There are many benefits of traveling, especially traveling often. In fact, mention travel to just about anyone and notice a whole new demeanor come over them. People love things that make them feel young and happy and traveling usually tops the list. However, have you ever noticed how society as a whole is fixated on griping about the disadvantages of getting older? While complaining about our weight, changing looks, graying hair and increasing birthdays, people rarely choose to see the benefits of aging. But like any situation, the positives usually far outweigh the negatives; you just have to look through a new lens.Having experience under your belt brings with it a whole new set of advantages. For starters, experience brings increased knowledge of just about everything in life than you had before. You now know to slow down and take the time to enjoy yourself and others important to you – spouse, children, grandchildren, extended family and friends. Moreover, peer pressures lessen, society boundaries seem less rigid, goals become clearer, stability increases, people respect you more and the confidence that comes with reaching a certain age is priceless.Getting older in number doesn’t have to mean sitting around reminiscing about the “good old days.” The truth is that older doesn’t have to mean boring. In fact, keeping in mind these top five reasons traveling keeps you young will remind you why you should not only plan your next trip, but why becoming a travel addict should be in your future.1. Breaks up your daily routineTraveling provides a change of scenery. In today’s world where technology often replaces face-to-face interaction, traveling makes you get outdoors and tune in to humanity. Whether your days are filled with work, parenthood, grocery shopping or all three, a new setting will lend you the freedom you need to recreate yourself. No matter your stage in life, stepping away from your daily life keeps stress from taking over or boredom from creeping in.2. Relieves your stressTravel is necessary to our survival. The spontaneity and excitement of travel allows you to put petty frustrations in their rightful place. The physical and mental rejuvenation that accompanies traveling enables you to return to your daily routine with the energy and patience needed to deal with all your responsibilities. Spend your money on travel and prevent the buildup of stress that will make you throw your money away at the doctor’s office.3. Requires you to be active -physically and mentallyTraveling by its very nature makes you move. Whether you’re zip lining in Costa Rica, walking the streets in Rome or simply lying on the beach in Jamaica, you will be active. Most of us know that physical exercise is good for our general health, but physical exercise is also good for your brain. If you think you’re going to get smarter sitting in front of your computer or watching television, think again. It is said that our brain is a thinking organ that learns and grows by acting and interacting with the world. Mental stimulation improves brain function and protects against severe cognitive decline caused by disease. Most age-related losses in memory or motor skills simply result from mental and physical inactivity. In other words, use it or lose it. Why not use it by traveling?4. Provides education beyond books Traveling is not mere recreation, but education through experience. Travel captures things books can only describe. A traveler learns that there are numerous ways of thinking and more than one solution to a problem. Travel teaches that not everyone shares your beliefs and that other ways of doing things can work equally well. In issues from child-rearing to politics, travel rids you of the arrogance that comes with everyone believing they’re the best. In essence, traveling the globe makes you a lifelong learner.5. Brings spiritual healthTravel teaches humility. Travelers learn that all people in the world are basically alike. Language, customs and all exterior differences aside, we all share the basic desires and concerns. Travel makes us care about strangers and become comfortable with the unfamiliar. It makes it impossible to have a disregard for others. We become concerned for and respectful to all people. Ultimately, spiritual health is about finding meaning and purpose in your life and discovering who you truly are. Physical, mental and spiritual health is deeply tangled in a web of cause and effect. Start traveling and instantly bring good health to all three.In summary, traveling keeps you young in more ways than one. Most importantly, travel nourishes the soul. Prescription: Travel as often as you can…doctor’s orders.

Given time, Location Based Services will without doubt revolutionize how small local business owners can communicate to their customers. Marketing your business, services and offers online has proved difficult for many small business owners due to the amount of online global competition, however smartphones with built in GPS means that now users will be searching for businesses in their current location and interacting with their social media contacts for entertainment value. This offers new opportunities, the majority of marketers are excited about this prospect and so should local business owners as this offers tremendous scope and innovative marketing methods to communicate to new customers as well as existing customers. Whilst this is a wonderful opportunity, business owners need to understand just how effective this new marketing method can be. Many of these location based services allow the user to interact and share their experiences live with all their social media contacts for example Facebook and Twitter contacts, this could be extremely beneficial should their experience be positive but obviously bad should their experience be a negative one. Some of the Popular Location Based Services are:Foursquare
Yelp
Facebook Places
Loopt
GowallaWhen users of these services check in to reveal their location, a business owner can offer them coupons, latest deals and products as a way of getting them through the door, and many of these services also offer analytics where the business owner can monitor, organize and manage these campaigns. Mobile phones are now the most popular consumer device on the planet, mobile phone users have almost reached a staggering 6 billion globally and the majority of new mobile phone sales are now smart phone devices due to the high demand for more advanced phone capabilities and features such as email, internet and office documents etc. The majority of these smart phones are GPS enabled allowing for Geo-location services. Smartphone users are becoming more familiar and knowledgeable with how location based services can be used in their everyday life,whether that be looking for great bargains, looking for a lovely meal or simply interacting with their friends or contacts. A recent poll has indicated that the majority of these users are willing and happy to receive information which is relevant to their current location. This should inspire small business owners to make a start on a new mobile marketing campaign and give their customers what they want. They have nothing to lose and should start learning mobile marketing methods before their competitors do.

