Chemical Engineering Insights Essay #2: High Performance Outdoor Clothing Material

            The Cover Story for the October 5, 2009 publication of Chemical & Engineering News was an article entitled, Materials for Adventure. It deals with the manufacture of high-performance materials for the outdoors apparel. This type of apparel has created a very specialized niche in the market, where brand names that the customers associate with are not necessarily the clothing line itself, but rather the material that went into its production. The textile market is an ever-changing and highly competitive place, where breakthroughs in technology are continuously used to create the newest sportswear.

            The article begins by retelling a hiking story of Todd Rutledge, a mountain guide in Alaska, where he decided to take a dangerous route that took 18 hours. This was to set the stage and show just how necessary it is to have high-performance materials in the clothing. These pieces of clothing are much more complex than they have ever been before. They have to be able to keep the person warm while wicking away sweat, they also have to be light and resistant to wear. The search for these materials is what drives the market.

            Unlike the apparel market, which is often based on its appearance, and not its functionality, the active wear market hasn’t been affected by the recession much. The $9 billion a year industry is fueled by customers who are always looking for the next best thing. The brand names of the materials are part of the reason the clothing sells, and it takes innovation to gain a spot in the supply chain of the major clothing lines. One such company that the article talks about is Invista, whose main products are Coolmax® and Thermolite®, both made of polyester and are the base layer closest to the skin. The properties of these materials have been engineered for comfort. Modeled after the insulating hairs of many mammals, Thermolite has a hollow core to keep the warmth in, where Coolmax is a fast-wicking fiber with a cross section designed for air permeability and fast evaporation of moisture due to sweat.

            The article then goes on to explain Invista’s stronger, more durable fiber called Cordura which prevents the clothing or gear from falling apart during extreme use. Cordura is made by extruding and texturing polyester or nylon in a proprietary manner. This fiber is then shipped to a fabric mill to be woven, and then to a facility that will cut and sew it into the desired piece, then all the materials must be sent to yet another facility which will assemble them into the final product. Even though Invista is far down the supply chain and several steps removed from the final product, it is still the name recognized on the tag of the coat or whatever it may be.

            There is a need for all these new materials and the continuous research. The military is very large customer of these companies and it has very strict guidelines. The current polyester shirts that, when subjected to an explosion, can cause third degree burns when the heat generated is greater than its melting point. Invista’s answer was a lightweight nylon and cotton shirt that wouldn’t melt, is quick-drying and has undergone a silver based treatment that would prevent odors.

            The breadth of specialization that the materials have is astounding, some clothes for athletes have sun protection properties on the outside, while wick away sweat and allow for air diffusion on the inside. New material such as active fibers and phase change materials will make a huge impact on the thermal properties of clothing and the outer durability of it as well. The phase change material uses capsules of paraffin wax or some other material that has a melting point between 5°C and 30°C so that when the body starts to cool down the material solidifies and releases heat, alternately, when the body heats up beyond a point, the material melts and absorbs that heat. This should keep the body at an comfortable temperature at all times. The future of the active wear clothing is in the PCM’s and nanomaterial that can change its physical or electrical properties whenever the time arises. Clothing made with shear-thickening fluid can harden on impact which might have military use, would be unnecessarily heavy for the hiker.

            The article then goes on to talk about Jeff Nash, the director for materials development and testing for North Face, and how he also has strict guidelines for any new material. North face has its own testing grounds and will extensively test a new material before implementing it into its clothing line. Many materials that worked great in a lab setting fail when it comes to real life testing. Such is the case for PCM’s and most active fiber materials out there today, mainly with the material not adapting well to periods of high activity and then sudden rest times. Once these problems are fixed it could provide near perfect thermal control.

            The next challenge for the industry is to make their production more “green”, eco-products are gaining a lot of attention these days and by trying to be eco-friendly they will reduce costs significantly. The production of many of these specialized fibers and materials requires the use of highly toxic chemicals that sometimes remain in the environment for thousands of years. The production of “green” materials is a rapidly increasing business and the benefits greatly outweigh the cost in fixing facilities and improving the processes.

