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Accepta Newsletter: Issue 1

A message from Nigel Richardson, CEO of Accepta;
"Welcome to our first newsletter, we hope you find the articles we've included in this inaugural edition informative. You'll also find versions of each article plus much more in the 'Knowledge' area of our web site www.accepta.com.

If you'd like to comment on any of the issues raised, make suggestions for future articles or suggest ways in which we can improve this service please contact us.

Articles in issue 1:

• Chemical Odour Control - Masking or Neutralisation (Free samples available)
• Improving the Efficiency of Reverse Osmosis Units
• Inside B2B - The Basics of B2B

Chemical Odour Control - Masking or Neutralisation ?
How many times have you been to a site, for example an animal rendering
plant, chicken factory, landfill site, or effluent plant and thought that it
was about time they found out how to overcome the smell? Well, by
understanding the problem you can at least identify what types of products
may be helpful in overcoming this problem. It's even rumoured that the Queen has the local Windsor effluent plant close when she's in residence at Windsor Castle due to the smell!

There are basically three elements that cause most smells; nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, and all of them can be found everywhere. Fortunately not all smells are bad, those containing oxygen are usually sweet whilst those with nitrogen and sulphur usually foul.

The parent compound of the nitrogen is normally ammonia, found in all manner of household and industrial compounds such as glass cleaners and smelling salts. Whilst pungent, ammonia is not normally considered foul unlike organic derivatives of ammonia. Amines such as dimethylamine and trimethylamine give rise to fishy smells, and higher amines; tetra and penta-methylenes arise from the putrifaction of flesh. Ammonia derivatives are also associated with pet urine.

Sulphurous smells are normally associated with rotten eggs and organic derivatives such as butyl mercaptan with animals such as the skunk.

In order to detect odours the responsible compound needs to be volatile and therefore be dispersed in the air we breathe. Once airborne the compound can stimulate the olfactory glands in the nose and cause a number of complex reactions resulting in what we know as smell. With some compounds only a few molecules may be needed to cause this reaction, whilst others are capable of blocking smells when in high concentrations and become no longer detectable above certain levels. This in fact is very dangerous as it may be a lethal compound such as Hydrogen Sulphide.

Many odours are formed by dead and decaying matter and during the process of decay the organic material breaks down into other, volatile, compounds giving rise to the smell.

Odours can be controlled in 2 different ways, by masking or by neutralisation.

Masking is the concept behind air fresheners in that a pleasant smell is introduced in high enough concentrations to mask the unpleasant smell. The nose then only detects the pleasant smell that gives rise to a fresh smell. The only downside to this approach is that the bad smell is not removed but stays in the background and any masking may need to be continually repeated to hide the smell.

Neutralisation is the process that nullifies the odour-producing chemical, including those persistently produced. During this process the specially formulated odour control agent is atomised and absorbs the odour-producing compound, neutralising the compound. The result is not just the elimination of the bad smell but a light and fresh smell to the location.

Nigel Richardson - April 2002

You'll find 2 excellent odour related products at accepta.com, Accepta 3525 - a masking product and Accepta 2050 - an excellent odour neutraliser.

*To receive your free sample click here and send us your details*

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Reverse Osmosis units have at their heart a membrane that if damaged reduces output, increases costs and gives poor water quality so it is important to keep it clean and operating efficiently. Most RO membranes are formed from hollow fibre or thin film composite sheets with the membrane allowing passage of pure water and rejecting the dissolved solids contained in the water.

As water passes along the membrane surface the solids concentration increases and some sparingly soluble salts start to exceed their solubility and precipitate. When precipitated onto the membrane surface this causes fouling that may reduce output and increase product water conductivity. The worst of these solids being calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate and so the prevention of their precipitation is vital if the membrane is to function efficiently.

The traditional way to prevent this was to "de-alkalise" the water using sulphuric acid to prevent calcium carbonate precipitation. However the acid is hazardous, increases the sulphates and increases the corrosivity of the water on both sides of the membrane. Reducing the recovery rate of the RO plant eliminated calcium sulphate but this reduces the efficiency of the plant and hence increases costs.

Effective membrane antiscalants therefore should be:

• Safe to handle and safe to use
• Good scale preventors
• Membrane compatible
• Effective across a wide pH range
• Compatible with other products
• Cost effective

It is also normal operating practice to keep residual iron levels in the RO feed water as low as possible, normally below a maximum set by membrane manufacturers. Precipitated iron is a membrane foulant and adversely affects the performance of many antiscalants.

With this in mind it is important to design chemical and maintenance programs that are capable of meeting all of the above to ensure problem free running together with low operating costs.

Should you need help in any of these areas please feel free to contact Accepta who can help provide the requirements needed to assist with the RO plant, maintain its efficiency and thus reduce costs and improve plant life expectancy.

Nigel Richardson - April 2002

To contact Accepta or learn more about their extensive product range click here.

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Pre-Internet
'B2B' is about increasing the efficiency of trade between organisations. Electronic Document Interchange systems (EDI), developed by the largest organisations, have been around for over 25 years and still involve many companies. However they were and are expensive, inflexible and proprietary. Major initiatives to increase internal efficiency and hence readiness to trade externally occurred first with Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) in the late 1980s and then with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) - essentially "software-wrapped BPR" - in the 1990s. The Millennium Bug (Y2K) created an opportunity - albeit an expensive one - to spring-clean the internal systems of mid and large size corporates.

Internet
Internet-based e-commerce began in the mid-90s with companies like FedEx, Cisco, Dell and GE. They focused on sales, customer service and procurement. Dell now generates more revenues online than McDonalds as a whole. Cisco generates $13.4bn of its sales online (84% of its total). Many-to-many public e-markets emerged at the end of the 1990s with software companies like Ariba, CommerceOne, Oracle, and independent companies such as Chemdex and PlasticsNet. Other products such as auctions (FreeMarkets) and deep industry communities (VerticalNet) were also appeared. As a cheap, flexible and universal network, the Internet offered the opportunity for smaller companies to get involved in e-commerce. Web technology promised real-time transaction processing and richer data exchange.

E-marketplaces offered dramatic efficiency benefits to both buyers and suppliers alike - a seemingly perfect win-win situation. Entrepreneurs, fuelled by huge sums of venture capital money, founded most of the e-marketplaces. Large corporates watched with increasing alarm as independent e-marketplaces proliferated. They saw a threat to their trading relationships. In 2000 they began to set up their own 'consortia' e-markets. The biggest example of this was Covisint, formed by Ford, GM and Daimler Chrysler.

Within 2 years 1500 independent e-markets emerged in nearly every conceivable industry sector across the world. In parallel 'consortia' started to mushroom. The number of independents is now dwindling rapidly as investors and managers lose patience. It appears the world is not yet ready to move online fast enough to provide the levels of on-line trading (known as liquidity) required. Some consortia are also struggling to develop viable business models. A number of powerful e-marketplaces are, however, likely to emerge in certain industry sectors.

Next phase
The one sure result of all this activity is that the large corporates are awake to the wider opportunities of B2B. For many, ERP systems have not delivered the ROI and flexibility they imagined. And now they are moving fast to e-enable existing systems and processes to increase operating efficiency. The largest companies piloted B2B projects heavily in 2000. Analysts predict major investment over the next few years in internet-based solutions to deepen relationships with trading partners. As the large corporates move from defence to offence in exploiting new eChannels, their supply chains will be forced to participate, creating new opportunities and threats for mid and small sized companies.

Article reproduced courtesy of NetMarkets Europe

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