VTT Impulse 1/2015

1/2015

MCI

VTT

MANAGING

RISKS

in a complex world

SCIENCE Storm water management in urban environments

teCHNOLOGY The bioeconomy is emerging

BUSINESS Yarn directly from wood

VTT

1/2015 44

At VTT’s MIKES, accuracy is an end in itself.

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Photo: Mikko Vähäniitty

Simulations and stress tests help prepare for exceptional situations.

76 68

Silicon photonics create new opportunities for data transfer.

Dose Coach is made by VTT from start to finish.” marika kurkinen

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editorial

“Finland can ill afford duplication of research projects or quasi-scientific activities.”

Erkki KM Leppävuori President & CEO, VTT Ltd

Research with impact

B

y the time this magazine is published, Finland will have a new Parliament after very important elections. Once the new Government is in place, it is time to see how much weight the campaign promises hold, and whether the politicians will keep them.

Hopefully they will, because Finland is in a dire need of clear and unambiguous decisions on how to build the country’s future. There are no easy choices, and the decisions require not only vision but also thinking outside the box. Politicians must be prepared to leave their personal comfort zones.

Many signs point to cutbacks and economic atrophy, far fewer to growth and regeneration. Following the latter requires the ability to take and tolerate risks.

In my opinion, investing in research is the only effective way to improve the competitiveness of businesses in Finland. In particular, research that promotes productivity and product value adds to company profitability and thus to a healthy national economy.

I have been disheartened by the fact that experts in

different fields have very conflicting views on how to secure our competitiveness. Cost-efficiency is a must, but in order to be able to survive on global markets, our economy must be built on strong expertise and competitive products.

For a small nation such as ours, two things are critical: allocating resources in the right places and directing funds where returns are the best. Finland can ill afford duplicate research projects; nor should any funding be directed to quasi-scientific activities under these challenging economic conditions.

Universities and research institutions should deepen their cooperation, but not without a clear mission and mandate for each party. Funds should be granted based on results and effectiveness, and decision-making should use comparable financial and

result criteria so as to identify the best investment areas.

As for the new Government Programme, it pays to

look at previous ones: they contained a clear intention to invest in RDI, which has enabled the continuous growth of our national economy. The past two Governments have reaped the last economic benefits produced by significant investments in RDI in previous years. Should the negative development continue, we can only expect grim results!

According to Statistics Finland, research and development expenditure fell to EUR 6.7 billion, or 3.3 per cent of GDP in 2013. This downward trend is expected to accelerate, and the expenditure in 2014 is likely to come to some EUR 6.4 billion, or 3.1 per cent of GDP. We cannot let this go on! Competing countries continue to increase investments in their RDI resources, and significantly so. Can we really afford to lag behind?

Research and development, and the results of applied

research in particular, are the catalysts of economic growth. The Government and businesses need to invest more in new technologies and innovations, and must be prepared to tolerate risks while doing so.

We must also tap into the high-level expertise available in Finland to provide results. Organisations such as Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and VTT Ltd ensure that this expertise will build new businesses and promote economic growth. By doing this, we have a direct impact on the growth and competitiveness of Finnish companies, the creation of new jobs and generation of tax revenue.

We should aim to bring RDI expenditure to EUR 8 billion, or 4 per cent of GDP. This will promote economic growth and improve the competitiveness of Finnish companies, while also securing interest and investments from foreign companies. n VTT Impulse 3

Contents 1/2015 vtt impulse now A glimpse of the future.............................. 6 Focal point................................................. 8 Ponsse: Swift and agile in business and in the forest Risk management in an increasingly complex world......................................... 14

Kohtaamisia henkilö

58

72 62

science Science news...........................................................22 Quantum standards for the new SI metric system......................................................24 Research Scientist Antti Manninen Bio-based aromatics essential to the fine chemical industry...................................30 Research scientists David Thomas, Matti Reinikainen New solutions to prevent urban flooding – water-permeable surfacing..................................36 Research Scientists Erika Holt, Hannele Kuosa, Juhani Koskenlaakso, Terhi Kling, Emma Niemeläinen, Harri Kivikoski 4 VTT Impulse

Photo: Juha Sarkkinen

Column..................................................... 21 Matti Apunen

“It is important to achieve as high a utilisation rate as possible for expensive infrastructure.”

konstantinos spartiotis

PHoto: Juho Kuva

54

As an Ltd, we are more agile.

TEchnology Technology news..............................................................42 When you know how to measure, you know how to improve................................................44 VTT’s MIKES Metrology is expert at precise measurements.

Are environmental claims reliable?..................................50 Consumers need to know whether environmental claims can be trusted.

It is a duty of entrepreneurs to seek growth...................54 Aaro Cantell, Chairman of the Board, VTT Ltd, believes that development drives growth.

Working towards bioeconomy.........................................58 Bioruukki offers a new, unique development platform for R&D in bioeconomy.

Pilot plants turn ideas into business...............................62 Pilot factories speed up the development of new ideas.

8 business Business news.................................................................66 Small is mighty: growth and new opportunities in silicon photonics ............................................................68 Fast optic data transfer replacing electronic transfer.

X-ray imaging taken to new heights...............................72 Ajat is an excellent example of a successful entry onto the global market.

76 This is the only technology capable of spinning yearn directly from wood fibres.

Yarn from wood fibres, sustainably................................76 Spinnova is developing a sustainable method for spinning yarn from wood fibres.

VTT Impulse  5

Digitalisation in closing the gap When we talk about the D word, we no longer refer to devaluation. We mean the digital revolution. Can digitalisation improve equality?

The answer is simple: Yes, it can.

T

Text Riitta Ekholm

he new Digibarometer 2015 survey reveals both positives and negatives about Finland’s digital position.

Despite widespread technical skills, not enough has been made of digital technology. The barometer measures how digitalisation makes a difference in society.

On the whole, Finland is doing well, climbing to second place out of 22 countries after Denmark. While Finland enjoys the best conditions in the world for making use of the digital expansion, in practice the country is lagging behind the top league, in fifth place. Finland’s good overall performance is based on a level playing field.

It’s not far from the truth to say that nearly all Finns can access the Internet. Regardless of age, gender, status and where they live, Finns are largely equal in the digital world.

However, it is too optimistic to claim that the nation’s adult population is digitally conversant simply because they have embraced online banking. In the Digital Barometer, the citizens’ IT skills were only ranked average.

Creating value together VTT’s team leader for digital services research Anu Seisto gives her insight into the results of the 2015 Digital Barometer for Finland.

– We received similar results from the EIT ICT Labs’ Trusted Cloud online survey, with just over 500 respondents across Finland, says Seisto.

