Lockheed Martin Looks To Space With Australian-Developed Composite Tanks

 A collaborative partnership between Lockheed Martin, Australian manufacturer Omni Tanker and UNSW Sydney will look to develop and commercialize world-first composite tank technologies, thanks to a grant from the Federal Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre (AMGC).

The co-funded project announced as part of AMGC’s Commercialisation Fund launch and worth a total $AUD1.4 million will utilize two revolutionary home-grown technologies to solve the challenges of using composites for the transportation and storage of liquid hydrogen with applications on the ground, in the air, underwater and in space.  

Combining nano-engineering technology developed by UNSW in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Omni Tanker, and Omni Tanker’s patented OmniBIND™ technology, the collaboration will result in the development of two new operational scale propellant tanks for storing cryogenic liquid fuels for commercial and civil satellite programs: a “Type IV” fluoropolymer-lined carbon fiber composite tank and a “Type V” linerless carbon fiber composite tank, both of which are suitable for high pressures, the extreme cryogenic temperatures required for liquid hydrogen as well as oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, and hydrazine.

Christopher Hess, Head of Industrial Development, Lockheed Martin Australia acknowledged the support of AMGC and welcomed the opportunity for ongoing collaboration with UNSW and Omni Tanker.

“Lockheed Martin invests millions of dollars every year into R&D programs with our Australian industry and research partners to solve real challenges facing our Global Supply Chains,” he said. “We have had a long-standing research collaboration with UNSW and Omni Tanker, and we are grateful for the support of the AMGC as we now look to commercialize these cutting edge, Australian-developed composite tank technologies for a number of Lockheed Martin and NASA applications.” 

David Ball, Regional Director Australia and New Zealand, Lockheed Martin Space, confirmed the development of composite tanks that are lightweight, cost-effective, and resistant to microcracking and permeation represents a unique and innovative technological solution with significant space applications.

“As the world increasingly looks to hydrogen for emission-free energy, containing and transporting it in a safe, cost-effective and economic manner remains extremely challenging,” he said. “The space industry is particularly interested in the development of linerless composite tanks for their weight efficiency and durability, which represent the cutting edge of composite pressure vessel manufacturing.”

“These advances have the potential to support the growth of Australia’s sovereign space capabilities, strengthen exports to space-faring allies and partner nations, and make an important technological contribution to future space missions particularly in on-orbit storage, launch and deep space exploration,”  he said.

“Creating a lightweight vessel for transporting liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius is no simple thing – whether you’re moving it along a highway or to outer space – but it’s Australian know-how that is making it possible,” said Dr Jens Goennemann, Managing Director, AMGC.

“That’s why AMGC is supporting Omni Tanker and its collaborative partners to engineer and manufacture a solution to this problem and offer it globally,” said Dr Goennemann.

The project builds on a recent invention by the research team at UNSW led by Professor Chun Wang, which enables carbon fibre composites to withstand liquid hydrogen temperatures without matrix cracks – a challenge that has, up until now, prevented mass-market adoption of these materials for such applications.

“This new technology is the result of an outstanding collaboration and partnership between UNSW, Lockheed Martin, and Omni Tanker over the past four years. It is wonderful seeing our research achievement is now moving closer towards commercial success and generating social and economic impact in Australia and beyond,” said Professor Wang.

Omni Tanker, with its significant experience in the development and commercialization of strong, lightweight composite transport vessels, has the know-how and technology to translate the recent research innovations for a myriad of applications.

Omni Tanker’s CEO, Daniel Rodgers says: “This next phase in our collaboration with Lockheed Martin and UNSW is a landmark development that sees Omni Tanker’s seamless thermoplastic lining technology enter the aerospace sector. The OmniBIND™ technology has made inroads to revolutionizing the safe and efficient movement of challenging liquids within the chemical transport sector. Now the growing need to decarbonize the energy industry, and the re-usable low-earth-orbit satellite market, have the potential to drive major utilization for these new technologies.”

“We are excited to work with Lockheed Martin and UNSW on this ground-breaking project, which leverages our patented technology. It is also a credit to the talented Australian engineering team that we have assembled at Omni Tanker,” said Omni Tanker’s Chief Technical Officer, Dr Luke Djukic.

Source: LOCKHEED MARTIN

Carbon Fiber vs Fiberglass:

 Though carbon fiber and fiberglass share some similar attributes and are used interchangeably in a handful of different industrial and everyday applications, the two materials are vastly different from one another.

For instance…
Strength:
Though either material is substantially stronger than steel, industrial carbon fiber is more than 20 percent stronger than the best fiberglass. Carbon fiber boasts a strength-to-weight ratio roughly twice that of fiberglass.

