decan

See also: Decan, décan, and Decán

English

Etymology 1

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɛkən/
• Rhymes: -ɛkən

Noun

decan (plural decans)

1. (Egyptology, astrology) One of a collection of 36 small constellations or zodiacal subdivisions that appear heliacally at intervals of 10 days or are separated by approximately 10 degrees.

Etymology 2

de- +‎ can

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /di.kæn/

Verb

1. To remove (something, especially nuclear reactor fuel) from a can or similar protective enclosure, cladding, etc.
   • 1962, American Nuclear Society, Hot Laboratory Division, Winter Meeting, Proceedings of the tenth Conference on Hot Laboratories and Equipment:

     (4) The time required to decan the elements should be minimized due to the highly reactive nature of the exposed fuel even in the inert atmosphere of the cell. Remote Repair. The decanning machine is to be remotely operated, [...]

   • 1965, Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Development Program Progress Report

     A machine to decan the blanket elements contained in the core, outer, and inner blanket subassemblies is being designed. The machine will consist of transfer magazines, a cutting unit, an ejector unit and a sampling unit.

   • 1996, Journal of Engineering for Industry

     Can Design for Nonisothermal Pancake Forging of Gamma Titanium Aluminide Alloys

     The design of cans to produce [...]. After decanning, the pancakes revealed "flaky" and sporadically cracked flat surfaces, noticeable dead metal zones at the [...]

   • 2011, Frank Crundwell, Michael Moats, Venkoba Ramachandran, Timothy Robinson, W. G. Davenport, Extractive Metallurgy of Nickel, Cobalt and Platinum Group Metals, Elsevier (→ISBN), page 539:

     (a) collecting end-of-use automobiles; (b) dismantling them into major components, including batteries and catalytic converters; (c) decanning the converters by shearing the cans crossways into two halves; (d) [...]

Anagrams

• Caden, Dance, acned, caned, dance

---

Esperanto

Adjective

decan

1. accusative singular of deca