Is less better?
Dr. Selim Erhan | TLT From the Editor November 2021
Revisiting and reevaluating old knowledge is always a worthwhile endeavor.
Sometimes, like a forgotten piece of furniture, we find products and molecules that have been waiting in some corner.
Last year I moved to a new house and, in the process, was able to consolidate and eliminate many items—like most of us do on such occasions. After all was done and settled, I was able to enjoy being able to reach whatever I needed. I reorganized my belongings with more thought and eliminated items I knew from experience that I would not need. There were opportunities to evaluate functions and move to better solutions!
Isn’t this also true in formulations? Every time a formula is reworked due to an obsolete raw material or a new one that brings higher performance, there is usually a need to rebalance the formula. Usually this is done with additions. Perhaps a bit more coupler, maybe some more water or some emulsifier? These formulas keep growing through the years. Chemists change, notes telling why there had been a change are seldom found and the chemists keeps adding on. However, this is not always the best solution! There are times when some additives can be reduced to give much better results. A bit of reorganizing and getting rid of some unused additives opens more space to breathe. It is interesting to observe that molecules and atoms behave like humans! They like their comfort zone, space to move and a comfortable place to sit. At molecular levels, the behavior becomes more physical, and lines between chemistry and physics start to blur. With fewer molecules, movement is less restricted, and there is space to attach on surfaces, space to rearrange an uncomfortable position and less entanglement that results in better performance and quicker reactions. Of course, if oversimplified, the results will be noticeable too, but this line is worth a thought.
Sometimes, like a forgotten piece of furniture, we find products and molecules that have been waiting in some corner. As more and more people get into technology, naturally there is an increasing amount of research, and new products appear all over the world. Unfortunately, there is little time or budget to look at all of them. So, they sit in publications and company archives. Unlike furniture, though, molecules are always in good shape and ready to go! They never get old. So, it is not a bad idea to look at literature, look at those articles we saved a few years back, and, who knows, the solution may be lying in our reach! It will be worthwhile for companies and research centers to invest some research money in digitalizing articles and books to enable web searches. It will be much cheaper than new research.
Coming back to human dimensions, like past research becoming viable in the future, I recently had an idea in attracting the attention of younger generations who, naturally, focus on the future. Like past research becoming viable in the present, older generations have very valuable information to pass on, especially in experience! While I was thinking about how to best pass this information, I realized that, actually, we are from their future! As people’s needs and actions do not change very much with time, and as parents, we have similar genes, and we know what our children will be going through in 10, 20 or 30 years! So, in fact, when we talk, we are a voice from their future—a resource lying in their reach like those articles and books!
Happy hunting!
Dr. Selim Erhan is director of business development for Process Oils Inc. in Trout Valley, Ill. You can reach him at serhan@processoilsinc.com.