Stiffness:
Carbon fiber is significantly less flexible than fiberglass and is the preferred material for applications in which stiffness and rigidity are essential (mechanical components for example). Carbon fiber tensile modulus is 4 times that of fiberglass. For applications in which flexibility is required or rigidity isn’t imperative, fiberglass is often the preferred choice. 

Weight:
Compared to metals like steel and aluminum, both carbon fiber and fiberglass materials are remarkably light in the weight given their inherent strength. In environments and applications in which minimal weight is imperative (aerospace or car racing, for example) both materials are in high demand and used quite frequently. Typically, however, carbon fiber weighs about 15% less than fiberglass composites. 

Thermal Expansion:
Unlike most materials, carbon fiber has a negative coefficient of thermal expansion which means that the material in its purest form actually expands in cold temperatures. However, the matrix in carbon fiber carries a positive coefficient of thermal expansion and the two typically offset one another for an overall coefficient of thermal expansion close to neutral. This is a fancy way of saying that carbon fiber materials do not contract in cold temperatures while fiberglass products may. So if extreme heat or cold is a factor, and thermal expansion is a concern, carbon fiber may be the better way to go.
Corrosion Resistance
If your carbon fiber or fiberglass application will be exposed to harmful chemicals, acids, or abrasive environments, you’ll be happy to learn that either material is highly resistant to corrosion or chemical abrasions. 

Cost:
Generally, fiberglass components are viewed as more cost-effective as compared to their carbon fiber counterparts. This is due in large part to the fact that fiberglass is used in a wider range of applications and manufacturing costs are significantly lower. Carbon fiber manufacturing is a much more involved process and there are fewer established manufacturers in the industry.

How the surfaces of silicone breast implants affect the immune system

 Every year, about 400,000 people receive silicone breast implants in the United States. According to data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a majority of those implants need to be replaced within 10 years due to the buildup of scar tissue and other complications.

A team led by MIT researchers has now systematically analyzed how the varying surface architecture found in these implants influences the development of adverse effects, which in rare cases can include an unusual type of lymphoma.

“The surface topography of an implant can drastically affect how the immune response perceives it, and this has important ramifications for the [implants’] design,” says Omid Veiseh, a former MIT postdoc. “We hope this paper provides a foundation for plastic surgeons to evaluate and better understand how implant choice can affect the patient experience.”

The findings could also help scientists to design more biocompatible implants in the future, the researchers say.

“We are pleased that we were able to bring new materials science approaches to better understand issues of biocompatibility in the area of breast implants. We also hope the studies that we conducted will be broadly useful in understanding how to design safer and more effective implants of any type,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and the senior author of the study.

Veiseh, who is now an assistant professor at Rice University, and Joshua Doloff, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The research team also includes scientists from Rice University, Johns Hopkins, Establishment Labs, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, among other institutions.

Surface analysis

Silicone breast implants have been in use since the 1960s, and the earliest versions had smooth surfaces. However, with these implants, patients often experienced a complication called capsular contracture, in which scar tissue forms around the implant and squeezes it, creating pain or discomfort as well as visible deformation of the implant. These implants could also flip after implantation, requiring them to be surgically adjusted or removed.

In the late 1980s, some companies began making implants with rougher surfaces, with the hopes of reducing capsular contracture rates and making them “stick” better to the tissue and stay in place. They did this by creating a surface with peaks extending up to hundreds of microns above the surface.

However, in 2019, the FDA requested a breast implant manufacturer to recall all highly textured breast implants (about 80 microns) marketed in the United States due to the risk of breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

A new generation of breast implants that dates back a decade, having a unique and patented surface architecture that includes not only a slight degree of surface roughness, with an average of about 4 microns, but also other specific surface characteristics including skewness and the number, distribution, and size of contact points optimized to cellular dimensions, was designed to prevent those complications.

In 2015, Doloff, Veiseh, and researchers from Establishment Labs teamed up to explore how this unique surface, as well as others commonly used, interact with the surrounding tissue and the immune system. They began by testing five commercially available implants with different topographies, including degree of roughness. These included the highly textured one that had been previously recalled, one that is completely smooth, and three that are somewhere in between. Two of these implants had the aforementioned novel surface architecture, one with a 4-micron roughness and one with a 15-micron roughness, manufactured by Establishment Labs.

In a study of rabbits, the researchers found that tissue exposed to the roughest implant surfaces showed signs of increased activity from macrophages — immune cells that normally clear out foreign cells and debris.

