The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Out of West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University has earned a Guinness World Record for an unintended side effect to reducing global warming – creating the whitest paint ever. "When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind," said Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue. It was Ruan and a team of graduate students who invented the paint; the idea was to create a paint that would reflect s...
With the global transition to electric vehicles charged with renewable energy creating massive new demands for rare earth materials and magnets, copper, and electrical steel, General Motors and GE Renewable Energy are working together to evaluate opportunities to improve supplies of the materials critical to a low-carbon future. "A secure, sustainable and resilient local supply chain for electric vehicle materials is critical to the execution of GM's vision of an all-electric...
BHP Group has produced the first nickel sulfate crystals at its Nickel West plant in Western Australia, a milestone that is good news for electric vehicle and lithium-ion manufacturers, especially Tesla Inc. Once running at full capacity, this nickel sulfate plant south of Perth is slated to produce 100,000 metric tons of the 99.99% pure nickel sulfate needed for lithium-ion batteries each year. "BHP's nickel sulphate plant is the first of its kind in Australia and will...
Toyota Motor Corp. and Panasonic Corp. are the latest electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery manufacturers to sign an agreement to acquire nickel sulfate from the new production plant at BHP's Nickel West operation in Western Australia. Just last week, BHP announced that it has produced the first nickel sulfate crystals at a new plant slated to yield 100,000 metric tons of the 99.99% pure nickel sulfate needed for lithium-ion batteries each year. Further details on this...
The European Raw Materials Alliance released its action plan to secure access to rare earth elements for the industrial sector in the European Union. Detailed in a 38-page report published on Sept. 30, the plan outlines current and projected European demand for REEs and steps that should be taken to secure their supply. "The EU has committed to the goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050. The raw materials needs to facilitate this energy transition are massive, and Europe...
Seeking to solidify Australia as a leading supplier of the critical minerals that are increasingly being required for electric vehicles, renewable energy, telecommunications, aerospace, defense, and other advanced technologies, the federal government is establishing an AU$2 billion (US$1.44 billion) loan facility for Australian mining projects poised to deliver these vital materials to global markets. Understanding that traditional funding options are often difficult due to...
The explosion of scientific research into the properties and potential benefits of graphene since the material was first identified nearly two decades ago continues to yield substantial results. Ultrathin materials made of a single layer of atoms have riveted scientists' attention since the isolation of graphene. Among the exciting advances made by researchers since that time include the discovery that stacking individual sheets of the carbon-based 2D materials and sometimes...
In a move that will shape the future of batteries powering electric Volkswagens, the German automaker has opened one of the most modern laboratories for cell research and development in Europe. This laboratory in Salzgitter, Germany, will help develop Volkswagen Group's unified cell, a format adaptable to various mixes of battery chemistries, and is compatible with all major upcoming product and production process innovations. This lithium battery, which is expected to...
Working in partnership with Austria-based Enerox GmbH, US Vanadium Holding Company LLC is expanding its capacity to produce ultra-high-purity vanadium electrolyte at its facility in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Enerox recently entered into a contract to purchase 580,000 liters of the ultra-high-purity electrolyte produced by US Vanadium for vanadium redox flow batteries the European manufacturer sells under the brand name CellCube. US Vanadium says this contract is believed to be...
3D Systems recently announced it has added two new alloys to its material portfolio specifically designed to yield high-strength, corrosion-resistant parts when used with its proprietary Direct Metal Printing platform. Based out of South Carolina, 3D Systems has been providing additive manufacturing solutions for over 20 years. Engineering, manufacturing and selling 3D printers, materials, scanners, and services, 3D Systems originally pioneered one of the earliest forms of 3D...
The United States' withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan opened the door for China to swoop in and lay claim to the more than $1 trillion worth of lithium, rare earths, and other metals and gems estimated to lie below a landscape marked by more than 40 years of continuous war. Digging up the rich natural resources in Afghanistan will not be easy and it is not likely that China will consider the now Taliban-run country as a dependable source of critical minerals and metals in t...
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have recently devised a method of using a novel form of the wonder material graphene in sodium-ion batteries, increasing their sustainability and capability, tenfold. Much like today's lithium-ion, sodium-ion batteries function by generating power by shuttling ions between a pair of electrodes in a liquid electrolyte, yet their performance has always left something to be desired. Part of their limitation is due to...
