The hybrid approach combines fermentation and chemical synthesis, and it has the benefit of competing economically with conventional products derived from fossil fuels, while also improving sustainability. Technologies were integrated to find the lowest-energy and lowest-cost processing techniques leading to the most overall efficient method of making chemicals.

“This advance from the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers demonstrates a truly innovative, green entry into the building blocks for valuable polymers/plastics,” said NSF Chemistry Division Director David Berkowitz. “By cleverly combining biology and chemistry, the Chang team has opened a new, potential bio-renewable alternative to petroleum cracking. These results showcase how NSF investments in collaborative, interdisciplinary science can push the envelope toward developing more sustainable chemical industries.”

These renewable liquids could serve as a more sustainable replacement for today’s fossil fuels used to make everyday products like plastic containers and bags, automobile parts, lubricants, and soaps.

https://csp.umn.edu/

In conjunction with America Recycles Day, Amcor Rigid Packaging (ARP) is announcing a technological advancement that makes it possible for billions* of small bottles to be recycled. ARP, known for its designed-to-be-recycled packaging, is always looking for ways to increase the amount of material that makes it to – and through – the recycling process.

ARP is first applying the technology to 50 mL spirits bottles. These bottles, while made of recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are often lost in the recycling process due to their small size. Most people recognize these as the little liquor bottles often served on airplanes. Despite its material being infinitely recyclable**, the size of these bottles presents challenges at most U.S. material recycling facilities. The bottles tend to slip out of the sorting process where broken glass is filtered out for disposal.

“We know that many small bottles are falling through screens in our MRFs designed to separate glass, so this is a major development – it allows these bottles to pass this step in the process and have the opportunity to be captured by the appropriate equipment downstream. At a time when the recycling industry is constrained by material supply every additional pound diverted from waste makes a big difference,” said Curt Cozart of the Association of Plastic Recyclers.

With its pledge to develop all its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025, Amcor is always innovating to increase the recyclability of its products. Seeing an opportunity for improvement, ARP’s team of engineers examined the issue and began designing a container that collapses in a controlled way to maximize its width. With a collapsed width greater than 5 cm, this design would no longer slip through the cracks at most U.S. recycling facilities.

“This discovery was made by the Amcor team when testing revealed that the bottles collapse in different ways,” said Terry Patcheak, VP of Research & Development and Advanced Engineering at ARP. “Our simulations demonstrated that when these tiny spirits bottles are designed to collapse in a specific way, fewer bottles actually fall through the cracks. The potential here is higher recyclability rates and more recycled content for multiple segments and materials.”

Amcor’s bottle design includes intentional failure points and is based on the Association of Plastic Recyclers specific guidelines. Finite Element Analysis testing is being undertaken to better understand the dynamics of these small bottles during the recycling process. Additionally, ARP will partner with recycling facilities to capture real-world data about the recyclability of its new bottle.

“We look forward to seeing the data and continuing to use this kind of creative approach to look at all of our packaging. In partnering with the APR, we are looking at size, color and material to increase the amount of recycled material that can be turned into more bottles. We look forward to partnering with our customers as we use a new lens to look at ways to meet our shared sustainability goals,” Patcheak said.

https://www.amcor.com/

Aiming to commercialize chemical recycling of hard-to-recycle ASR and SMC

Mitsui Chemicals, Inc.and Microwave Chemical Co. Ltd have launched a new initiative aimed at commercializing the use of microwave technology in the chemical recycling of plastic waste. The project involves directly producing raw monomers from plastics that have conventionally been tricky to recycle, including automotive shredder residue (ASR) – a mixture of principally polypropylene-based plastics – and thermosetting sheet molding compound (SMC), which is used in bathtubs and vehicle parts.

Since entering into a strategic partnership in 2017 to promote joint development of next-generation chemical process technologies, Mitsui Chemicals and Microwave Chemical have built up a solid relationship, including through partial equity investment. The two companies are together looking at leveraging microwave technology for a variety of chemical processes.

This new initiative is an attempt to commercialize a chemical recycling technique that uses the PlaWave™ microwave-based plastic degradation technology developed by Microwave Chemical to directly break down ASR and SMC products into raw monomers. As it eliminates an intermediate step, direct monomerization is a more efficient means of recycling plastic waste into plastic than the conventional approach, which involves turning the waste into oil before monomerization. The technique also promises to reduce CO2 emissions through the use of electricity generated from renewable energy to power the decomposition process.