Access to social media, such as Facebook, is fairly equally spread across Finland. Of the

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respondents aged 65 or over, 70 per cent had a Facebook account and were familiar with cloud services, while Instagram, Spotify and Netflix were mainly popular among the young age groups.

– Finnish libraries and schools are great levellers for digital service access. Smart phones are widely used by primary school children, regardless of their parents’ level of income. The talk about young people being digital natives is not for nothing, says Seisto.

Finnish attitudes towards technology are positive, but the threshold for using digital services should be lowered. If services include familiar elements, they will be easier to adopt. For example, older people may like a game of Patience and end up getting a computer to practise the card game.

– Use of Skype has also become more pre­ valent among the older age groups, particu­ larly when grandparents don’t live close to their grandchildren. The distance does not stop grandparents when they want to see how the children learn to crawl or play.

Seisto studies the user aspect in technology.­ The key characteristics of digital services include effectiveness, feasibility and, most of all, the ability to meet user needs. For this purpose, Seisto’s team also gathers information on human behaviour.

– Data protection must be guaranteed in order for users to have trust in the services.

Digitalisation changes our perceptions of how things work. Previously, we made a product,

glimpse of the future sold it and created a business. This process has been replaced by services.

Smart phones are rarely used only for making phone calls any longer. Instead, the camera and messaging such as WhatsApp, video and social media have become the most important features of smart phones.

– Creating value together is essential. Online, everybody has equal chances for participation and sharing information.

Even break With the advance of the Internet in the 1990s, the digital gap became a hotly debated topic.

Some citizens were able to connect to the net and use a computer and some were not. As this inequality has dramatically decreased, the digital gap is no longer discussed as much, says research professor Heikki Ailisto.

Developing countries in Africa, along with China, have gained access to ITC and digital tools. The gap now exists in terms of connection speeds and the quality of devices.

In the digital world, users cannot enjoy economic equality, fully realise their career prospects, participate in society or monitor their physical health without a high-speed internet connection. Digital access also improves productivity and thereby economic growth. We are by no means across the finishing line yet, and there is still plenty to do.

Education has always provided the means to achieve equality. In Finland, the comprehensive school system has guaranteed a level playing field for children. However, Ailisto claims development has now stalled in Finland.

– At school, digitalisation currently means that pupils may have access to laptops or tablets. Instead, it could mean something totally different.

Ailisto mentions online courses, which have become commonplace in the United States.

According to Ailisto, interactive teaching definitely beats lectures where students doze off, feel unengaged and leave with nothing to show for their time.

Free online courses are a major step towards equal access to education. Some courses run by large universities are already available to the public for free. In 2006, Salman Khan, an American trainer of Bengali origin, set up a non-profit educational organisation with a mis-

sion to offer free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

– Khan tutored his young relative in maths by email and had an idea of a platform that could offer exercises and teachers’ tools free of charge, says Ailisto.

Help from old-age technology – Managing one’s health with the help of web applications, smart phone apps and a range of devices is a trend that encourages people to take up preventative health care, says team leader Johan Plomp.

The widespread use of self-care apps would help to close the equality gap between those accessing public and private health care services. Opportunities for personal health monitoring are put to the test in Tekes’ strategic initiative, the DHR (Digital Health Revolution).

Over the years, Plomp and his colleagues have participated in several of VTT’s health care projects, which have supported elderly people in their efforts to manage independently in their own homes. The tools for helping the ageing ­population in their daily life include management and monitoring solutions for the living environment, digital and communication services, robotics and concepts facilitating remote care.

Their current project, Empathic Products, explores the uses of VTT’s People Tracker technology, based on a motion detection sensor, in order to monitor the daily life of elderly people and to recognise emergencies.

With the help of the international AAL programme (Ambient Assisted Living), VTT has also developed a method to measure balance.

– When elderly persons fall and hurt themselves, their quality of life deteriorates, and the accident may prove costly to society, says Plomp.

VTT has also developed a method for diagnosing the early signs of Alzheimer’s. A startup called Combinostics has been set up to bring the tool onto the market.

Plomp says it was great to see how people voted for Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (PKN) as Finland’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. In the Eureka/ITEA DIYSE project, VTT collaborated with the Rinnekoti Foundation, developing digital instruments suitable for people with developmental disabilities and a control panel tool for use in music therapy. n

VTT Impulse 7

Swift and agile

in business

Forest machine manufacturer Ponsse is transforming. Its new products will enter serial production in phases during 2015. As a result of quick growth in the past years, the company has emerged a leading manufacturer of industrial harvesting products in several markets.

Text Paula Bergqvist Photos Ponsse and Paula Bergqvist

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and in the forest

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he new 2015 models mark the most significant product range overhaul in ­Ponsse’s history, introducing new solutions and engines that call for major changes in the factory, says Ponsse’s President and CEO Juho Nummela.

When renewing the products, Ponsse has focused on efficiency, structural durability, easy maintenance and ergonomics. The new models’ engines will also be compliant with the new environment requirements of the EU. – Financial cycles have shifted rapidly since 2009, and last year was the most successful in our history. We have been doing the right things, creating demand for and interest in our products.

Ponsse shows that it is possible to run a viable business in Finland and Northern Savonia, far from industrial hubs.

Nummela names three factors that have en­abled Ponsse’s success: renewal, high level of education and an effective innovation system.

– The company’s quick ability to adopt new product and manufacturing technologies makes high-technology manufacturing possible in Finland. Productivity must also be at a sufficient level to make business viable here. Finnish competitiveness has been hit by the global financial c­ risis, 10 VTT Impulse

which involves some risks, but we have kept both our product development and manufacturing operations in Finland.

In addition to extensive in-house manufacturing, Ponsse works in close cooperation with a supplier network. Operations are based on the principle that the suppliers must also be able to grow, make investments and network.

– Ponsse designs and manufactures its products­together with its partner companies in the Vieremä business park, which facilitates communication, Nummela points out.

Ponsse’s product range consists of forest machines suitable for all kinds of conditions from harvesting on steep slopes to dense eucalyptus forests. The quality of infrastructure in the countries to which Ponsse exports products varies greatly, making spare part delivery and machine maintenance more challenging.

– Our task is to ensure that the machines work in the forest. They must be maintained so that they work reliably, even in the freezing conditions in Siberia. We need to develop our parts and maintenance networks continuously, to keep up with sales and product development.

Good networks are a foundation for long-term operation, Nummela says.

“research cooperation with VTT has involved, for example, reduction of vibration and safety assessment of control systems.”

Product development ideas stem from the forest Customer-oriented approach is an important part of product development at Ponsse.

– It’s good to know how the machine operators work and what kind of needs they have.