A team at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, including students at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, have achieved growth and characterization of large area, single-crystal graphene that has no wrinkles, folds or absorption layers. This could be said to be the most perfect graphene that has been grown and characterized, to date. "This pioneering breakthrough was due to many contributing...
The furious pace of scientific and academic research into ways to curb the spread of COVID-19 and other highly infectious diseases is yielding impressive results this summer. Researchers say testing is key to understanding and controlling the spread of COVID-19, which has already taken more than four million lives around the world. However, current tests are limited by the tradeoff between accuracy and the time it takes to analyze a sample. Another challenge of current COVID...
Researchers at the National Science Foundation's first Quantum Foundry at the University of California Santa Barbara are making major breakthroughs in the development of materials that enable quantum information-based technologies for quantum computing, communications, sensing, and simulation. The difficulty with quantum mechanics – deemed the hardest part of physics – is that quantum behavior does not follow the rules we are used to when it comes to conventional physics. Thi...
As the world aspires to move away from fossil fuels and minimize carbon emissions, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new method to generate clean hydrogen fuel using scrap aluminum and water. Hydrogen fuel cells function by combining hydrogen and oxygen in an electrochemical process to produce electrical energy and water. While an incredible source of energy, with the only byproduct being water vapor, the extraction of hydrogen is not...
Idaho-focused mining company Perpetua Resources Corp. and Ambri Inc., a battery technology company born from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have forged a partnership that will help advance the antimony-based liquid-metal battery technology that can provide the large-scale energy storage needed to decarbonize electrical grids in the United States and around the world. "This agreement is a meaningful step in support of the current administration's goal...
Ambri Inc., which is advancing antimony-based liquid-metal battery technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has secured a $144 million financing to commercialize and grow its daily cycling, long-duration battery technology, and to build a domestic manufacturing facility. This latest round of financing announced by the company on Aug. 9 was led by strategic investors Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd.,...
Niobium, a metal best known for its ability to strengthen steel, may also be the secret ingredient that allows lithium-ion batteries to live up to their full potential. One problem with the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles, smartphones, laptops, power tools, and thousands of other applications is they lose nearly a fifth of their storage capacity the first time they are charged up. The reason for this loss is the formation of impurities on the nickel-rich...
One year after unveiling a graphene-based coating that is 99% effective at killing the virus responsible for COVID-19 when applied to face masks and other personal protective equipment, ZEN Graphene Solutions Ltd. has received Health Canada approval of its ZENGuard disposable face mask treated with this pathogen-fighting coating. "Exactly one year ago today we announced the scientific breakthrough related to our antimicrobial coating – and now seeing proactive affirmation f...
Crews at Vital Metals Ltd.'s Nechalacho rare earths project in Canada's Northwest Territories are mining zones of ore with such high grades that there is no need to upgrade it with the on-site ore sorter – just simply dig, crush, and bag for shipping to the company's processing facility in Saskatchewan. Mining is currently being carried out at North T, a particularly high-grade deposit within Nechalacho Upper Zone, which hosts 94.7 million metric tons of Australian Joint O...
With renewable energy and electric vehicles driving enormous new demand, the United States Department of Energy is investing $30 million into 13 projects to develop new technologies that will help secure the supply of critical materials such as cobalt, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements needed to build clean energy technologies. The selected national lab- and university-led research projects aim to diversify the supply of, develop substitutes for, and improve the...
Graphene manufacturer and producer of graphene-based batteries Nanotech Energy Inc. reported Aug. 10 it had raised $64 million in funding to be used toward the development of a high-volume graphene manufacturing facility in Reno, Nevada, as well as a potential new headquarters in Amsterdam. Founded in 2015, Nanotech has been researching and developing scalable graphene production and graphene batteries for many years, holding one of the earliest patents for the 2D material...
The National Mining Association and a group of 16 companies working to establish a complete rare earths mines-to-magnets supply chain in the United States are urging Congress to approve legislation that would provide tax incentives for the domestic manufacturing of REE magnets. Earlier this month, Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-California) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pennsylvania) introduced HR 5033, a bipartisan bill to help stimulate domestic production of rare earth magnets as part...
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are working with Powdermet Inc., an Ohio-based nanomaterials and advanced materials research and development company, to develop manganese-bismuth-based materials as an alternative to rare earths in permanent magnets. The motors in most electric vehicles made today contain rare earth permanent magnets, which leverage the naturally occurring strong magnetic force offered by rare earths such as neodymium o...
