, 110 miles northeast of Reno.

Orion Resources & Exploration will buy the mine for $960,000. The deal, which was due to close June 15, is a stock swap in which Orion will pay in private shares of Newgold.

Orion uses Newgold's old headquarters in El Dorado Hills, Calif. Newgold is now based in Dallas.

Orion's president is Scott Dockter, who was Newgold's chairman until this spring. An executive said that Orion will not devote itself exclusively to mining, but declined to specify other possible lines of business. Dockter did not return phone calls.

Newgold plans to put money into Internet business-to-business and e-commerce ventures. It has begun to do business as Newgold.com, and expects to make the name change official when it comes up for a vote by stockholders.

Newgold says it has developed a business model that can shorten the time a startup needs to ready itself for an initial public stock offering.

In its form 10-K financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for 1997, the company said its business was developing gold and silver mining properties in the United States and that it was developing three sites, two in Nevada and one in California.

In its report for 1998, the description was in the past tense; its only property left was Relief Canyon, which had all but shut down. Mining had brought the company no revenues.

Newgold went public in November 1996, through a reverse merger with Warehouse Auto Centers, which was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

A plan to merge with an Internet company, Business Web Inc., was called off in December 1999. Newgold retains an interest in Business Web.

Thanks to its new rolling mill, SSAB Oxelösund now guarantees the thickness tolerance on rolled-plate sizes between 4 and 150 mm.

The mill uses two 11,200-kW motors to power the four high rollers. Between them the press pushes on steel with 10,000 tons of rolling force.

Anderson said the close tolerance steel is a boon to heavy-vehicle manufacturers because high-precision plates cut faster, weld better, and bend smoother. Spring-back from part to part varies less. For that matter, close tolerance plate assures strong parts that are trim as they can be. Designers can specify material close to theoretical limits and avoid tacking on big safety allowances, he added.

Preparation was the key to the speedy turnaround of the repair project. GE logistics personnel planned all the internal shop prerequisites and determined which combustion and turbine components would be needed for the repair project while the gas generator was en route to Miami. After the machine arrived at the 485,000-square-foot repair facility, a team of GE experts stripped the engine, replaced the failed components, and made other necessary corrections.

GE staff also conducted a stringent post-repair test to ensure that the Rolls-Royce Avon unit performed within its manufacturer's specifications before returning it to service. This involved using one of the facility's three thrust cells, capable of up to 100,000 pounds of thrust.

In addition, the Miami depot contacted a field engineer based in the United Arab Emirates who specializes in Rolls-Royce industrial aeroderivative support. The engineer oversaw the engine's reinstallation and recommissioning, and ensured that its critical power capacity was restored. This was confirmed by GE's client after the engine returned to service in the Middle East.

When either of the multipurpose foams is applied, it forms a film on hydrocarbons, and creates a thin gel on solvents and acids to prevent the risk of re-ignition or the release of gases and toxic fumes. Because either foam is effective when applied in concentrations of 3 percent in water, storage requirements are reduced. An additional benefit of Bio Newpol 3S is that its viscosity resembles that of water, allowing permanent and stable premixing with water.

The Bio For C foaming/wetting agent, in concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 0.6 percent in water, prevents forest fires from re-igniting.

The Bio For C is a foaming/wetting agent formulated so that when mixed with water in low concentrations of 0.1 to 0.6 percent, it will enable water to penetrate deeply into the wood of trees or houses. This speeds up the extinction of the fire and prevents it from re-igniting. Extinguishing fires more quickly reduces water damage in buildings, and enables fire fighting crews and equipment to return home faster.

A water/Bio For C mixture can effectively put water into burning wood within seconds. The new foams and the wetting agent are used by numerous French fire brigades; French chemical processing companies, including Atochem in Pierre-Benite and Aventis in Villefranche; car manufacturer Renault in Cleon; and uranium processor Cogema in Marcoule. Bio-Ex is currently marketing these new fire-fighting chemicals to North America.

Knowing the depth of condensate along the inside wall of a steam pipe is valuable in the process industries. From it, a plant operator can determine the ratio of water to vapor, he said.

Shedd's technique replaces a section of pipeline with transparent conduit, into which light from an LED shines. The light ray traverses undisturbed through both pipe and the fluid condensed on the inside wall. When the beam hits the interface between water and steam, however, as much as 20 percent of the light bounces back.

The reflected light forms a ring on the outside wall of the transparent tube, Shedd explained. The thicker the fluid film, the bigger the ring, he said. A CCD camera captures the image in digital form. A computer program then calculates film thickness to within ± 0.01 mm, he said.

To calibrate the instrument, Shedd measures the ring that is produced when the light shines against clean, dry pipe wall. Or, knowing one of three—the thickness of the wall, the refraction index of the wall, or the refraction index of the pipe—Shedd calibrates the instrument by calculation alone. Though lacking the accuracy of a system calibrated empirically, one calibrated formulaically is easier to plug into an existing steam line, Shedd added.

The Swedish Department of Defense Research Establishment in Stock-holm is simulating various Swedish Armed Forces scenarios in order to test ways of creating countermeasures against SAR.

The defense research establishment began its tests by simulating a scenario in which the SAR is jammed to prevent it from accurately reading objects on the ground. The establishment carried out a full-scale experiment using convincing dummy targets on the archipelago of southern Sweden. Researchers Per Hyberg and Fredrik Berefelt of the Defense Research Establishment found that large vessels could be totally concealed with the help of a jammer using specially shaped waveforms that had been generated in a software program called Matlab. The program is a mathematical modeling and analysis package developed by Comsol of Stockholm.

The researchers also wrote a large SAR signal-processing model using Matlab against which they could test different jammer waveforms. The researchers even found another defense use for the technology: to model tactical situations in which objects change as the situation continues. For example, an aircraft might change its performance in midair or might be equipped with a different guided missile than the one previously determined by radar. Their models show potential changes that might occur, which helps those in the defense department determine how to respond to each change.

But they've also created a broader application. The models show many different potential situations that occur during battle, and researchers, along with others in the Swedish Armed Forces, can determine ways of responding to each of them. For instance, Hyberg and Berefelt created mathematical software models of the potential outcomes that might result when aircraft discover enemy aircraft.

"What happens when one or more fighters encounter one or more enemy planes of different types?" Hyberg asked. "If you know beforehand what type of aircraft you're likely to encounter, you will also know what weapons the aircraft carries and—through simulations carried out in advance—how you will need to respond tactically."

The Hydraulic Institute in Parsippany, N.J., has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies in Washington to collaborate on initiatives that will encourage pump manufacturers and pump users to improve pump energy efficiency.

A Ford Motor Co. contract to design and manufacture control arms and stabilizer bar links went to TRW of Livonia, Mich. TRW will build the parts for Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators at plants in St. Catharines and Tillsonburg, Ontario, and Sterling Heights, Mich.

Stratos Global Corp. of Toronto will supply C-band satellite equipment and teleport services to PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. of Calgary, for exploratory drilling platforms off the coast of Nova Scotia.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is providing research funds to Davis Aircraft Products Co. of Bohemia, N.Y., for the development of an electromagnetic fuel oil pump for home heating systems. Davis will develop prototype piston pumps that could eventually save households $50 to $75 a year each on electric bills.

Intermagnetics General Corp. of Latham, N.Y., and the U.S. Department of Energy have signed a contract to cover the first phase of a three-year, $4.5 million project to commercialize the manufacturing process for second-generation high-temperature superconductors.

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