With initial deliberations having yielded positive results, the project will proceed to verification using Microwave Chemical’s bench-scale equipment before the end of fiscal 2021. A move to full implementation will be then be considered with the objective of promptly commencing demonstration tests.

Microwaves are an electromagnetic wave which is frequently used for microwave oven and communication applications, which can transfer energy to materials directly and selectively. As microwaves can be generated from renewable energy sources, this technology is environmentally friendly, which promotes a reduction of CO2 emissions

https://jp.mitsuichemicals.com/

Carbon Design Engine allows product designers to generate advanced latticed parts quickly and easily from a solid part STL file and output STL files for printing on most common 3D printers. Previously, this software was available only to Carbon platform customers, but beginning in early 2022 software licenses will be available for individuals and teams to design, develop, and print advanced lattices on most common 3D printers. With broad accessibility to Carbon’s lattice-generating design software, design engineers and industrial designers can automate the process of creating conformal, multi-zone lattices, dramatically accelerating the product development process. Design Engine has been widely used by global brands to design high-performance, breakthrough products, including bike saddles, helmets, and sporting gloves.

Specialized Bicycles reimagined the bike saddle leveraging Carbon Design Engine. “We’ve invested heavily in research and innovation, with the goal of improving riders’ experience on the bike. Our collaboration using Carbon’s Design Engine software and 3D printing process enabled us to develop a saddle with different damping characteristics, something impossible with traditional foam, leading to superior comfort. We wanted to push the limits and our partnership with Carbon allowed us to do just that,” said Emma Boutcher, Saddles, Grips and Tapes Product Manager at Specialized.

Carbon’s idea-to-production platform enables creators to develop better products in less time. It is comprised of a wide range of materials, a suite of software to design products and define production processes, and high-speed 3D printers. Within Carbon’s software suite, Design Engine automates complex product design and development from prototyping to production. Innovative products designed with Design Engine have successfully moved from design to production in months and then been produced at scale.

“Creators are challenged with fragmented solutions and organizational silos that have caused friction, limitations on innovation, and delayed time to market. To successfully bring better products to market in less time, organizations need a platform that unifies product design, development, and manufacturing,” said Phil DeSimone, Chief Product and Business Development Officer at Carbon. “Carbon’s software suite, starting with Design Engine, aims to cover every step needed for companies to create products with superior performance while accelerating the time to market.”

Lattice structures require less material, while retaining tunable mechanical properties. As a result, latticed parts can provide performance advantages, including lightweighting, flexibility, improved cushioning and dampening, heat dissipation, and unique aesthetics. Because of Design Engine’s unique ability to run complex computations in the cloud, design engineers can experience extremely fast design cycles to rapidly refine lattice designs in minutes, and use most 3D printers to manufacture them immediately. As a result, this robust and powerful tool helps creators go from idea to functional lattice part in hours, rather than days.

Key features of Design Engine include:

• Multi-zone: The Pro tier of Design Engine introduces the ability to tune multiple zones at once, integrating different lattice types, cell sizes, or strut diameters to create different zones of performance within a single part, using the same material.
• Powerful zone transitions: The Pro tier of Design Engine uses patent-pending technology to seamlessly blend zones, producing attractive, functional lattices ready to use in real-world applications.
• No tedious tuning: Designing even simple lattices often requires tedious, manual work that is prone to errors that can significantly impact part performance. Design Engine resolves lattice features, both large and small, while robustly transitioning seamlessly between different zones inside the same part for tunable performance.
• Precise control: Lattices generated in Design Engine can be optimized for a wide array of performance characteristics, including part volume and tunable mechanical response.
• Compatibility: Design Engine offers compatibility with most common additive manufacturing techniques by outputting generated lattices as STLs.

“Carbon’s move to open its design software to all designers is a game-changer for the product development process. We’ve seen what innovative designs are possible with Design Engine, and heard real use cases of efficiency from idea-to-production,” said Tim Greene, a Research Director at IDC. ”Moreover, the ability to generate designs that are agnostic to many printer technologies will empower more teams to rapidly create functional latticed parts.”

https://www.carbon3d.com/

Purdue University engineers have invented a new, patent-pending charging station cable that would fully recharge certain electric vehicles in under five minutes – about the same amount of time it takes to fill up a gas tank.

