Hexagon Acquires Testing Technology for Type 4 HP Cylinders

Hexagon Composites ASA has moved to acquire the technology testing company Digital Wave Corporation, based in Denver, Colorado. With this acquisition, Hexagon Composites will fully integrate capabilities for testing and requalification of high-pressure cylinders.

“Hexagon has worked successfully with Digital Wave for three years to apply Modal Acoustic Emissions (MAE) technology to test Type 4 cylinders. With this acquisition we take control of the unique testing process, which effectively reduces the operators’ down time, while ensuring an approved, safe and reliable requalification method. We are further enhancing our leadership position by obtaining the most advanced capabilities and technology currently available,” said Jack Schimenti, Executive Vice President of Hexagon Composites Group. “We believe that this technology has the potential of fulfilling the holy grail of real-time health monitoring of composite cylinders.”

Digital Wave is a leading provider of modal acoustic emission (MAE) requalification and ultrasonic examination (UE) testing of pressure vessels. MAE is a relatively new and unique process that uses sound waves to measure structural integrity in composite structures. It greatly improves both routine re-qualifications and post-accident inspections.

Operators of gas transportation modules in North America are required to requalify their cylinders every five years. MAE testing collects data from cylinders under pressure and provides a comprehensive evaluation of the composite structure of each cylinder. UE is an efficient alternative to the traditional hydro-testing of all-metal cylinders.

“Hexagon Composites is a leader in the composite pressure cylinder market and a great strategic fit for Digital Wave’s array of products and patents,” adds Mike Gorman, CEO of Digital Wave Corporation. “It provides a strong platform for the Company’s employees, who have developed testing technology for all types of pressure vessels, to use their talents to expand both the range of applications and global reach for Digital Wave’s intellectual property. We are convinced that both organizations complement each other in terms of products and services and this will lead to a stronger position in the cylinder market.

Digital Wave reported revenues of USD 3.8 (NOK 31.4) million in 2017, with an adjusted EBITDA of USD 0.4 (NOK 3.0) million.
The agreed transaction value of Digital Wave is USD 7.5 million (approx. NOK 61.8 million). The signing of a definitive agreement has taken place on 26 October with expected closing in the fourth quarter of 2018.

The business will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Hexagon’s US affiliate and will continue to research and develop new products and services in this field.

Transforming Food Waste into High Quality, Fully Biodegradable Bioplastics

Luna Yu, a recent graduate from the Master of Environmental Science program at University of Toronto Scarborough teams up with a talented group of scientists and engineers — many of whom are U of T students or alum — to form Genecis. The company uses recent advancements in biotechnology, microbial engineering and machine learning to take food destined for landfill and convert it into high quality, fully biodegradable plastics.
Food waste is a significant environmental issue in North America, explains Yu. In the United States roughly 55 million tons of food is thrown away annually. Once that food hits landfill it generates methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In fact, it’s estimated that 34 per cent of methane emissions in the U.S. alone are caused by food waste.
Luna Yu said: “We feel that by using synthetic biology create high quality products out of this organic waste in a cost-effective way – while also mitigating the effects of plastic pollution – is really the way of the future.”
Though only in her early 20s, this isn’t Yu’s first foray into entrepreneurship. She has more than six years’ experience, first at a start-up software company as an undergrad before moving to another start-up that converted restaurant food waste into biogas.
It was there that she met several talented engineers, learned about the microbiology of converting discarded food into other materials, and discovered a valuable lesson in the economics of re-using food waste.
Luna Yu said: “Converting food waste into biogas is not only a time-consuming process, the end product is fairly low value.”
It was shortly after this experience that she connected with a fellow environmental science student in The Hub, U of T Scarborough’s entrepreneurial incubator, to figure out what else could be made from food waste.
Luna Yu said:
“We looked at different types of bio-rubbers and bio-chemicals before landing on PHAs. We felt it had the biggest market potential.”

A Reusable, Biodegradable form of Plastic

PHAs, or polyhydroxyalkanoates, are a type of polymer produced in nature by bacteria that have many benefits over other forms of bio-plastics. For one, it can be a thermoplastic, meaning it can be easily molded and remolded into different products. Another benefit is that, unlike many other forms of bio-plastics, it won’t ruin the recycling process. 

Luna Yu said: “Many people throw bio-plastics into the recycling bin rather than the compost, but if it’s not a thermoplastic, it can’t be remolded,” says Yu.