Our best product development ideas originate in harvesting sites. We also get valuable feedback from our resellers.

– We maintain regular communication with forest companies home and abroad. All our machines, frames included, are manufactured in our own factory in Vieremä. For us, the frame is an important part of the product. We do much more than just assemble parts in our factory, Nummela points out.

Ponsse’s product development and testing are also carried out in Vieremä, managed by Director, Technology and R&D Juha Inberg. The new prototype testing facility opened for business in March.

Customer needs guide product development Nummela and Inberg do not want to venture guesses about the next technological leap in the industry. According to them, digitisation will provide new opportunities for a long time to come.

– Ponsse’s machines are increasingly monitoring themselves. As the products develop, we acquire a growing pool of data from the product network on how customers use them. This data is valuable for both production and product development, Inberg explains.

Ponsse’s machines are designed and manufactured in Vieremä, Finland.

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“best product development ideas originate in harvesting sites.”

– There are numerous interesting technolo­ gical opportunities. We focus on those that can enhance harvesting technologies, machine productivity and reliability as well as ergonomics.

– Our customers need reliable machines.

Machine operators work in demanding conditions that require focus and quick decisionmaking, making ergonomics important. Spare part deliveries and effective maintenance are the ultimate deal-maker, Nummela says.

Participation in network programmes Over the past years, Ponsse has been an active participant in the network programmes coordinated by the Finnish Metals and Engineer-

12 VTT Impulse

ing Competence Cluster, FIMECC Ltd. Cooperation with VTT and universities is ongoing in programmes such as MANU (Manufacturing Competence through Digitisation), which aims to develop supplier networks by digitisation.

In the past, research cooperation with VTT has involved, for example, reduction of vibration and safety assessment of control systems.

– FIMECC, Ponsse and VTT have established a great cooperative triangle, Nummela says.

– It is worthwhile for VTT to focus on the recognition of customer needs to provide great results. General research topics tend not to be of use to us, and more often than not, we need quick results.

– VTT readily supports product development in cooperation with companies in many industries. We are currently working on several projects to produce new and innovative machinery products. At the new VTT Ltd, we aim to deepen this cooperation and provide services that complement the customers’ own product development seamlessly. Bridging the gap between research and product development is one of our key objectives, says VTT’s Key Account Manager Pirkka Tukeva. n

Juho Nummela (right), Juha Inberg and the Scorpion harvester from Ponsse’s 2015 series. The Scorpion boasts special features such as minimum surface pressure, stability, high productivity and excellent ergonomics.

from a workshop to a manufacturing group forest machine company Ponsse was founded in 1970 by Einari Vidgrén (1943-2010), a logger in Northern Savonia.

Logging was hard work for a young man. There were no durable machines available, so Vidgrén decided to build one. His machine was robust and agile in the forest terrain. When others expressed interest in the machine, Vidgrén decided to open a factory. The company was named after Ponsse, an agile cross-breed dog renowned in Vieremä for its hunting skills.

The manufacture of first factory-made Ponsse machines started in Vieremä in 1970. Ponsse’s first harvester was manufactured in 1986, which also marks the year Ponsse started manufacturing harvester grapples and measuring devices. Demand for the products was steady, and the company already had interested buyers.

Ponsse was sold to Interpolator Oy in 1988, but as recession hit Finland in the early 1990s, the Vid-

grén family purchased it back. Exports pick up, and Ponsse is listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1995. Strong growth has continued ever since.

Ponsse’s foreign subsidiaries are responsible for sales, maintenance and parts deliveries in their respective areas. To date, Ponsse’s forest machines have been sold to 40 countries.

Ponsse Group consists of the parent company Ponsse Plc and subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway, UK, France, USA, Brazil, Russia, China and Uruguay as well as Epec Oy in Finland. In 2014, Ponsse Plc’s net sales amounted to EUR 390.8 million. International operations accounted for 75 per cent of Ponsse’s net sales.

Ponsse’s machines are designed and manufactured in Vieremä, Finland. Since 2000, Ponsse has emerged a market leader in Finland and one of the world’s leading manufacturers of forest machines for the cut-to-length method. The Group employs some 1,200 forest machine professionals.

VTT Impulse 13

t n e m e g risk mana

in an increasingly complex world Text Matti Välimäki Photos iStockphoto

14 VTT Impulse

What would happen if there were a major power failure in Lapland?

Together with its partners, VTT helps the authorities to prepare for situations like this. Simulations and stress tests are convenient tools in a world in which everything is connected.

VTT Impulse  15

V

VTT’s extensive experience in the research and development of security spans decades, with special expertise in areas such as risk and safety management, reliability management of technical systems and support in decision-making.

Research focus and objectives are aligned according to needs. The world is changing at an increasing pace, and technical systems are increasingly complex and inter-dependent.

According to Team Leader Liisa Poussa, Risk Management team, and Research Professor Veikko Rouhiainen, Safety and Security research, risk management in an increasingly complex world becomes all the more challenging.

– We have more versatile methods of data collection, more advanced analytics and different real-time safety indicators at our disposal.

This helps create a dynamic snapshot of the current situation. On the other hand, it is more challenging to identify relevant data and use it in decision-making at different levels of the organisation, Poussa says.

– It is essential to refine data into information so that decision-makers can interpret it quickly and easily. There should be more emphasis on the visualisation of information, and its uncertainties.

When resources are increasingly limited, safety and security operations cannot escape input-output considerations.

– An added challenge in public service is the fact that the payers and beneficiaries are often not the same. Each party should adopt a systemic approach and think about the big picture, using multi-criteria assessment of effects and considering the points of view of different parties, Poussa says.

Simulations and stress tests provide new development opportunities In particular, Poussa and Rouhiainen are advocates of simulations and stress tests.

Simulations are models that allow the illustration and virtualisation of how processes and people, or machines and buildings, operate under different conditions.

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“it is more challenging to identify relevant data.”

“management of risks becomes increasingly challenging.”

– It is much cheaper, not to mention quicker, to study this with simulations instead of reallife environments, Veikko Rouhiainen points out.

Stress tests reveal how well the research subject is prepared for exceptional situations and can manage them. While the terminology and testing originates in the banking world, stress tests are today performed in other facilities, such as nuclear power plants, and more recently, mines.

Opportunities for advancements and enhancements Like other operators, authorities aim to prioritise and focus their activities more.

– There is a lot of room for development in self-monitoring. Critical functions in society should be subjected to more stress testing, Rouhiainen says.

On the other hand, many central functions in society are provided by businesses. Authorities lack the time or resources to monitor their operations, which makes the companies’ selfmonitoring increasingly important.

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Businesses must be better prepared for exceptional situations.