The Six Most Common Reasons Why Ozone Water Treatment Systems FailIntroductionOzone water treatment systems are used for a variety of applications. Nearly 1.6 billion gallons of municipal drinking water is treated with ozone. Almost all bottled water has ozone added prior to the bottling step. A number of fruit and vegetable washing operations, especially for ready to eat foods, use ozone to keep the food safe from bacteria and other pathogens. It is important that the ozone systems in these applications work reliably.Knowing what types of things can go wrong can help municipalities and industry make smarter decisions regarding the type of ozone water treatment system to buy and why various features are important. In this article we are referring to municipal/industrial scale ozone generators. We will cover the six most common reasons why ozone systems fail, techniques for preventing these problems and proper instrumentation that can provide an early warning of potential problems.Ozone Water Treatment SystemsOzone water treatment systems take oxygen or dry air and convert the oxygen present into ozone. This ozone is then mixed with water for the specific water treatment application, e.g. disifection. There are a number of factors that can cause these systems to fail. This article tries to group them into six categories.The typical failure mechanisms include:Back Flow of Water into the Generator
Poor Feed Gas Quality
Under Sizing the System
Poor Ozone Transfer Efficiency
Ozone Generator Cooling
Incorrect Materials of ConstructionBack Flow of Water into the Ozone GeneratorCommercial scale ozone generator cannot tolerate water entering the generator without having severe damage. The potential for back flow exists since the gas must flow from the generator into the water, so there is a pathway for water to back flow into the generator. This is compounded because ozone can be injected, via a venturi, into water that is at a higher pressure than that inside of the ozone generator. If there is a problem with the operation of the venturi or some change in the downstream hydraulics, water can be forced into the generator.It is common to see check valves used to prevent the back flow of water, but check valves are not a reliable device for this purposes, especially given the severe damage that can result from back flow. Check valves in this application have a high probability of failure. Most high quality ozone water treatment systems use a multi barrier approach to back flow prevention employing several passive and active devices to detect and counter the back flow of water.An example might be check valves, liquid traps and differential pressure monitoring interlocked with a normally closed solenoid valve. Monitoring differential pressure is based on the fact that in normal operation the pressure in the generator must exceed the pressure at the point of injection, otherwise the gas would not flow into the water. Triggering a solenoid valve to close eliminates the pathway for the water to reach the generator. Using a normally closed valve means that even with a loss of power, the valve is closed and the generator protected.Another technique that is used is to place instruments in the gas line or liquid traps that can detect liquid water. These devices can be used to trigger the shutdown of the solenoid valve and the generator.Without such protection it is usually a matter of time until a set of circumstances arises that causes the back flow to occur and damage the ozone generator.Poor Feed Gas QualityOzone generators require a source of oxygen to make ozone. Ozone is simply three oxygen atoms connected together (O3). The air that we breathe contains about 21% oxygen, and is built from two oxygen atoms (O2). You can buy pure oxygen from industrial and medical gas suppliers. It is also possible to make oxygen using a so called oxygen concentrator. Small versions of these devices are used for home medical purposes. They also produce a gas that is extremely dry which is 90-95% oxygen.Different ozone generators have different optimal gas feeds. Some generators work best with pure oxygen, other require some nitrogen being present (1-4%). Other generators work from dry air. In all cases the gas feed must be extremely dry. This is normally measured as the dew point of the air, the temperature at which water in the air will condense. For ozone generators this value is typically around -100 degree F. This means that there are only a few parts per million of moisture in the gas stream.Moisture in the feed gas can result in the formation of nitric acid in the generator creating the conditions for severe corrosion. In addition, moisture also reduces the efficiency of the ozone formation reaction, reducing output.To insure that the feed gas is the proper quality oxygen monitors that report the concentration of oxygen in the gas can be used. Dew point monitors, hygrometers, are available that can measure the amount of moisture in a gas stream. These devices are often used in larger ozone generating systems.Finally, filtration is important to prevent particles, oil droplets and vapors of hydrocarbon from entering the ozone generator.Under Sizing the Ozone SystemEven a well design ozone system will not do any good if it is undersized. In some applications it is easy to predict the proper size of the ozone water treatment system and in other cases it is important that laboratory and pilot field studies be conducted. This is especially true for applications like treating surface water