“This disrupts the physical properties of new recycled products — they will end up falling apart.”
PHAs won’t cause this problem if it accidentally ends up in recycling bins, which makes it much easier for waste management companies to handle.
But what really sold Yu on PHAs is the fact that it’s fully biodegradable. PHAs degrade within one year in a terrestrial environment, and fewer than 10 years in marine environments. Meanwhile, synthetic plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade in similar environments.
Given its superior physical properties and the process it takes to create, Yu says Genecis’s PHAs are best suited for higher-end products like toys, flexible packaging, 3D-printing filament and medical applications including surgical staples, sutures and stints.
Luna Yu said: “The PHAs we create can be used to make pretty much anything, but it makes the most economic sense to use it in higher-quality, multi-use products.”
While PHAs have been in the market for the past two decades, most come directly from corn and sugarcane crops. Yu explains that the process Genecis uses to create its PHAs is much cheaper because they avoid the expenses required to acquire their feedstock.

Three-step Process

Genecis uses a three-step process to produce its PHAs, explains Michael Williamson, the company’s head of mechanical engineering and U of T engineering grad.

• First, they use a mixture of anaerobic (without oxygen) bacteria that breaks down the food waste into volatile fatty acids, similar to how food is broken down in our stomachs. 
• Next, the fatty acids are added to a mixed culture of aerobic (with oxygen) bacteria that are specially selected to produce PHAs in their cells. 
• Finally, they use an extraction process to break open the cells, collect and purify the plastic.

The process takes less than seven days from getting the food waste to having the purified plastic — making biogas, on the other hand, takes an average of 21 days. When the company opens its demonstration plant later next year, it will be able to convert three tons of organic waste into PHAs weekly. 

While the process used by Genecis works for pretty much all types of food, some foods like simple carbs and proteins can be more efficiently converted, says Yu.
The company currently has two locations — their main lab in U of T’s Banting and Best Building, in the heart of Toronto’s Discovery District, and the other in the Environmental Science and Chemistry Building at U of T Scarborough, which is responsible for research and development.

U of T start-up

In their downtown lab they work with pilot-scale bioreactors, and are continuing to scale up their operations with an industry partner to a demonstration plant by the end of next year. Meanwhile, their facility at UTSC houses smaller bioreactors that are used to help optimize their production process.
Vani Sankar, Genecis’s head of biotechnology and a postdoc at U of T Scarborough, said: “We’re fine-tuning things to figure out the best conditions to operate our bacteria cultures. This includes what combinations of temperature, pH and amount of food will give us the best yield.”
  Source: University of Toronto Scarborough

Fire-resistant Bio-based Composite Prepreg Enables Lightweight Train Seating Support

Composites Evolution, Bercella and Element Materials Technology (Element) have successfully completed the development and testing of a composite cantilever support for rail passenger seating.

Composite Cantilever Seat Support

The component, which is 1 meter long but weighs less than 5 kg, passed a wide range of tests performed by Element. The evaluation included static loadings, fatigue cycles and fire testing to EN 45545 according to the requirements of Bercella’s customers.

Cantilever seat supports, which are mounted on the wall of a train carriage rather than the floor, offer a number of advantages including improved access for cleaning and luggage storage. The lightweight composite structure also provides advantages in terms of reduced train energy consumption and lower axle loads.

Bio-based Evopreg PFC Prepreg

The seat support was manufactured by Bercella using Composites Evolution’s Evopreg PFC prepreg with a high strength carbon fiber reinforcement. Evopreg PFC was specified for this application because of its excellent fire performance, low toxicity and outstanding environmental credentials - the base polyfurfuryl alcohol resin is 100% bio-derived. Evopreg PFC is one of the first prepregs to be manufactured on Composites Evolution’s new prepreg line that was installed in July 2018.

Brendon Weager, Composites Evolution’s Technical Director, commented:
“We are delighted with how well Evopreg PFC has performed for Bercella’s seating concept. Producing composites that are both structural and highly fire-resistant is often challenging, but we’ve passed Element’s tests with flying colors.”

The seat support will be on display at Composites Evolution’s stand (N99) at the Advanced Engineering Show on 31st October and 1st November in Birmingham, UK.

Source: Composites Evolution

First TITAN®53 Mobile Pipeline® units delivered in Nebraska

Hexagon continues delivering firsts to the Mobile Pipeline® market as the first TITAN®53 gas transport module was delivered in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. The TITAN®53 is the result of a rigorous design, development and testing process built on the foundation of the deepest engineering expertise in composite pressure vessel technology in the industry.

After nearly a decade of success with TITAN® products, customers are demanding the ability to move greater volumes of compressed gases including natural gas, hydrogen and industrial gases on every trip. The newly developed TITAN®53 cylinders and module optimize weight and capacity to meet the 80,000 lbs (36,300 kg) GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) to allow operation in all 50 US states while delivering an estimated gas volume of 492,000 SCF / 13,932 SCM of natural gas. Hexagon’s TITAN® cylinders are the largest composite cylinders now available.

