Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a technique for harvesting electricity from air humidity, dubbed the “generic Air-gen effect.” According to research published in Advanced Materials, any material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter can be utilized to continuously generate electricity.
Continue readingCirtec Medical Corp., Lowell, Mass., has acquired QMD Precision Components, a business that specializes in the development and manufacturing of silicone, polyisoprene, and other custom elastomeric components, tubing, and subassemblies.
Cirtec is a strategic outsourcing partner of complex medical devices, including minimally invasive and active implantable devices. The acquisition will enable Cirtec to provide customers with advanced expertise in medical silicone molding and extrusion. The integration of Precision Components within the Cirtec brand will offer comprehensive, integrated solutions based on decades of silicone experience. The acquisition will also strengthen Cirtec’s platform for growth in existing markets such as active implantables, interventional, and minimally invasive surgical devices. Precision Components consists of Centers of Excellence in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, and Rock Hill, South Carolina, and engineering and manufacturing capabilities will remain at the facilities, along with current leadership.
Ipsen, Pecatonica, Ill., formerly known as Ipsen Ceramics, is expanding its vacuum furnace hot zone assembly. The refurbishments include new lighting, HVAC, roofing, and other interior and exterior upgrades. Located at 325 John Street, less than 30 miles from Ipsen’s Vacuum Technology Excellence Center in Cherry Valley, the factory will initially employ up to eight material assemblers.
Incorporating the Pecatonica location into Ipsen’s vacuum furnace production and aftermarket process will provide added benefits to customers. Jake Hamid, Ipsen’s director and chief Operating Officer, stated that “Our goal is to reduce delivery times and better control the critical phase of assembly.” In the future, Ipsen is considering other manufacturing activities in Pecatonica to supplement the needs of the Vacuum Technology Excellence Center.
The move to repurpose the Pecatonica plant aligns with Ipsen’s commitment to providing high-quality vacuum furnace equipment and services to customers. The company’s dedication to meeting customer needs and reducing delivery times will be further enhanced by this strategic move, ensuring that Ipsen remains a leader in the vacuum furnace industry.
Seco/Vacuum, Meadville, Pa., has announced that a U.S.-based international manufacturer has placed an order for a Vector high-pressure gas quench furnace. The new furnace will increase the partner’s heat treat capability while improving part quality. The Vector will allow the partner to heat treat larger parts, at higher quantities per cycle than their existing furnace, all with improved quality control and reliability.
The partner’s equipment requires the use of large dies that require precise heat treating. Their current heat treatment setup includes a pair of vacuum furnaces, which have some limits compared to the Vector they are about to receive.
The new furnace, a bottom loading Vector vacuum furnace with 6 bar nitrogen gas quench, has a 60″ diameter, 72″ tall, and a 3-ton capacity working zone. It is equipped with convection heating which allows them to run their tempering cycle in the same furnace without having to move parts after hardening, a tremendous time and labor savings.
The furnace is also equipped with SECO/WARWICK’s FineCarb low-pressure carburizing system for future process developments. The Vector will increase production capacity to meet the rising market demand of today and tomorrow. The new furnace’s vertical configuration and rotary hearth were built specifically to accommodate more large dies, allowing the partner to meet the elevated demand with ease. SECO/VACUUM’s intuitive process controls ensure greater heating uniformity than their existing equipment in both convection mode and in vacuum mode.
WITec GmbH, the originator of commercial Raman imaging systems, has delivered a new alpha300 R instrument to the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) Baden-Württemberg in Ulm, Germany. The Raman microscope will be used in the “Powder-Up!” pilot plant in Ulm, where cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries will be produced and the scalability of fabrication methods will be investigated.
Lithium-ion batteries are the primary enabling technology in the current shift toward electric mobility and their performance is almost exclusively determined by the materials used. ZSW is at the forefront of innovative energy storage development and is constructing a new building for the “Powder-Up!” pilot plant over the next twelve months. The new facility will focus on making improvements in the next generation of battery electrode materials, and on scaling up their manufacturing processes. This work is set to have far-reaching effects in terms of battery performance, resource use, and unit costs.
According to Dr. Margret Wohlfahrt-Mehrens, head of the Accumulators Materials Research department, “Raman microscopy is becoming a standard method in applied battery research. It quickly provides detailed information about how different electrode formulations function and degrade over charge cycles.”
WITec GmbH won the Europe-wide public tender due to the high chemical sensitivity, spatial resolution and acquisition speed of its Raman imaging systems. The alpha300 R microscope offers the added benefits of modularity for integrating hardware such as electro-chemical cells, and high sample throughput for compiling industrially relevant volumes of data.
The “Powder-Up!” facility, funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor and Tourism and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is the first of its kind in Europe. Material batches of up to 100 kilograms can be produced in the new plant. Such quantities are required to produce large battery cells for electric cars or stationary energy storage units.
Image – Florian Klein (left) and Leon Gläser (right) from the ZSW in Ulm together with WITec Application Scientist Dr. Ievgeniia Iermak (middle) during training on the new Raman microscope.
For more information:
Oxford Instruments Group
The Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg
The DOE awarded $42 million in funding for 12 projects developing next-generation electric vehicle battery technologies to Exponent, Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., along with colleagues from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Texas, Austin. Project funding comes from the Department of Energy’s Electric Vehicles for American Low-Carbon Living (EVs4ALL) program.
“Exponent has been a leader in evaluating battery performance, risk, and safety for our clients for over 20 years,” said Ryan Spray, Ph.D., principal scientist at Exponent. “We look forward to the opportunity, with NREL and UT, to apply our deep expertise toward evaluating the energy storage technologies of tomorrow to enable new transportation possibilities.”
Deploying “clean” (zero emission) EVs is key to global decarbonization efforts. In the U.S., for instance, EVs4ALL reports that 80% adoption of EVs could reduce overall CO2 emissions by 800 million tons per year. However, the widespread adoption of EVs depends on developing more durable, faster-charging battery technologies that are effective at low temperatures.
Exponent’s team will focus on characterizing the risks posed by next-generation cells from fundamental reaction-kinetics of the materials all the way to the battery pack level. The project will lead the charge by investigating failure modes and effects, revising testing standards, and new capabilities and tools to help de-risk adoption of next-generation cells for commercial applications.
For more information:
Exponent, Inc.