for municipal drinking water or industrial wastewater treatment.The complexities of these applications, including seasonal variations, require extensive testing prior to the final design of the system. Once a system has been built it is usually very difficult to increase its capacity due to the cost and space limitations that exist after the initial installation, if room for expansion was not planned for. For larger projects, competent engineering firms are unlikely to make this type of mistake, but for smaller projects it is possible that poor assumptions can lead to an undersized system.Poor Ozone Transfer EfficiencyIn water treatment applications the ozone water treatment system must make the proper amount of ozone and dissolve it into water. The ozone transfer efficiency is the percent of ozone that dissolves out of the total amount that was generated. Only ozone that dissolves into the water will be able to carry out reactions like disinfection, oxidation of organic molecules or enhancing filtration.Ozone has a limited solubility in water. It is more soluble than oxygen, but less soluble than chlorine. The solubility of ozone is affected by the following parameters:The ratio of gas volume to liquid volume (G/L ratio): lower ratio increases efficiency
Bubble size: smaller bubbles increase efficiency
Ozone demand of the water: higher demand increases efficiency
Ozone concentration: higher concentration increases efficiency
Pressure: higher pressure increases efficiency, specifically the venturi outlet pressure
Detention time: longer detention time increases efficiency
Temperature: lower temperature increases efficiencyA well designed ozone water treatment system will transfer >90% of the generated ozone into solution. While ozone can be generated from dry air, the concentration of ozone produced 1-3% is much lower than systems that use oxygen feed from either liquid oxygen or oxygen concnetrators. These systems can generate ozone concentrations of 6-10%. The most common feed gas systems for water treatment are oxygen based.Fine bubble diffusers or venturi are typically used to transfer the gas into the liquid. In either method of mixing the proper G/L ratio, temperature, pressure, and detention time to satisfy a given ozone demand need to be considered. If these considerations are not taken into account properly, even with the right amount of ozone being produced, the application may not be successful.Ozone Generator CoolingOzone generator output is directly proportional to the temperature of the cooling water, for water cooled systems, and air temperature, for air cooled systems. Normally ozone generator manufacturers provide production curves for their machines as a function of gas flow and power setting. These values are always based on a specific inlet water temperature or air temperature for their cooling systems.Typically, the output of the machine will decrease by 0.5-1.0% per degree higher than the value shown on the production curves or data table. So, if the cooling water entered at 20 degrees C instead of the specified 15 degrees C, the output of the generator might be decreased by as much as 5%.In cooling water systems that rely on chillers, the temperature of the water can normally be expected to be controlled, but if the water to be treated is used as the cooling medium, than the water temperature can vary. In drinking water systems, the treated water may be used to cool the generators. This water tends to be higher in the temperature in the summer than the winter, thus affecting output. Engineers will often oversize a system to account for the expected loss as water temperature increases. Where this is not done, the output may not meet the application demands.This problem is more acute with air cooled systems since ambient conditions can vary significantly. If the ozone system is not in an air conditioned space, it is likely that generator performance will drop off when temperatures rise. So, adding an air conditioning system to the ozone generator enclosure is often a good idea where significant temperature variations are expected.Materials of ConstructionOzone is a strong oxidizer and can attack many materials. This is especially true for rubber and Buna-N elastomers. Failure of materials in an ozone water treatment system can result in leaks of water or ozonated gas. It can also result in the failure of key components or instruments.In an ozone water treatment application, materials can be exposed to high concentration ozone 6-10 % (60,000 to 100,000 ppm) in the gas phase or low concentrations in the liquid phase, a few ppm. These applications are significantly different. Just because a material can work with high concentration gas phase ozone does not mean it will work in the liquid phase and vice a versa.Even materials that are supposed to be suitable for a specific ozone application can fail. Viton is generally considered acceptable for ozone use in both the liquid and gas phase. Viton, however, comes in different grades, can be compounded with different materials and in the case of diaphragms might have fabrics embedded in it. Some of these variants can fail in certain ozone environments.So, the question of materials of construction is a complicated one. Experience with specific materials for specific applications is required. Material compatibility charts should be considered a starting point. The manufacturers of the materials are the best place to consult about the use of the materials, grades available and certifications offered.