            The active wear clothing market relies heavily upon the advances in chemistry and chemical engineering, for they are manipulating the structure and properties on a molecular level to achieve results which can do so many things. It is truly incredible just how much technology is in a high-end sports shirt. Multiple layers of complex materials, woven in a specific pattern, and treated with certain dyes or laminates that alter the way the shirt reacts with the environment all go into the production of a simple shirt. That simple shirt is now light, wicks-away sweat, protects from the sun’s UV rays, and has an antimicrobial property to keep it from stinking even after strenuous exercise while wearing it. It’s a pretty incredible step away from the simple wool, cotton or silk clothes being worn a couple hundred years ago.

            It’s hard to say where the ideal is that the industry is striving for, each sector desires something different and special for that environment. The military needs those types of shirts for use in hot climates, but they can’t melt when exposed to an IED, but the military needs another, much more specialized type of clothing on top of that, body armor. Hikers need clothing and gear that’s light, insulating, waterproof, and moisture-wicking, and a multitude of other constraints. It’s these constraints which keeps the industry evolving, ever searching for a better material to solve all the problems and offer the customer the most comfortable and reliable piece of clothing. 

Nature Valley Commercial Critique

Commercials serve one purpose in today’s world, and that is to sell something to a target audience. Corporations spend millions of dollars trying to craft the perfect ad that will stick in the consumer’s head and maybe persuade them enough to buy the product. That product can be anything; it doesn't even have to be consumer goods, ideologies and agendas are sold just the same way through a visual argument presented to every eyeball glued to the T.V screen. The same can be said for General Mill’s ad promoting Nature Valley Oats N’ Honey granola bars. A fairly short ad that doesn't scream, “Buy our product!” but is effective in its use of location, actress and music. The subtle nuances of these elements are what make it a compelling visual argument without giving the viewer any information about the product itself. The question that needs to be asked is how honest is this advertisement about its product and the company that manufactures it, and what were the driving forces behind making an ad such as this.

The commercial starts out with a shot of a beautiful blond haired woman looking at the perfectly opened Nature Valley Bar with a contented smile on her face, wind gently blowing her hair and she takes a small bite, smiling while she chews. The golden sun shining on her perfect skin is the pinnacle of health, she is almost radiating health as she enjoys a “100% Natural” Oats N’ Honey bar. The camera then circles her face to show the evergreen trees and rugged mountains behind her as it finally gets over her shoulder and pulls back to show the beautiful Montana mountain range she’s gazing upon. As the camera pulls out further it the scene is shown to be embedded in a granola bar that is drawing its ingredients together and finally is wrapped up in its iconic green wrapper as the words “The energy bar nature intended” scrolls along the bottom. This quick and effective visual display of natural beauty was coupled with the soothing narration of a woman’s voice and the repeating electric guitar chords from the song Live Spark by Andrew Britton that gives the sense of accomplishment or possibly emphasizes the sex appeal of the model in the scene.

The main point of this ad is that eating a Nature Valley bar brings you closer to nature, because it uses 100% natural ingredients and that it’s a healthy choice. They are trying to appeal to the 20-30 something year olds who enjoy the outdoors or those who wish they could. By using the beautiful blonde model Nina Bergman they are trying to show that you can be as beautiful and healthy as she is by eating the bars. That is another point of disingenuous, there is no possible way that a nature valley bar can be eaten as portrayed, it would crumble and crunch, require a good deal of jaw movement and not many people can chew a crunchy brick-like bar such as these with a Mona Lisa smile on their face the entire time.

 The nutritional value of the bar is clearly implied by the actress used, but the overall feeling of consuming a Nature Valley bar is given by the location used and words said by the narrator. It is marketed as the natural energy bar to be enjoyed while hiking mountains, biking through forests ect. By show the majestic mountains of Montana they are appealing to the aspirations of a generation of independent and environmentally conscious Americans. There is no logic or real reasoning behind the idea that Nature valley bars bring you closer to nature, only the ambiguous title of being “100% Natural” and the marriage between the images of nature and eating the granola bar. It is this vague sense of organic-ness that sells the bar. There are many granola bars on the market, all with varying levels of industrial production involved, but the name Nature Valley is clearly trying very hard to appear to be the most nutritional and environmental conscious choice. How natural or nutritious these bars are is the real question that should be going through the minds of anyone viewing this commercial.