Safety is top priority for development teams, which have delivered over 700,000 high pressure full composite cylinders over their 25 years. Hexagon’s composite cylinders hold up to three times the capacity of steel at the same vehicle weight, dramatically improving payload and range.

Hexagon’s Mobile Pipeline® team is collaborating with energy leaders to develop innovative systems that provide safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions off the gas grid. To date, more than 1,200 Mobile Pipeline® modules are deployed globally, where they are driving energy transformation from conventional petroleum fuels to clean and affordable natural gas.

Supporting customers extends beyond the deployment of the modules with exceptional service and support. To facilitate future service and requalification of the module, Hexagon designed the TITAN®53 module to accommodate Hexagon’s Modal Acoustic Emission requalification testing. Modal Acoustic Emission testing is the most comprehensive method of testing composites available in the world and presents a technological leap in safety.

Source: Hexagon

Bioinspired Approach to 3D Print Recyclable Materials: ETH Zürich

Fused deposition modeling (FDM), often simply referred to as 3D Printing, has been hailed as the future of manufacturing. However, the bad mechanical performance of parts produced by FDM compared to conventionally manufactured objects has limited its use to prototyping. Therefore, despite its promise of mass customization, FDM 3D Printing has not been adopted by industry for production. 

Commercial 3D Printing of Complex Parts

Researchers at ETH Zürich have developed a bioinspired approach to 3D print recyclable materials using cheap desktop printers that outperform state-of-the-art printed polymers and rival the highest performance lightweight materials. This will finally enable the manufacturing of complex parts that mimic natural structural designs on the mass market. 3D Printing, particularly FDM, makes it possible to produce unique complex parts quickly and at a low cost by sequentially depositing beads of a molten polymer. However, the available polymers are relatively weak and the printed parts show poor adhesion between the printed lines. Because of these limitations FDM has not yet been successfully implemented in commercial products. Traditionally, people increased the performance of polymers by including strong and stiff fibers such as glass or carbon fibers into the material. Although the resulting materials exhibit very high strength and stiffness, the energy- and labor-intensive fabrication process as well as the difficulty to recycle state-of-the-art composites represent major challenges today.

3D Printing with Single Recyclable Material

• To combine the mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced composites with the freedom in design that comes with 3D printing, methods have been developed to include carbon fibers into the printed objects. 
• However, this approach requires expensive specialized equipment, and still is restricted with the possible geometries with materials that cannot be recycled. 
• For the first time, researchers from the Complex Materials group and the Soft Materials group at ETH, were able to print objects from a single recyclable material with mechanical properties that surpass all other available printable polymers and can compete even with fiber-reinforced composites.

Inspiration by Nature

The researchers were inspired by two materials that can be found in Nature – spider silk and wood – during the development of these structures. Spider silk gets its unrivalled mechanical properties from the high degree of molecular alignment of the silk proteins along the fiber directions. 

• First, it was possible to reproduce this high alignment during the extrusion from an FDM nozzle by using a liquid crystal polymer (LCP) as an FDM feedstock material, resulting in unprecedented mechanical properties in the deposition direction. 
• Second, the anisotropic fiber properties were utilized by tailoring the local orientation of the print path according to the specific loading conditions imposed by the environment. This design principle is inspired by the ability of living tissue like wood to arrange fibers along the stress lines developed throughout the loaded structure as it grows and adapts to its environment.

Recyclable 3D Printed LCP Structures

• The recyclable 3D printed LCP structures are much stronger than the state-of-the-art 3D printed polymers and do not require the labor- and energy-intensive steps involved in current composite manufacturing technologies. 
• Thus, the technology is expected to be a game-changer in several structural, biomedical and energy-harvesting applications where high-performance lightweight materials are required. 
• Additionally, because the research has been conducted using a readily available polymer and a commercial desktop printer, it should be easy for the broader additive manufacturing and open source communities to adopt this new material and digitally design and fabricate strong and complex lightweight objects from LCPs.

Source: ETH Zürich

Covestro’s Bio-based Raw Materials for Rigid PU Foam Reduce CO2 Emissions

In industrial and commercial construction, in public facilities and logistics buildings, energy efficiency, sustainability and compliance with climate protection targets will become increasingly important alongside cost-effectiveness. These and other challenges are the topic of this year's industrieBAU (Industrial Construction) Day on trends and future topics in industrial construction, which the industrieBAU magazine is organizing on September 27 at the Kasino Hotel in Chempark Leverkusen.