– Companies in general – regardless of the industry – should be better prepared for exceptional situations and external risks. They should identify their weaknesses, which can provide completely new kinds of opportunities to advance and enhance their operations. This point of view may become even more important in the future, Rouhiainen speculates.

He points out that optimisation of individual details is not that important. What counts is optimisation at a higher-level.

– We must also consider what is deemed acceptable in society. For example, when considering security, we must remember that protection of the individual places practical restrictions on data collection.

Systems must be able to communicate with each other VTT participates in many security and safety projects. Among them is the EU-financed project CRISMA (Modelling crisis management for improved action and preparedness) that aims to improve the reliability of societal functions and, for example, to optimise response operations in the event of civil crisis situations or catastrophes. The project creates tools for modelling crisis management and simulating different scenarios.

The CRISMA project is coordinated by VTT. According to project coordinator A ­ nna-Mari 18 VTT Impulse

Heikkilä, one of the CRISMA pilot studies focuses on the effects of a winter storm and a large-scale power outage in Lapland.

– Various parties, such as municipalities, infrastructure maintenance operators, emergency services and social and health care professionals have their own actions plans and models for situations such as this. The problem is that their systems and data are not connected, which makes it more difficult to see the big picture. As a result, the situation remains quite abstract.

The objective of CRISMA is to create an environment in which relevant data can be combined to simulate the situation. By doing so, we can see the effect of each individual measure, and how different measures impact each other, in advance.

– With the tool, the parties can identify the best methods and practice cooperation so that the resources of all parties can be leveraged fully.

Cost-efficiency is a consideration Basic data in CRISMA’s Lapland pilot includes information on the building stock of different areas, the ability of buildings to withstand cold climate and the age structure of the population. It also includes data such as weather models provided by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and information about the places to be evacuated.

Other types of data can be entered, such as cost information, for example on the cost of bus transportation from Kemi to Tornio, or the costs of damage caused to buildings by ice.

This data helps allocate resources where required and make the best decisions, also in terms of cost-efficiency.

CRISMA visualises the central data to support decision making.

Visualisation provides a quick overall picture of the situation to decision-makers. They also need visual information to present to others, Heikkilä points out.

VTT is also keeping an eye on other CRISMA applications. In Italy, simulations help the authorities to prepare for an earthquake, while those in France are preparing for damage caused by coastal submersion. Authorities in Israel are simulating accidental spillage at a large city port, and those in Germany are simulating the operation of responder organisations in mass accidents.

“information is visualised to support decision making.”

VTT’s main competence in this area • Safety risk • Mapping and analysis • Safety and security management and preparedness • Risk illustration and simulation • Management of reliability in technical systems • Data and cyber security

Automated border control Border control is one of the most important security considerations for any nation. In FastPass project, VTT and its partners are working together to develop technologies and solutions VTT Impulse 19

for automated border control for passengers at European borders.

According to ­Senior Scientist Sirra Toivonen, the EUfunded project aims to make border crossing­ faster for travellers, while improving the reliability and cost-efficiency of control.

– The project uses devices that recognise the passenger’s face and fingerprints. For example,­ they automatically capture a picture of the ­passenger’s face and compare it to the passport photo and the information in the chip of the electronic passport.

In the project, VTT has developed the ­management of user and security requirements, contributing to areas such as system requirement specification, user experience analysis and risk analysis. The results of the project will be collected and used as best practices.

– Automated border control is becoming more common, at airports in particular, increasing the need to harmonise the systems.

The new technology developed in the FastPass project is tested by the Vienna Airport, Romanian Border Control and the Port of Mykonos in Greece.

Biometrics provide ease of use One of VTT’s partners in FastPass is a Finnish company called Deltabit, an expert in fingerprint-based identification and monitoring systems.

According to Managing Director Jukka Hosio, Deltabit’s responsibility in the FastPass project is to find a practical way of introducing fingerprint-based identification at airports, ports and border control.

– Among other things, we are looking into the process impact of multi-finger identification and the use of 3D images instead of 2D images.

Jukka Hosio says that cooperation in the project with VTT is also a great learning opportunity for Deltabit.

– We get to see the entire ecosystem and what the requirements are like in different countries and facilities.

What does he think the new technology can offer in the future?

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– What we primarily offer is ease-of-use and simplicity. On the other hand, security can also be enhanced by the introduction of a new identification method alongside the old ones.

– In all likelihood, today’s security practices will appear quite silly in the future.

What I mean is this: we have to carry keys, ID cards and passports with us and remember user IDs and passwords, while all the data required for biometric identification is always with us, Jukka Hosio says. n

It’s all around us there are two key terms in this area: safety

and security. Safety focuses on unintended events, such as accidents, mistakes or reduced ability to function, as a result of ageing for example. Security focuses first and foremost on an intended act by an external party.

Research Professor Veikko Rouhiainen points out the pervasiveness of these two aspects: they must be a consideration in all technological research – both as a threat and an opportunity. Society and businesses must ensure the continuity and safety of their operations and processes, as well as their services and products. Safety and reliability are important competitive assets for businesses.

– We are increasingly dependent on electricity and IT. The development of IT has also created completely new types of risks. In an increasingly complex word, the ability to identify all of them becomes more challenging.

On the other hand, it is good to remember that, in many respects, our lives are now much more safe and secure than not so long ago – especially in terms of life expectancy.

– Our average life span has increased due to medical advances and healthier lifestyle choices. The rate of crime-related deaths is down. The death toll on the roads has fallen significantly, even despite increased volumes of traffic. At the same time, both occupational health and safety and product safety have advanced in leaps and bounds, says Rouhiainen, naming just a few positive developments.

column

Matti Apunen Director Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

The American poet T.S. Eliot said “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”, hitting the nail on the head.

Before information gets lost in numbers Finland lacks the tradition of evaluating active labour market policies with scientific methods, which leads to a dispersed view of the performance of measures.

In Germany for example, the Hartz reforms aimed to make the labour market policy more effective by also introducing an obligation to evaluate policy effectiveness by scientific methods. The rationale was that the evaluations would indicate how the measures could be developed further and help allocate resources to effective measures.”

This quote is from a recent publication by the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (Etla), Muistioita tulevalle hallitukselle (“Notes to the new government”) written by Chief Research Scientist Antti Kauhanen. It gives pause for thought.

It is almost sacrilege to suggest that decisionmaking in Finland, a country that considers itself extremely rational, is not always based on research data. Does this mean that we are directing significant amounts of funds to policy measures but rely on guesswork, assurances or beliefs in order to evaluate their effectiveness?

There is no shortage of numerical data, mind you.