Today, chargers are limited in how quickly they can charge an EV’s battery due to the danger of overheating. To charge an EV faster, a higher current needs to travel through the charging cable. The higher the current, the greater amount of heat that must be removed to keep the charging cable operational. The cooling systems that chargers currently use remove only so much heat.

Using an alternative cooling method, Purdue researchers designed a charging cable that can deliver a current 4.6 times that of the fastest available EV chargers on the market today by removing up to 24.22 kilowatts of heat. The project was funded by a research and development alliance between Ford Motor Co. and Purdue.

Electric vehicle charging time can vary widely today, from 20 minutes at a station alongside a roadway to hours using an at-home charging station. Wait times and charger location are both cited as major sources of anxiety for people who are considering electric vehicle ownership.

“My lab specializes in coming up with solutions for situations where the amounts of heat that are produced are way beyond the capabilities of today’s technologies to remove,” said Issam Mudawar, Purdue’s Betty Ruth and Milton B. Hollander Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

“Ford is committed to making the transition to electrification easy,” said Matt Stover, director of charging, energy services and business development at Ford. “We are glad to support Purdue’s research, which has the potential to make electric vehicle and commercial fleet ownership more appealing and accessible.”

Though the prototype hasn’t been tested on EVs yet, Mudawar and his students demonstrated in the lab that their prototype accommodates a current of over 2,400 amperes – far beyond the 1,400-ampere minimum that would be needed to reduce charging times for large commercial EVs to five minutes. The most advanced chargers in the industry deliver only currents up to 520 amperes, and most chargers available to consumers support currents of less than 150 amperes.

Ultimately, charge times will be dependent on the power output ratings of the power supply and charging cable, and the power input rating of the EV’s battery. To obtain a sub-five minute charge, all three components will need to be rated to 2,500 amperes.

The prototype also mimics all the traits of a real-world charging station: It includes a pump, a tube with the same diameter as an actual charging cable, the same controls and instrumentation, and it has the same flow rates and temperatures.

Mudawar’s lab intends to work with EV or charging cable manufacturers to test the prototype on EVs within the next two years. The testing will determine more details on charge speeds for specific models of EVs.

Removing more heat to shorten EV charging time

EV charging stations and other types of electronics rely on liquid cooling systems to remove heat from within their wires. Increasing the current through a charging cable using this method would require larger conductive wires and more liquid coolant, making the cable heavier and difficult for customers to handle.

For the past 37 years, Mudawar has been developing ways to more efficiently cool electronics by taking advantage of how liquid captures heat when boiled into a vapor. By capturing heat in both liquid and vapor forms, a liquid-to-vapor cooling system can remove at least 10 times more heat than pure liquid cooling.

These cooling benefits make it possible to use a smaller wire diameter inside the charging cable while dissipating a higher current. Research papers on the team’s experimental demonstration of the charging cable prototype and the cooling method it uses have been published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

Despite decades of research on liquid-to-vapor cooling, no industry has begun using these systems yet because studies like those conducted by Mudawar’s lab are needed to understand how to best implement the technology.

“The industry has a gap in knowledge and expertise needed to switch from pure liquid cooling to liquid phase change cooling. How do you design the system? What type of equations do you use to optimize it? But we do have this knowledge through our extensive research,” Mudawar said.

Beyond EVs: aircraft and spacecraft

Based on what Mudawar and his students observed from experimental demonstrations of their prototype, liquid-to-vapor cooling is so effective at removing large amounts of heat that EVs could charge in far less than five minutes using this technology.

“The industry doesn’t really need EVs to charge faster than five minutes, but we think we can increase the current even more by modifying both the state of the incoming liquid and the design of the cooling space around the conductor wires in the charging cable,” Mudawar said.

The prototype’s ability to remove far more heat than other chargers wasn’t a surprise to Mudawar. “My lab has developed solutions using liquid phase change technology for many applications, including in aerospace and defense. We knew how capable the technology is,” he said.

Similar to the EV charging cable prototype, the systems that Mudawar’s lab has designed for aircraft allow avionics to dissipate great amounts of heat, increasing their performance. Mudawar also has projects funded by NASA to boost the cooling capabilities of rocket engines and spacecraft.

The researchers have filed a patent application for their charging cable invention through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization and are seeking additional industry partners to continue the technology’s development.

https://www.purdue.edu/