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Focus on Germany Allan Hall reports from Berlin
NEWS
TECHNOLOGYSPOTLIGHT
Advances in technology across industry
Demonstrating wave power in France
Fortum, DCNS and AW-Energy have signed a development agreement in wave power research and development with the support of La Règion Bretagne. As part of the agreement, the companies will develop a joint 1.5MW wave power demonstration project. The wave power technology chosen for the project is WaveRollerô.
Fortum will be responsible for the project development and will be the owner of the demonstration park. DCNS will manage the site development and construction work. The WaveRollerô technology chosen for this project was developed by AW-Energy and is extensively patented. At the cutting edge of wave power, the WaveRollerô offers huge perspectives on an international scale.
“This demonstration project is an ingenious European industrial match combining the best of Finnish and French expertise in renewable energy. For the very first time, we can now bring together Fortum’s expertise in CO2 free power production, DCNS industrial expertise in marine energy, AW-Energy’s technology solution and the commitment of La Règion Bretagne. Together, we can truly create new renewable energy for Europe,” declared Matti Ruotsala, Fortum’s executive vice-president, Power Division. Visit: www.fortum.com - www.dcnsgroup.com - www.aw-energy.com
Creating electricity with caged atoms
Alot of energy is wasted when machines turn hot, unnecessarily heating up their environment. Some of this thermal energy could be harvested using thermoelectric materials; they create electric current when they are used to bridge hot and cold objects. At the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), a new and considerably more efficient class of thermoelectric materials can now be produced. It is the material’s very special crystal structure that does the trick, in connection with an astonishing new physical effect; in countless tiny cages within the crystal, cerium atoms are enclosed. These trapped magnetic atoms are constantly rattling the bars of their cage, and this rattling seems to be responsible for the material’s exceptionally favourable properties.
‘Clathrates’ is the technical term for crystals, in which host atoms are enclosed in cage-like spaces. “These clathrates show remarkable thermal properties,” says Professor Silke Bühler-Paschen (TU Vienna). The exact behaviour of the material depends on the interaction between the trapped atoms and the cage surrounding them. “We came up with the idea to trap cerium atoms, because their magnetic properties promised particularly interesting kinds of interaction,” explains Bühler-Paschen.
For a long time, this task seemed impossible. All earlier attempts to incorporate magnetic atoms such as the rare-earth metal cerium into the clathrate structures failed. With the help of a sophisticated crystal growth technique in a mirror oven, Professor Andrey Prokofiev (TU Vienna) has now succeeded in creating clathrates made of barium, silicon and gold, encapsulating single cerium atoms. Visit: www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/ article/8391/
Royal DSM, the global Life Sciences and Materials Sciences company, is launching a custom-made solution for structural and semistructural applications, incorporating various types of continuous fibre reinforcements embedded in its advanced polyamides. Together with several industry partners, DSM has developed advanced thermoplastic composites, which are initially aimed at the automotive industry.
“Car makers around the world continue to improve the fuel efficiency and sustainability of their products,” says Rein Borggreve, Global Research and Technology director at DSM. “Over the years, thermoplastics have provided various solutions, in the form of lightweight components and systems in the passenger compartment, in bodywork, and under the hood. DSM materials have proven important in making this trend to replace metal by plastics possible, in such applications as the air bag system and the oil sump. Now it’s time for the next step, with advanced thermoplastic composites.”
Composites containing carbon fibers, based on DSM’s EcoPaXX® polyamide 410, Akulon® polyamide 6 and Stanyl® polyamide 46, will facilitate significant weight reduction in automobile body and chassis parts, while glass fibre reinforced composites will be targeted at reducing the weight of semi-structural components. In all cases, the lightweighting will result in increased vehicle fuel efficiency and reduced emissions of carbon dioxide. Visit: www.dsm.com/automotive