Various interest and lobby groups, research institutions, citizen’s movements and authorities generate vast amounts of materials, all of which they naturally present as facts. The problem is that all this information is far from uniform. While the sources do not always reveal how they have processed the data, I hope it is questioned at least every now and then.

It seems that it is not the lack of information that is problematical for politicians, but rather evaluating whether the information is reliable. Who are they to believe?

I posed this question to Mikael Jungner, a policy maker and outgoing Member of Parliament whose response was razor-sharp.

According to Jungner, evidence can be used to reinforce a perception one has already formed. In this case, it is more than likely that the preconception is reinforced by carefully selected facts. However, if we use the evidence so as to find shortcomings in our own argumentation, it is at least

theoretically possible that we are close to an optimal solution.

I agree. First and foremost, good evidence-based decision-making involves the strength calculation of ideas.

Good public decision-making has three objectives.

Firstly, it needs to enforce the citizen’s trust in governing bodies. This, in turn, requires transparency in terms of both decision-making and supporting materials. Lastly, decision-making should focus on results rather than on the purity of processes.

To be able to focus on the results, we have to be sure – or at least believe – that the target-setting is clear and that the implementation of set targets will be measured.

The decision-making machinery that includes politicians, authorities, Parliament, ministries, councils and municipalities - should be a professional buyer at the research data market, not just a producer of its own truths. The quality of the collected data and arguments should be measured during the preparatory work.

No finding should be excluded just because of its source.

This is what is called a motivational trap, the greatest stumbling block in political discussion. For example, I may have a motive to participate in the discussion about security policy because I am in favour of Finland’s membership in NATO, but I may also have a good point to make. My attitude towards the NATO membership does not automatically invalidate my arguments about security policy.

However, we should not confuse the right to personal opinions with the right to personal facts. Decision-making becomes dispersed if it is not based on shared facts.

Discussion in the media tends to heat up, and scientific facts and lifestyle beliefs are presented sideby-side with great abandon. People with university degrees have a great belief in the health benefits of diluted birch ash – to each his own, right? However, even if an individual firmly believes that a glass of a homoeopathic drink is of benefit to them, a decisionmaker must require evidence, verification and testing for the sake of others. n VTT Impulse 21

science

VTT’s specialists turn science into technology

87 %

New products from bark one tonne of dry wood bark yields at least 130 kg of tannin powder, leaving 87 per cent of the original bark mass available for incineration. In industrial use, tannin could be used to replace fossil chemicals in glues and insulating foams. In Finland, softwood tannins would be well suited for glue production and for the production of glued wood products. It also enhances the fire resistance of insulating foams.

As part of the international ERA-NET project, VTT has, in collaboration with its partners, developed a tannin extraction process from bark material generated as a by-product in the paper and wood industry to give added value to the fraction currently used for incineration.

Morphine test printed on paper VTT is the first in the world to have developed a drug test printed on paper. VTT used antibodies – produced by methods of molecular biology – as morphine-sensing molecules when creating this printing technology-based morphine test. Using printing technology to manufacture rapid tests enables high production volumes and low production costs. A paper-based test enables a rapid analysis of whether a compound is present in a given sample.

Possible future applications of the developed test include drug testing at workplaces and in connection with traffic control.

22 VTT Impulse

After tannin extraction, 87 per cent of the original bark mass is available for incineration.

Successful generation of hybrid yeasts for beer VTT has been the first to publish a scientific study on the successful generation of hybrid lager yeasts. For centuries, the same few yeast strains have been used in the production of lager beer, in contrast to ale, whisky, wine or cider, for which there is a wide range of yeast strains available to produce different nuances of flavour. VTT has been developing hybrid yeasts so as to impart new flavour to lager and to accelerate the production process.

Maintenance of ITER fusion reactor successfully performed using remote control VTT and Tampere University of Technology reached an important objective in the development of ITER fusion reactor remote control. The divertor cassette was replaced for the first time using remote control in the research facility for remote-controlled maintenance. This operation is one of the most demanding measures in the forthcoming ITER fusion reactor. The cooperation in Fnland will continue in development of the ITER fusion reactor in a new multimillion euro project.

Photo: Vesa Tyni

Managing storm water hailing from Seattle, Principal Scientist and Team

Leader Erika Holt has Finnish roots. After completing her civil engineering studies in Seattle, in 1996 Holt received a scholarship for research in Finland. Her initial plan was to work at VTT in Otaniemi in Espoo for a year. However, she decided to stay to complete further studies in Finland. She was employed by VTT and met her future husband there.

– Finland is a great place to be, because it is easy to find the right balance between work and leisure, Holt says.

Based in Espoo, Holt is a mother of two and well settled in Finland. In her new adopted country, she enjoys typical leisure activities, such as cross-country skiing, berry picking in the woods and retreating to the summer cottage, away from the daily hustle and bustle. She was able to familiarise herself with many Finnish traditions already in her childhood because her grandparents on her mother’s side were Finns, and the family visited Finland often.

Not just a talented research scientist, Holt is also a wizard when it comes to baking.

– During my maternity leave, I had a business name under which I baked cakes for a couple of cafés in Helsinki. My friends praise my chocolate and cheese cakes, she says happily.

Her current duties at VTT include work on permeable pavements. You can read more about improved control of storm waters on p. 36.

erika holt • Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader of VTT’s Material Solutions for Infrastructure team • PhD, Civil Engineering • from Seattle, USA

VTT Impulse 23

Quantum standards for the new

SI system Units of measurement for electricity can be linked to fundamental physical constants, using quantum standards based on micro- and nanostructures that function at low temperatures.

VTT researchers are closely involved in international research aimed at the redefinition, over the next few years, of the International System of Units (SI).

Text Antti Manninen

24  VTT Impulse

T

science

he International System of Units (SI) will and his partners developed the Nordic counsoon undergo a major change, when the tries’ first Josephson standard for DC voltage. units of measurement are redefined on In recent years, MIKES has been especially the basis of fundamental physical con- active in the development of a quantum standstants [1, 2]. ard for electric current, based on single-electron It now seems possible, or even probable, that phenomena in nanostructures [3]. The solution this long-term metrology goal of the revision of MIKES is the so-called SINIS turnstile that of the SI system, will be achieved in 2018. The was invented in what was then the Helsinki Unibase unit of time, the second, is already defined versity of Technology’s Low Temperature Laboin terms of the properties of single atoms, by ratory in 2007 [4]. fixing the numerical value of the ground state The structure of the SINIS turnstile is similar hyperfine splitting frequency of the caesium-133 to that of a hybrid single-electron transistor. It atom, and the metre is based on the second and consists of a nanoscale normal metal island conan agreed numerical value for the speed of light. nected to superconducting electrodes by tunnel However, in the current SI system the kilo­ junctions. Electrons can be pumped through the gram is still based on the International Pro- transistor one at a time, in a controlled manner. totype of the Kilogram, which is kept behind The maximum frequency for precise electron locks and keys at the pumping is around BIPM (International 100 MHz, which corBureau of Weights MIKES is at the forefront responds to a curand Measures) close rent of I = ef ≈ 16 pA, of international to Paris. The magbut the current can research. nitude of the unit of be increased by conelectric current, the necting several SINIS ampere, is defined turnstiles in parallel.