As to whether or not these granola bars are bad for the consumer is fairly subjective, it depends on how thorough they want to be about all the ingredients and manufacturing processes that are involved with the bar. Compared to a regular candy bar, the Nature Valley bar is a healthy choice, with only 190 calories per package, but most consumers will be sitting around, not hiking the mountains, while eating the bars. Therefore it’s misleading to market these as health bars, as respites from the modern office grind as they do in other commercials, for any extra calories while being sedentary will lead to weight gain. It does not matter whether or not these are “100% Natural” calories or artificial calories, the body doesn't know the difference. There is a difference in the terms however, a very subtle but important difference.

As Monica Eng outlined in her article for the Chicago Tribune entitled, “Organic vs. Natural a source of confusion in food labeling”, the use of the term Natural to describe a food product is directly related to the company’s desire to cash in on the growth of the Organic market while simultaneously offering a slightly cheaper version that seems the same. In her article she describes the actions of dairy company Dean Farms, which chose to roll out a new line of “Natural” yogurt. The reason that this action is seen as regressive is because the company previously had a line of organic products but the Natural brand name was a cheaper solution that would bring in more profits while devaluing the farmers that have to struggle with all the FDA regulations concerning the label of Organic.

The owner and distributor of Nature Valley is of course General Mills, the sixth largest food company in the world which markets the bars as a better-for-you snack and as such has seen their sales of said bars increase by 15 percent in 2010. This is representative of the whole foods and whole grain health fad that has gripped the Baby Boomers and Millennial’s. Nature Valley Bars have been marketed as the healthier choice for people who want to be active since its inception, but it has really found a niche now that the organic market has increased to $46 billion by 2007, when this Nature Valley commercial came out.  The term “natural” is largely defined by the producer themselves and not by the FDA. So the sources that the ingredients are derived from may be “natural” but their production still involved the use of tons of pesticides, herbicides, possibly GMO crops and other non-organic products.

Willer, Helga; Kilcher, Lukas (2009). the organic world homepage "The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends". Bonn; FiBL, Frick; ITC, Geneva: IFOAM.

Society's Grand Challenges. A simple introductory freshman class assignment.

            

The challenges facing society today are many in number and great in difficulty. We live in a world beset on all sides by the threats that climate change, pollution, disease, poverty and many more. In almost all cases it was humanity’s great strides in technology and knowledge that caused these problems and in the 21^st century it shall be our advances in such fields that solve these grand challenges. The role of the engineer will be paramount in each sector, and chemical engineers will be in a unique position. The most talked about and important challenge is of course climate change due to global warming and emission of CO₂, a problem that involves a fair amount of chemistry will need a chemical engineer to solve it. There is another situation that has both been one of humanity’s greatest achievements and, as current research now begins to show, one of the most polluting elements introduced to the Earth. That element is nitrogen. Without nitrogen the Green revolution never would have occurred, but its overuse has contributed to many of the grand challenges we face today.

            The problem isn’t that nitrogen is overly toxic to life, it makes up 78% of the air we breathe, 3% of our own bodies and is essential to all legumes in the world; the problem is the way it’s been used so extensively and carelessly. Fritz Haber discovered the way to transform the abundant nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into ammonia in 1909 and 20 years later Carl Bosch developed the industrial scheme commonly known as the Haber-process, this transformed the agricultural landscape. Factories started churning out ton after ton of ammonia-based fertilizer and the global population skyrocketed from 1.6 billion to 6 billion in one century. One of the most significant advancements in public health has come with a high price as most of the reactant nitrogen that is made, both as fertilizer and from the combustion of fossil fuels does not make it into the food we eat. It runs off into the rivers and streams or into the atmosphere where it causes both ozone depletion and global warming. The algae blooms that are an everyday sight cause coastal dead zones as all the oxygen its absorbed, and new indications are pointing at nitrogen as a contributor to a higher incidence of deadly human diseases like malaria and Schistosomiasis.

