“Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?” -- Bill Watterson (American Author of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, b.1958)
NPR-National Public Radio (www.npr.org) is my preferred source for general news. A couple of days ago it surprised me … it featured a piece on ResearchGATE (www.researchgate.com) – a social network aimed specifically at research scientists.
To quote from the NPR piece …
“A few years ago, while he was doing research at Harvard, Ijad Madisch could not figure out why his experiment wasn't working. His adviser didn't know what was wrong, nobody in his lab worked on the same stuff, and none of his researcher friends could help … That's when Madisch got the idea for a scientist network: ResearchGate — a sort of Facebook for scientists. Instead of sharing favorite photos and videos, researchers could use the Web platform to connect with each other and share information that doesn't get published”
Lest you think, “Oh, God, not ANOTHER way to waste my time,” Google® this …
Researchgate desulfurization
One interesting result, from ConocoPhillips, is …
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Unraveling heavy oil desulfurization chemistry: targeting clean fuels
ConocoPhillips Company, Bartlesville Technology Center, Bartlesville, Oklahoma 74004, USA.
Environmental science & technology. 04/2008; 42(6):1944-7.
Abstract
The sulfur removal chemistry of heavy oils has been unraveled by systematically investigating several heavy oils with an extremely wide range of properties. The heavy oil feed and product properties have been characterized by advanced analytical methods, and these properties have been related to the sulfur conversion data observed in pilot hydrotreating units. These studies coupled with kinetic treatment of the data have revealed that the desulfurization chemistry of heavy oils is essentially controlled by the strongly inhibiting three and larger ring aromatic hydrocarbon content and surprisingly not by the content of the "hard-to-remove" sulfur compounds. Such enhanced understanding of the heavy oil sulfur removal is expected to open new avenues for catalyst/process optimization for heavy oil desulfurization and thereby assist the efficent production of clean transporation fuels.
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Today’s tip to serious desulfurization researchers: Join ResearchGATE.
Another tip: add the Desulfurization Blog (www.desulf.blogspot.com) as a feed to your homepage.
Research Gate has disciplines like Law, Religious Studies, History, Literature, etc. I know not when these became science.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there are far too many amateurs and non-researchers posting stupid things on Research Gate. It's just a big waste of time.