At the moment, MIKES is developing a quanbased on the per-metre force between two conductors, via which the magnitude of an ampere, tum current source based on 10 SINIS turnin turn, depends on the prototype of the kilo- stiles in parallel, with the intention of achieving gram. a current of 100 pA with a relative uncertainty of However, the SI units for electricity can be under one part per million. linked directly to the values of fundamental physical constants through so-called quantum Research led to Microphoton project standards. The quantum standard for voltage is As a by-product of the SINIS turnstile research, based on the Josephson effect, which arises in a together with the O.V. Lounasmaa laboratory structure that consists of two superconductors of Aalto University and the National Metrology coupled by a weak link. This can be used to rea­ Institute of Germany (PTB), MIKES has demonlise voltage in terms of the elementary charge, e, strated that nanostructures of this kind, made of and Planck’s constant, h, with a relative uncer- a superconductor and normal metal, are highly tainty of around 10-10. The unit for resistance, sensitive to thermal radiation that can penet­ the ohm, can be linked to the values of e and h rate in cryogenic measurement environments. based on the quantum Hall effect observed in a Even individual microwave photons can shift a component from its correct operating point, 2-dimensional electron gas.

A separate, conceptually simple quantum but most of these problems can be eliminated standard is being developed for electric current, through careful filtering and shielding [5]. based on pumping individual electrons through As a result of the research, MIKES was accepted a nanostructure at a certain frequency. as the coordinator of the MICROPHOTON project [6], which belongs to the European MetrolGroundbreaking work in the field ogy Research Programme (EMRP). The project’s VTT and the Centre for Metrology and Accred- main goal is the development of generators and itation (MIKES) have been pioneers in the field detectors of single microwave photons in a freand have remained at the cutting edge of the quency range of around 10 GHz – 300 GHz. international development of quantum standThe anticipated long-term application is quanards since the 1970s. At that time, Heikki Seppä tum information processing and communication VTT Impulse 25

figure 1. (a) A quantum current standard based on ten SINIS turnstiles connected in parallel. (b) A single SINIS

turnstile. At the centre of the figure, a horizontal normal metal island is connected by tunnel junctions to superconducting electrodes on the left and right edges. A gate electrode can be seen in a vertical position under the normal metal island. The electrode can be used to control the charge in the island with a precision of a single electron.

(QIPC) based on superconducting quantum bits (qubits) and microwave photons. Three other leading European national metrology institutes and three universities are taking part in the project, in addition to MIKES. MIKES’ individual contribution to the project includes investigating the suitability of SINIS nanostructures for the detection of single microwave photons and understanding and minimising the detrimental effects caused to quantum and nanocomponents by thermal radiation.

Quantum Hall effect and graphene Since 1993, the Finnish national standard of resistance has been based on the quantum Hall effect observed on the interface of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. Operation of a resistance quantum standard of this kind requires that it must be cooled down to about 1.5 K in a magnetic field of around 10 T. However, graphene, which was discovered in 2004, is revolutionising resistance metrology, since the quantum Hall effect can be observed in this material at a far higher temperature and in a far weaker magnetic field than in GaAs structures.

MIKES is also at the forefront of international research in this field. The epitaxial growth of graphene on silicon carbide was developed in collaboration with Aalto University’s Department of Micro- and Nanosciences. With graphene devices, MIKES has succeeded in obtaining a correct value for quantum Hall resistance with a relative uncertainty below one part per million in a magnetic field of only 3T – i.e. weaker than ever before [7].

26 VTT Impulse

The PTB of Germany recently used graphene devices produced and tested by Aalto University and MIKES in the world’s first, highly promising precision AC measurements of the quantum Hall resistance in graphene [8].

Volt is realised by the Josephson effect The oldest quantum standard is the voltage standard based on the Josephson effect. It has served as Finland’s national standard of DC voltage since the early 1980s. An AC voltage standard based on the Josephson effect is now under development.

Around 15 years ago, VTT and MIKES had already noted that in AC voltage standard it would be beneficial to use the Josephson device to generate a quantized square wave and to compare the wave’s fundamental frequency component to the voltage of a controllable sine wave generator using a lock-in amplifier [9].

Thus far, the generation of a 1 V sine wave has been demonstrated with an uncertainty level of 1.5 parts per million at frequencies of 62.5 Hz and 1 kHz. The method has also been used to realize AC resistance and impedance bridges based on two Josephson voltage standards [10]. One problem has been the lack of a commercially available, stable and precisely controllable sine wave generator – MIKES had to design and build one itself [11]. This device, the two-channel precision sine wave generator DualDAC, has been commercialised via VTT’s spin-off company Aivon Oy and is already being used by several national metrology institutes around the world.

Research will continue Using quantum standards, the units of DC voltage and resistance can be linked to fundamental physical constants with a relative uncertainty below one part per billion. However, according to the present definitions of the SI system, the volt and ohm are based on the ampere which is defined using electromagnetic forces, and have an uncertainty two or three times greater.

On the other hand, it has been internationally agreed that minimum uncertainties in voltage and resistance calibrations based on Josephson and quantum Hall effects can be smaller than the measurement uncertainties set by the SI system. This means that the most accurate calibrations of electric quantities are, in a sense, performed outside the SI system. This inconsistency will be eliminated when the ampere is defined using a fixed value for the elementary charge in the “new SI system”.

In any case, development of the quantum standards will continue and special focuses of research and development in MIKES are as follows: an electric current quantum standard based on single-electron phenomena, a quantum Hall resistance/impedance standard based

on graphene and the use of the Josephson voltage standard in AC applications.

The long-term aim is to close the so-called quantum metrology triangle to demonstrate the consistency between quantum standards for voltage, current and resistance at uncertainty level below 0.1 parts per million. Another vision is a “universal quantum standard for all electric quantities” which would be based on Josephson standards and a graphene-based quantum Hall standard in the same cryostat. With such a system, the units of both voltage, resistance, electric current, capacitance and inductance could be realized in accordance with the new SI definitions.

