Tablet pellets help reduce power bill in steel plants

RANCHI: A team of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has developed a steel-making model which helps reduce energy consumption. After conducting the research on various aspects of steel making, the team has concluded that if companies use tablet pellets in their furnace, they can effectively bring down energy consumption.

A member of the IIT team from Kharagpur, Manish Kumar Sharma, shared the findings during a three-day international conference on Energy Efficiency in Steel Industry (EESI-2011) that was inaugurated here at the Ispat Bhawan. It was inaugurated by SAIL chief director (personnel and technical) B B Singh.

"After conducting a series of tests, we have arrived at a conclusion that tablet pellets are the best and activation energy is 1,000 degree Celsius against 1,200-1,300 degree Celsius in case of other forms of pellets," said Sharma. The tablet pellets are better than sphere or cylinder pellets.

"We have successfully completed the prototype tests in a rotary hearth furnace. In the next phase, tests will be done on a large scale to check commercial viability," he added.

At present, the iron and steel industry accounts for around 15% energy consumption in India. Energy accounts for around 35-40% of the cost of production in Indian steel industry.

Vice-president of the Illinois-based LanzaTech Prabhakar Nair appreciated the steps taken by research and development institutions all over the world. "There is immense pressure all over the world to bring down energy consumption, especially in the wake of growing demand to cut carbondioxide emission. I hope that in near future, these steps will bring down energy consumption in steel making," said Nair.

Former scientific advisor to the Union government V S Arunachalam delivered a lecture on "curtailing carbondioxide: Challenges and opportunities in steel industry".

Various companies including Jindal Steel and Power Limited, JSW Steel Limited, LanzaTech, Earth Tekniks, Precision Engineering, Technical also exhibited their products at an exhibition organized at the venue. More than 15 foreign experts from Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia and USA along with 200 delegates from India are participating in the conference.

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Aakash tablet goes on sale for Rs 2500 online

Datawind has put up for sale about 30,000 tablets online at a price of Rs 2500 each, with a delivery period of seven days.

NEW DELHI: Datawind, the maker of theworld's cheapest tablet has put up for sale about 30,000 tablets online at a price of Rs 2500 each, with a delivery period of seven days.

The seven inch tablet with Android 2.2 is now available through its portal aakashtablet.com. "We have put up on sale about 30,000 tablets online, which will have a cash on delivery of 7 days. We have achieved pre-sale orders of about 400,000 tablets from individuals and corporates. But current supplies will only be limited for individual buyers," Datawind CEO and founder Suneet Singh Tuli told ET.

Aakash's next commercial version called the Ubislate 7, which has a faster processor, is slated to be launched late January. Ubislate 7 is set to have a 700 Mhz processor compared to the 366 MHz processor in Aakash. Ubislate 7 will be priced at Rs 3000 for sale online.

Datawind though seems to be struggling with customer service issues for online retail, even though the sale is only for a limited number of tablets.

According to sources, the Indian government is also planning to provide a new specification for Aakash, which may come with a faster processor and better battery life. The current version ofAakash has a battery life of about 1.5 hours. An email to the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, which is supplying the tablets to schools and colleges remained unanswered.

The government till now procured only 10,000 tablets. It has still not procured the remaining 90,000 tablets for distribution in schools and colleges, even as other nations have expressed interest to the government for similar low-cost computing initiatives.

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The Best Laptop For Music?

Wanna go mobile with a powerful recording machine? Yes, the best laptop for music production... they do exist but you need to make sure you get the right one. I know them all, good and bad so hear me out.

Lots of people are going mobile these days and I did the same thing a while ago... I left my big old desktop computer for a sleek brand new laptop, it was a Mac Powerbook to be exact.

It used to be that if you were serious about recording in your home studio on a computer you pretty much had to go with a tower, or desktop to get enough power to run your audio recording software program. Well, over the last few years some manufactures have really put some effort into getting that same power that was only found on the big towers into their laptops and some of those have even made specialized models specifically for music production.

Now when I talk about the best laptop for music I don't mean one that has a great pair of heavy duty built-in speakers to crank up your mp3's! We are talking about the best laptop for music production so let's take a peak under the hood shall we?

You can't spend $500 on the same computer a school kid does and expect to have a powerful enough recording machine. A typical laptop these days might have something like this:

• Intel core i3 2.26 GHz processor
• 4GB of RAM
• SATA 5400 RPM Hard Drive
• 14" Display

And almost no external ports other than a few USB ports. Compare those specs to something like the Roc Box Laptop made by PCAudioLabs:

• Intel Core i5 2.40GHz (520) Processor
• up to 8GB of RAM
• SATA2 7200rpm Hard Drive
• 15.6" Display

And as far as external ports which are very necessary in your studio... 1 eSATA port, 2 Firewire 400 ports, 3 USB ports, 2 channel HD audio with 3D stereo enhanced sound system.

The most important differences here are very key things that you'll notice when recording...

Slightly faster processor, double the RAM (this is huge), the Hard Drive speed of 7200 is mandatory for most recording software programs, and of course the extra ports, most importantly Firewire. The PCAudioLab Rok Box Mobile Laptop HD Computer rivals some of the Rok Box desktop models which were also designed specifically with music production in mind.

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LCD TV Technology

The abbreviation for LCD is Liquid Crystal Display and this LCD technology provides low power requirements and less weight. LCD screens can also be used as computer monitors. Each pixel in LCDs emit light of intensity for a time period of 20 ms and it typically takes 12 to 25 ms to switch to next stage.

The response time can be shortened by using the over driving technique and by the panel design. They also act as a good component for playing video games. The older LCD models had a ghosting problem and the response time is shortened by the manufacturers as 2ms for computer monitors and 8 ms for LCD displays.

This technology is based of the function of polarized light. Two thin laminated polarized sheets are attached to the glass having a very thin layer of liquid crystal. It has 2 regular dimensional grids of electrodes, which allows every pixel in an array to be activated and selected individually.

The LCD technology is used in large screen televisions with active matrix addressing in combination. Earlier LCD models had a low end technology when compared to large screen plasma televisions. But now, the LCD TVs are able to provide a high end performance.

Currently, sixth generation panels are introduced by branded manufacturers like Sharp Corporation, LG display, Sony and Samsung. The 65 inch panel was first introduced by Sharp in 2004. Then Samsung introduced 82 inch panel in 2005, 100 inch panel by LG Electronics in 2006 and 108 inch panel by Sharp in 2007.

The High Definition LCD TV was introduced by Silicon Mountain as Allio in 2008 which is integrated with a Blu-ray player. In the future, many plans of dollar investments for LCD production have been announced by the manufacturers. So these LCD televisions will definitely make a key product in the market.

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