All of the implants stimulated immune cells called T cells, but in different ways. Implants with rougher surfaces stimulated more pro-inflammatory T cell responses, while implants with the unique surface topography, including 4-micron average roughness, stimulated T cells that appear to inhibit tissue inflammation.

The researchers’ findings suggest that rougher implants rub against the surrounding tissue and cause more irritation. This may offer an explanation for why the rougher implants can lead to lymphoma: The hypothesis is that some of the texture sloughs off and gets trapped in nearby tissue, where it provokes chronic inflammation that can eventually lead to cancer.

The researchers also tested miniaturized versions of these implants in mice. They manufactured these implants using the same techniques used to manufacture the human-sized versions, and showed that more highly textured implants provoked more macrophage activity, more scar tissue formation, and higher levels of inflammatory T cells. The researchers also performed single-cell RNA sequencing of immune cells from these tissues to confirm that the cells were expressing pro-inflammatory genes.

“While completely smooth surface implants also had higher levels of macrophage response and fibrosis, it was very clear in mice that individual cells were more stressed and were expressing more of a pro-inflammatory phenotype in response to the highest surface roughness,” Doloff says.

On the other hand, implants with the unique surface architecture, including an optimized degree or “sweet spot” of surface roughness, at about 4 microns on average, and other specific characteristics, appeared to significantly reduce the amount of scarring and inflammation, compared to either the implants with higher roughness or a completely smooth surface.

“We believe that this is due to such surface architecture existing on the scale of individual cells of the body, allowing the cells to perceive them in a different way,” Doloff says.

Rachel Brem, director of breast imaging and intervention and a professor of radiology at George Washington University Medical Center, notes that the study “investigates one of the most timely and increasingly perplexing problems in breast reconstruction — how to identify silicone breast implants with the least immunologic response to minimize the risk of implant-induced lymphoma.”

“The finding of a complex inflammatory and anti-inflammatory response is critically important, as is the finding that the 4-micron textured implant results in a thinner, translucent capsule than that found with smooth implants, and is the optimal formulation of a silicone breast implant to result in the least thick, least overall immunogenic response,” says Brem, who was not involved in the study. “This is a critically important finding which will allow for the development of the optimal implant for patients.”

Toward safer implants

After performing their animal studies, the researchers analyzed samples from a large bank of cancer tissue samples at MD Anderson to study how human patients respond to different types of silicone breast implants.

In those samples, the researchers found evidence for the same types of immune responses that they had seen in the animal studies. Among their findings, they observed that tissue samples that had been host to highly textured implants for many years showed signs of a chronic, long-term immune response. They also found that scar tissue was thicker in patients who had more highly textured implants.

“Doing across-the-board comparisons in mice, rabbits, and then in human [tissue samples] really provides a much more robust and substantial body of evidence about how these compare to one another,” Veiseh says.

The authors hope that their datasets will help other researchers optimize the design of silicone breast implants and other types of medical silicone implants for better safety.

“The importance of science-based design that can provide patients with safer breast implants was confirmed in this study,” says Roberto de Mezerville, an author of the paper and head of R&D at Establishment Labs. “By demonstrating for the first time that an optimal surface architecture allows for the least possible inflammation and foreign-body response, this work is a significant contribution to the entire medical device industry.”

Other authors of paper include Marcos Sforza, Tracy Ann Perry, Jennifer Haupt, Morgan Jamiel, Courtney Chambers, Amanda Nash, Samira Aghlara-Fotovat, Jessica Stelzel, Stuart Bauer, Sarah Neshat, John Hancock, Natalia Araujo Romero, Yessica Elizondo Hidalgo, Isaac Mora Leiva, Alexandre Mendonca Munhoz, Ardeshir Bayat, Brian Kinney, H. Courtney Hodges, Roberto Miranda, and Mark Clemens.

The research was funded by Establishment Labs.

Source:MIT

Indian Oil Corp orders 15 hydrogen buses

 15 new hydrogen-powered buses have been ordered for Indian roads.

Indian bus manufacturer Tata Motors today (June 30) said it had received an order for the buses from Indian Oil Corporation as part of its effort towards ushering a hydrogen economy in the county.

Indian Oil hopes the initiative will act as a stepping-stone for various other key programs, which propose to introduce hydrogen-based mobility on different iconic routes and important sectors in the country.

As well as supplying the buses, Tata Motors will also collaborate with Indian Oil to undertake R&D projects and collectively study further the potential of fuel cell technology for commercial vehicles.