In research on quantum standards, MIKES’ key research partners have been other research groups from VTT, Aalto University and other national metrology institutes in Europe. Much of this research has been done in the framework of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) that is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the EU. Key Finnish funders have included the Academy of Finland and the Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation. n

antti manninen

figure 2. The Hall resistance RH of quantum Hall components made of graphene

(red curve) and a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure (blue curve) as a function of a magnetic field at a temperature of 1.5 K. In graphene components, a quantum Hall resistance plateau of 12.9 kΩ suitable for metrological use can be obtained in a magnetic field of just 2 T, whereas a magnetic field of over 8 T is needed in the GaAs structure for this purpose.

Dr. Antti Manninen is a Senior Principal Scientist in MIKES, VTT’s Centre for Metrology. Dr Manninen’s key research interests include the application of cryoelectronic micro and nanodevices to electrical metrology, particularly as quantum standards.

VTT Impulse 27

Alexandre Satrapinski (left), Pekka Immonen, Antti Kemppinen, Antti Manninen, Emma Mykkänen, Jaani Nissilä and Janne Lehtinen study, develop and use quantum standards for electricity at MIKES.

References [1] A. Manninen, Uusi SI-järjestelmä toteuttaa

[8] C.-C Kalmbach, J. Schurr, F. J. Ahlers, A.

Maxwellin unelman, Arkhimedes 2/2012, pp.

Muller, S. Novikov, N. Lebedeva, and A. Sa-

10 - 20.

trapinski, Towards a graphene-based quantum

[2] www.bipm.org/en/measurement-units/

impedance standard, Appl. Phys. Lett. 105

new-si/

(2014) 073511.

[3] J.P. Pekola, O.-P. Saira, V.F. Maisi, A.

[9] J. Nissilä, A. Kemppinen, K. Ojasalo, A.

Kemppinen, M. Möttönen, Yu.A. Pashkin, and

Manninen, J. Hassel, P. Helistö, and H. Seppä,

D.V. Averin, Single-electron current sources:

Realization of a square-wave voltage with

towards a refined definition of ampere, Rev.

externally-shunted SIS Josephson junction

Mod. Phys. 85 (2013) 1421 - 1472.

arrays for a sub-ppm quantum AC voltage

[4] J.P. Pekola, J.J. Vartiainen, M. Möttönen,

standard, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 54 (2005)

O.-P. Saira, M. Meschke, and D.V. Averin,

636 - 640.

Hybrid single-electron transistor as a source

[10] J. Lee, J. Schurr, J. Nissilä, L. Palafox,

of quantized electric current, Nature Phys. 4

and R. Behr, The Josephson two-terminal-

(2008) 120 - 124.

pair impedance bridge, Metrologia 47 (2010)

[5] A. Kemppinen, S.V. Lotkhov, O.-P. Saira,

453 - 459.

A.B. Zorin, J.P. Pekola, and A.J. Manninen,

[11]J. Nissilä, K. Ojasalo, M. Kampik, J.

Long hold times in a two-junction electron

Kaasalainen, V. Maisi, M. Casserly, F. Overney,

trap, Appl. Phys. Lett. 99 (2011) 142106.

A. Christensen, L.Callegaro, V. D’Elia, N.T.M.

[6] www.microphoton.eu

Tran, F. Pourdanesh, M. Ortolano, D.B. Kim, J.

[7] A. Satrapinski, S. Novikov, and N. Leb-

Penttilä, and L. Roschier, A precise two-chan-

edeva, Precision quantum Hall resistance

nel digitally synthesized AC voltage source for

measurement on epitaxial graphene device in

impedance metrology, CPEM 2014 Digest, Rio

low magnetic field, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103 (2013)

de Janeiro, 24 - 29 August, 2014, pp. 768 - 769.

173509.

28 VTT Impulse

Biobased aromatics essential to the

fine chemical industry

Woody biomass is a versatile resource and has long been used for everything from building materials to paper and oils. Although the forests of Finland are expanding at a faster rate than they are being used there is a decline in pulp and paper consumption and the traditional companies in this area are to look at alternative ways to utilize this resource.

Text David Thomas, Matti Reinikainen

30  VTT Impulse

T

science

he Finnish bioeconomy strategy vegetable oils and woody biomass. The purity jointly put forward by the Ministry and consistent production of biobased chemiof Employment and the Economy, the cal products is one major aspect which needs to Ministry of the Environment and the be overcome before they are readily taken-up by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry major industry players. As a result the market stated how they wish to increase the turnover for biofuels has been initially pursued as chemiin bioeconomy from €60bn to €100bn and in cal mixtures can be used without complex purithe increase 100 000 new jobs in the area in Fin- fication. This unfortunately is not the case for land by 2025Ⅰ. At the same time the demand for the fine chemicals industry in which the typical chemicals from renewable sources has rapidly purity requirement of a chemical product is over increased and there is an urgent need for alter- 98 % (figure 1).This increased value is directly native, preferably “green” reflected in the increased production routes. One value of BTX and it’s pure THE CHEMICAL of the most sought after fractions compared to fuel chemicals are pure aromixtures.

INDUSTRY EXPANDS matic hydrocarbons, such In the iBet project TherINTO EVERY mochemical Bioeconomy as benzene, toluene and – Integrated production of xylene (BTX)Ⅱ.

ASPECT OF OUR bioaromatics, other chemThe chemical industry DAILY LIVES. icals, fuels and energy, we expands into every aspect have produced a feasible of our daily lives, giving us everything from plastics and fuels to medicines and highly selective concept for the manufacture and paints. Traditionally crude oil has been uti- of BTX from woody biomass. The developed lized because of the diversity of chemicals that processes will drastically alleviate the dependcan be obtained from it, and because it is one of ency on fossil raw materials in chemicals while the few sources of aromatic available. Obtaining facilitating the efficient conversion of domeschemical products from biomass is an expand- tic biomass to valuable products and energy. A ing area, especially the production of the tra- demonstration facility with the ability to prepare ditional chemical raw materials used in every- high-quality bio-BTX in multi- kilogram scale day life, that is to make “drop-in” replacement is being built at the Bioruukki plant in Espoo. chemicals from an alternative raw material; this This plant will be use to further develop the synraw material may include, for example, sugars, thetic route, to access the techno-economics of

Biofuels

Biomass Pure chemicals figure 1. Biofuels can readily utilize chemical mixtures where as the fine chemicals industry cannot.

VTT Impulse 31

figure 2. Illustration of how gasification can lead from woody biomass to a vast range of potential products.

the process and take the next steps towards a commercial process.

