NEWS
TECHNOLOGYSPOTLIGHT
Movement without joints
Advances in technology across industry
Urban underground holds sustainable energy
T The Monolitix team from left to right: René Jähne, Flavio Campanile and Alexander Hasse
“WE
are surrounded by objects with joints from morning till night,” explains Flavio Campanile, aeronautical engineer and chairman of the board of directors at the Empa spin-off Monolitix. “Without joints, everything would be rigid: you would not able to steer a car and the brakes on bicycles would not work.” But rather than using conventional bearings and joints to create the required movement for a mechanism, solid-state mechanisms deliberately dispense with these types of elements. Instead, the material is deformed in a controlled and reversible way. As a figurative example, instead of a pair of pliers made from several parts, as representative of the traditional joint principle, Campanile highlights a pair of tweezers made from a single, elastically deformable component. “The advantages of monolithic systems are obvious: joint-free mechanisms are frictionless and wearfree and therefore also maintenance-free. This can drastically reduce the running costs of machines and instruments. In areas where high standards of hygiene are required, such as in medical devices or in the food industry, they are advantageous because they are easier to clean and sterilise. In addition, with solid-state mechanisms, assembly costs can be reduced dramatically or even avoided altogether. Compliant mechanisms can also perform functions that would be inconceivable with conventional systems: for example, aircraft wings which constantly change their geometry – like those found in nature – and optimise their use of the aerodynamic forces. Compliant concepts are also extremely well-suited to rotor blades on wind turbines that are difficult to access or for anti-friction and friction bearings in solar power plants, which are subjected to mud, sand or dust and have to function under extreme conditions. Visit: www.empa.ch
emperatures in big cities are far above those in the surrounding rural area: Dense settlement, surface sealing, industry, traffic, and lacking vegetation cause an urban microclimate with increased temperatures in the atmosphere. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich have developed an analytical heat flux model to examine factors such as the increase in temperatures of sealed surfaces, heat release from buildings, sewage ducts, and underground district heating networks as well as discharge of thermal waste water. By modelling anthropogenic heat fluxes into the underground of the city of Karlsruhe, the researchers determined long-term trends of heat flux processes. The energy from close-to-surface groundwater aquifers might be used for heating in winter and cooling in summer via geothermal heat pumps and groundwater heat pumps. Use of this geothermal potential would not only cover part of the growing demand for energy, but also reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which would counteract the heating of the cities. Visit: www.kit.edu
Langh Ship develops closed loop scrubber A
lthough nowadays the sulphur limit for ship fuel in the North Sea and Baltic Sea is 1%, Langh Ship’s m/s Laura sails in the area with whatever fuel the charterer has found in Rotterdam, no matter how high its sulphur content. This is possible because the shipping company has equipped the vessel with a closed loop scrubber that emits exhaust gas that is even cleaner than if the fuel had a sulphur content of no more than 0.1%. 22 Industry Europe
While m/s Laura was docked in May, a scrubber was installed in the vessel. Now the exhaust gas is cleaned in line with the requirements of the upcoming regulations, and the washing waters used in the method are also cleaned. In addition, the cleaning system removes particulates from the exhaust gas, even though this is not required by legislation. The system is protected by multiple patent applications. Visit: www.langh.fi