Reducing Energy Consumption and CO₂ Emissions

Rigid polyurethane (PU) foam is a very high-performance insulating material and is ideal for reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in buildings as well as conserving fossil resources. In German industrial and commercial buildings made of sandwich panels, the insulating material now has a market share of around 80 percent. Covestro is supporting the event with a lecture and as a platinum sponsor and is inviting the participants to visit its technical center for polyurethane building products.
Sustainable insulating material for industrial and commercial buildings Sandwich panels consist of two metallic cover layers and a core of PU or even more fire-resistant polyisocyanurate (PIR) hard foam. "They have been used for many years for large-area and efficient thermal insulation of industrial and commercial buildings and facilitate fast, modular and cost-effective construction of buildings," says Stefanie Rau, marketing manager for the construction industry in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Rigid PU foam is also used in insulation boards. They have flexible covering layers and are used to insulate pitched and flat roofs and floors as well as internal and external walls. "In flat roof applications, they are gaining increasing market share, which is due to their high compressive strength, water resistance and the associated low maintenance costs," explains Stefanie Rau. Both products are manufactured in a continuous process on double-belt lines.

Covestro – A Pioneer in Alternative Raw Materials

For even more sustainable thermal insulation of buildings, Covestro now additionally uses alternative raw materials for its production, also to reduce its own dependence on fossil resources. The company is currently working intensively on a CO₂-based raw material for rigid PU foam.

In addition, Covestro and its partners have developed a unique method for obtaining the key chemical product aniline from biobased raw materials. MDI could in future be produced from this bioaniline – another important raw material for rigid PU foam.

Modern Technical Center

A few years ago, Covestro set up a modern technical center for the industrial production of polyurethane foams in order to better support it in aligning its production to current market requirements. Among other things, the plant includes continuously operating systems for the production of insulation boards and sandwich panel elements, which are used for large-area insulation solutions in industrial construction. The goal is to further improve the insulating effect and fire resistance of these products in line with customer requirements and market trends.

Digitalization for Greater Efficiency

Digitalization opens up many opportunities for the construction industry and the associated value chain to increase productivity, make processes more efficient and support sustainability. Covestro pursues a comprehensive strategic program based on three dimensions – digital business processes, digital customer experience and new digital business models.
The implementation of the program begins for Covestro with more efficient operation of its own production and ranges from a comprehensive digital approach of business customers to the development of an innovative chemical trading platform, which is currently being tested. With the new business models, "digital technical services" are particularly important to make customer production even more efficient.
Source: Covestro

 

Researchers Identify Latex Proteins to Enhance Natural Rubber Production

The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., has announced that the results of joint research projects conducted since 2013 with two universities in Thailand, a major producer of natural rubber, were recently presented at The International Polymer Conference of Thailand 2018 (PCT-8). 

The joint research projects were conducted with researchers at Mahidol University and Prince of Songkla University. The research with Mahidol University succeeded in analyzing proteins contained in sap (latex), the base raw material for natural rubber, and identifying the proteins deeply involved in natural rubber biosynthesis. The research deepens the understanding of the biosynthesis of natural rubber, making it possible to accelerate research related to quality and production.

Evaluating Physical and Chemical Properties of Rubber

The research conducted at Mahidol University entailed the extraction and nano-level analysis of proteins from fresh latex and seedlings from Para rubber trees. The analysis covered more than 800 kinds of proteins contained in latex, some of which were found to be related to natural rubber biosynthesis and stress resistance. In addition, by comparing proteins from different varieties of Para rubber trees, the researchers were able to identify the proteins that promote biosynthesis and the proteins that inhibit biosynthesis. The proteins are expected to be used as biomarkers of biosynthesis.
The research at Prince of Songkla University was fundamental research on natural rubber that focused on analyzing the differences in latex related to different seasons and regions, different varieties and different processing methods. The research also evaluated the presence or absence of changes in the physical and chemical properties of rubber over long periods of time. To date, natural rubber has been a very stable material, from its composition to its physical properties, and it has been highly resistant to external factors. 

Enhancing Maintenance and Development of Natural Rubber Plantations:

Natural rubber is a raw material made from latex taken from Para rubber trees. It is one of the main raw materials used in automotive tires, accounting for about 30% of tires made. However, natural rubber’s production is concentrated in Southeast Asia, which exposes large-scale production to risks from abnormal weather and disease. Expecting tire demand to expand in the future, Yokohama Rubber regards the improvement of the quality of natural rubber and the promotion of technological development contributing to stable production as an important corporate duty. Accordingly, the Company plans to use the results of this research to promote the maintenance and development of natural rubber plantations.

The Yokohama Rubber Group has positioned “Promotion of CSR activities throughout the value chain” as one of the important issues of the Group’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Accordingly, in addition to the above joint research projects on natural rubber, the Group is engaged in activities that will contribute to sustaining farmlands. These activities have included biodiversity surveys on natural rubber plantations and promoting widespread use of an “agroforestry farming method” that contributes to more stable income for rubber tree growers by planting bamboo, fruit trees and other plants in natural rubber forests.

Source: Yokohama Rubber Co