            The nitrogen cycle that is causing problems starts when the nitrogen produced during fossil fuel combustion combines with water in the atmosphere to form nitric acid rain. This then joins the nitrogen runoff from over fertilized farms and human/animal waste in streams and rivers which feeds microscopic plants. These plants consume oxygen as they decompose forming dead zones. The excess nitrogen is also limiting biodiversity. When its added to a plant, the plant grows, but when excess nitrogen is added to a plant that isn’t used to an environment so rich in nutrients, other plants grow faster, killing off the weaker one. A normal person might not care if a rare plant dies, but new research is showing that elevated nitrate concentrations in drinking water can cause cancer, multiple heart problems, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. In the atmosphere reactive nitrogen combines to form ground-level ozone as nitric oxide or nitrogen dioxide. These compounds are both a significant greenhouse gas and extremely damaging to plant tissues, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars in crops each year. When it forms N₂O it becomes the most powerful greenhouse gas, 300 times more so then a molecule of CO­_2. Its concentrations in the atmosphere represent the equivalent to 10% of CO₂ contribution.

            The challenge in this case is just how essential reactive nitrogen has become in our society. Without fertilizers the world would never be able to support its current population, and nitrogen aerosols counteract global warming by reflecting incoming radiation. 400 billion pounds of reactive nitrogen is produced annually, twice the amount naturally produced by nitrogen-fixing bacteria and volcanoes. So what technological advances can limit the negative effects while boosting the positive?

            The first step would be to eliminate the excess reactive nitrogen produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The use of NO_x scrubbers in smokestacks could reduce emissions greatly. A much more effective tool at removing nitrites and nitrates from waste water is through the use of biological synthesis and nitrification, ion exchange, air and steam stripping and chlorination. These processes make use of natural aerobic bacteria to decompose ammonia and other compounds found in waste water. This process is useful when dealing with animal and human wastes but the effects of over fertilization are harder to manage from a chemical engineering standpoint. Current research into much more effective fertilizers and the delivery system to the plants roots is the most promising in reducing the nitrogen pollution. Current views on fertilizer are more is better, but with the new methods of delivery, denoted the 4R’s; right source, time, rate and place, the need to use excessive amounts is diminishing.

            Chemical engineering paved the way for the production of 400 billion pounds of reactive nitrogen each year and its usage has greatly improved the quality of life for billions of people, but its negative aspects must also be addressed by chemical engineering in the future. Advancements in fertilizers and farming techniques will go hand in hand to solving this problem. Along with new treatment facilities using nitrification, suspended growth systems and ion exchange systems can prevent the nitrogen compounds from entering municipal water supplies. Unlike the problem of CO₂ emissions, we can’t just stop the usage of nitrogen. This is why it’s an even greater challenge for society to face because it is so essential to the survival of our current populations. One of the easiest ways chemical engineering could help solve this problem is to produce effective fertilizers cheaper, so that poor countries stricken by famine can feed their populations, while rich nations limit the use of fertilizers and instead make use of genetically engineered crops resistant to disease.  Solving the grand challenges of air pollution, water pollution, global warming, poverty, and quality of life will require society to critically evaluate the current use of nitrogen if a sustainable use of the chemical in the future is possible.

References:

1)      Adams, E Carl Jr. “Removing Nitrogen from Waste Water”  Environ. Sci. Technol., 1973, 7 (8), pp 696–701

2)      Howarth, Robert W., Townsend, Alan R. “Fixing the Global Nitrogen Problem”

Scientific American February 2010.  64-71

Introducing, College Essays!

So I graduated from college, got a degree in Chemical Engineering and I'm fucking bored. So I might as well start dumping some of my college essays on this blog. Maybe I'll make a new blog for the more sciencey ones. Oh well, hope someone gets some use out of this!