Commenting on the company’s involvement in the landmark project, Girish Wagh, President of Commercial Vehicle Business Unit at Tata Motors said, “We are delighted to win this prestigious tender from IOCL for it adds to Tata Motors’ rich legacy of introducing future-ready technologies for cleaner and greener public transport.

“We have successfully supplied 215 EV buses under FAME I and won orders for 600 EV buses under FAME II. This order to supply PEM fuel cell buses from a company as respected as Indian Oil Corporation further encourages our ongoing efforts on developing India-focused alternative sustainable fuels to transform the future of mobility in India.”

Source:www.h2-view.com

HYDROGEN STATIONS IN SOUTH KOREA:

 As of Jun 18, Korea had a total of 93 hydrogen charging stations, 23 of which were installed this year. The government aims to build an additional 87 stations by yearend, bringing the total to 180. Accordingly, we expect installations to accelerate in 2H21.

The two major operators of hydrogen charging stations in Korea are HyNet (established in Sep 2019) and Kohygen (Mar 2021, a specialized constructor/operator of hydrogen charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles, such as buses and trucks). We note that the business of commercial hydrogen charging stations has only recently been launched. Under the control of the Ministry of Environment, 16 private hydrogen charging stations are to be built, 10 of which are to be operated by Kohygen, 2 by HyNet, and 1 each by Hyundai Steel, E1, GS Caltex, and Daedo HyGen. For reference, Hyosung Heavy Industries is the number-one domestic installer of hydrogen charging stations.

Source:Business Korea

NPROXX powering London’s first hydrogen ambulance:

 NPROXX has worked closely with ULEMCo to assist in the design of the conversion, deriving a design solution that places the hydrogen storage tank in the roof space of the ambulance.

This will give the ambulance a payload of up to 900kg while offering a low-floor chassis for easy patient access.

Named ZERRO, the prototype vehicle will be powered by a combination of a 30kW fuel cell with NPROXX’s type IV pressure vessel and a 400V 92kWh battery.

The fuel cell will act as a range-extender to charge the battery when needed and will give the ZEROO an expected average daily range of 200 miles and a top speed of 90mph.

Philipp Breuer, Sales Manager (Automotive & Heavy-Duty Vehicles) at NPROXX, said, “Emergency ambulances need to be ready to go at any time, so speed of re-fuelling and range are key factors when looking to transition these vehicles to a decarbonized energy source.

Source:NPROXX

World’s first industrial dynamic green ammonia demonstration plant

Green ammonia, produced from renewable energy, is an excellent fuel and fertilizer that can potentially replace significant volumes of fossil fuels and help accelerate the transition to a world powered by renewable energy. The green ammonia plant, which will be built by Skovgaard Invest, Vestas and Topsoe, will be state of the art and the world’s first so-called dynamic green ammonia plant. The dynamic approach entails that the clean power from wind turbines and solar panels will be connected directly to the electrolysis unit making it more cost-effective than if involving a battery or hydrogen storage.

Topsoe will design the plant’s dynamic ammonia technology to secure optimal production and adapt to the inherent fluctuations in power output from wind turbines and solar panels. The ammonia plant will interface to a green hydrogen solution developed by Vestas, integrating electrolysis with wind and solar in one smart control system.

The partnership will jointly invest in the project.

”We are proud, that the Danish technology program acknowledges our project as being unique when it comes to developing and demonstrating new energy technology that holds a global potential. The green ammonia plant is a prime example of how renewable electricity can be converted to sustainable fuels via electrolysis. For us, this is one of more partnerships showing that we already today have the technologies to introduce new clean solutions showcased by this green ammonia project.

We are excited to move forward with the world’s first fully dynamic industrial-scale renewable ammonia plant as it highlights the viability of electrification beyond the power sector. The project demonstrates an integrated power-to-X use case with significant demand potential. Vestas is uniquely positioned to integrate renewable energy with other technologies and we are proud to lay the foundation for scalable power-to-X production together with our partners on this project.”

Facts about the green ammonia plant

Location: Western Jutland, Denmark.

Output: More than 5,000 ton green ammonia annually from renewable power. This production will prevent 8,200 tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere every year.

Power supplied from renewable sources: 12 MW from six existing V80-2.0 MW Vestas wind turbines and 50 MW new solar panels.

The potential of Green ammonia:

Green ammonia has huge potential in the global effort to substitute fossil fuels with sustainable alternatives. It has been highlighted as a superior green fuel for international shipping that currently accounts for around 2% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Already today, ammonia is used as fertilizer globally and the production from fossil fuels [for this purpose alone?] accounts for around 1% of global CO2 emissions.

Source:Hydrocarbonprocessing.com