Technology Alerts

One of the best things you can do for your colleagues is to produce a periodic technology alert that you send to a small but highly targeted group within your organization.

As a library researcher for Aramco Services, which serves its parent Saudi Aramco, I produced a weekly technology alert that focused on areas of interest to engineers and scientists within the Saudi Aramco enterprise. The Desulfurization blog you are reading now is a modified version of the original concept.

In the Alert, I provided a few sentences that described the content of each article profiled within the alert. I also invited those who received the alert to contact me by return email if they wanted the full text of any of the items in the Alert.

Designing the Alert in this way provided several benefits …
1) It saved valuable time on the part of the engineers and scientists.
2) It saved money. Because I spent my time searching, they spent their time doing the work for which they were paid the big bucks. This resulted in strategic cost savings for the Saudi Aramco enterprise.
3) It enabled compliance with copyright. Because I was not mounting the full text of copyright protected articles on the Intranet, we did not have to spend large amounts of money on licensing fees. At the same time, as participants in the OCLC Interlibrary Loan system, we were able to provide a single copy of an article to a specific individual. In addition, as participants in the Copyright Clearance Center, we demonstrated a good faith effort to comply with copyright.
4) The feedback which resulted from requests for articles guided me in the production of future editions of the Alert.

Here is an example of the type of article I might have profiled …

Microbiology 154 (2008), 2169-2183
Review
Biocatalytic desulfurization (BDS) of petrodiesel fuels
Ghasemali Mohebali1 and Andrew S. Ball2
1 Department of Petroleum Biotechnology, Biotechnology Research Center, Research Institute of Petroleum Industry, Tehran, Iran
2 School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia
Correspondence: Ghasemali Mohebali (mohebaligh@ripi.ir)

The world is on the road to zero-sulfur fuel., Hydrodesulfurization (HDS) is the most common technology used by refineries to remove sulfur from intermediate streams. HDS has several disadvantages, however.

• HDS is energy intensive
• HDS is costly to install and to operate
• HDS does not work well on refractory organosulfur compounds.

Recent research focuses on the development of alternative technologies. One possible approach is biocatalytic desulfurization (BDS). BDS can be operated in conditions that require less energy and hydrogen. BDS operates at ambient temperature and pressure with high selectivity, resulting in decreased energy costs, low emission, and no generation of undesirable side products.

This review examines the developments in the understanding of bacteria in BDS processes, assesses the technical viability of this technology and examines its future challenges.

View the full text of this article at …
http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/154/8/2169

We can help you set up a Technology Alert custom made for your target audience. Contact research@JeanSteinhardtConsulting.com for details.