Biomass gasification Gasification is a process in which the woody biomass is converted into what is known as syngas, consisting mainly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, by heating to high temperatures above 800⁰C) without combustion and with a controlled amount of oxygen. In principle syngas reactions are not dependent on the raw material, though there are still relevant differences. Although gasification itself is an established technology, there is much less experience of biomass gasification and gas purification. The distinctive characteristic of biomass-fuelled plant is its scale–biomass gasification plants are principally one or two orders of magnitude smaller than plants using coal or natural gas. Catalytic Fischer-Tropsch is a process in which carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases are recombined into a mixture of hydrocarbons which can be used either as transportation fuel or as a source for further processing to chemicals. A good database on Fischer-Tropsch 32 VTT Impulse

synthesis can be found in reference Ⅲ. Biomass gasification, gas cleaning and synthesis gas conversion to valuable products have been extensively studied at VTT. A recent report summarizes the detailed techno-economic assessment of 20 individual plant concepts based on a large scale (300 MWth) gasifier.Ⅳ Despite the successful demonstration of the technology there are not any commercial production units in operation which is due to very high investment cost of first-of-a-kind plant as well as significant political uncertainties. In order to improve the economics and help the commercialization VTT has developed new processes suitable for smaller plant sizes. The bio-BTX process presented here is one example of such a process suitable for scales of 50–100 MWth. Synthesis of high selectivity benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) Combining biomass gasification, FischerTropsch-synthesis and aromatization has allowed us to prepare BTX in high selectivities (Figure 2).

A new two-stage tubular reactor system was constructed for the manufacture of BTX (figure 3). Synthesis gas (syngas) produced by biomass gasification is used as the raw material. Light aromatics formed in the gasification are separated and combined with the synthesis product.

In the first synthesis step a product mixture rich in olefins and oxygenates is produced from synthesis gas over an iron catalyst promoted by silicon, copper and potassium. In the second stage, the whole product from the first step reacts further to a mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons over a ZSM-5-catalyst modified with lanthanum and zinc. The reaction is carried out at significantly lower pressure than usually employed in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Low reaction pressure (<15 bar) both favours the formation of desired olefins and lowers the cost of the process. The principle of the reactor setup is depicted in Figure 4.

A hydrocarbon product with an exceptionally good selectivity to benzene, toluene, xylenes is formed. Typical product composition of the aromatic fraction is illustrated in Figure 5 with the distribution controlled by temperature and space velocity. To our knowledge this is the first example of a process capable of producing BTXcomponents with such a high selectivity from biomass.

Purification of BTX Although in theory a potentially very straightforward purification there are no literature reports of successful purification from BTX mixtures produced from either syngas or biomass. Such purification opens a very significant door to unlocking the ability to produce pure BTX fractions from biomass. The quality of the crude material was determined by GC-MS to contain a majority of toluene (42.8%) and benzene (23.0 %) (figure 6). The highly mobile liquid was of excellent physical composition for direct handling in the lab without any need for pretreatments, for example, filtration or preheating.

The crude BTX-product was purified by atmospheric Vigreux distillation and cryogenic crystallization. Pure BTX components could be isolated in good purity (>80%) with over 85 % of the available benzene obtained with greater than 90 % purity with the impurity being toluene.

With pure benzene and toluene having been isolated in good recovery (over 49 % of the total

figure 3. Two-phase reactor system for the production of BTX.

figure 4. Reactor setup.

VTT Impulseâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 33

100 % 90 % 80 % 70 % Other

60 %

Other arom.

50 %

Xylenes

40 % 30 %

Toluene

20 %

Benzene

10 % 0% GHSV 600, 350°C

GHSV 1000, 350°C

GHSV 1000, 400°C

GHSV 2000, 400°C

figure 5. Product distribution of the aromatic mixture. produced.

figure 6.

34 VTT Impulse

25,380 - Methylnaphtalene

16,915 - C3-Benzene

15,294 - Benzene

12,077 - Toluene

Composition of the supplied crude BTX.

15,997 - C3-Benzene

23.0 42.8 7.7 16.9 7.2 2.4

14,303 - Ethylbenzene 14,457 - m,p-xylene 14,548 - o-xylene

Benzene Toluene m,p-xylene o-xylene C3-Benzene Me-naphtalene

10,758 - Benzene

Conclusions We have been able to demonstrate that woody biomass can be successfully and selectively converted into benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX).

Over 85 % of available benzene was isolated at over 90% purity along with almost 50 % of available toluene isolated at 70% purity (“contaminant” is xylene). The preliminary price for pure BTX fractions is calculated at €1,4 per litre

which, although currently more expensive than the current crude-oil derived material (€~1.0 per litre), but a lot more competitive than other equivalent bio-based routes.

This process finds direct application in producing drop-in bio-based platform chemicals, however, both the benzene and toluene can be valorised into more useful niche compounds sure as paracetamol. This complex synthetic route is another demonstrator of the high quality of the aromatics produced by this method. With a realistic and highly-efficient process in our hands the scale-up has begun at VTT’s BioRuukki facility. To demonstrate the industrial feasibility of the process VTT plans to prepare multi-kilo quantities of material on a tubular flow reactor. n

23,455 - Naphtalene

available product) from the BTX mixture the next step is to valorize the material into a valuable bio-based compound that can be used in a specific niche. For this purpose it is excellent to illustrate the quality of the material by undertaking a complex synthetic step, for example, the manufacture of bio-paracetamol (figure 7).

OH Catalytic route

AcOH NH2OH

OH

OAc Hyrolysis

Acids

HN

HN

O

O

Benzene

Paracetamol

figure 7. Illustrating the quality of the benzene produced by the synthesis of paracetamol.v

matti reinikainen Matti Reinikainen (DSc Chemical Engineering) is a Principal Scientist in the Catalysis and synfuels group.

Matti obtained his doctorate from Helsinki University of Technology and has been a key player in catalysis research at VTT for more than 25 years. Matti has 28 peer reviewed publications and 7 patents. Currently he is working with biomass based chemicals as well as special gas chromatographic analysis techniques.

david thomas David Thomas (Ph.D in chemistry) is a Senior Scientist in the Chemical synthesis and polymerization technologies group.

David studied for his doctorate in photochromic chemistry from the University of Leeds, England. He is experienced in industrial synthesis and process optimisation, having spent over 9 years working in industry.

David has 7 peer reviewed publications and 2 patents.

Currently he is involved with biomass valorization, advanced spectroscopy and purification.

References i

Ministry of employment and

the economy, 8.5.2014 ii

T. Werpy, G. Peterson, Top

Value Added Chemicals from Biomass, August 2004, http://www.plasticstoday.com/ articles/anellotech-successfullyproduces-kilogram-scale-greenBTX-140527 iii

A. Stranges (Ed.), Fischer-

Tropsch-arkisto, http://www. fischer-tropsch.org, read 16.3.2015. iv

I. Hannula and E. Kurkela,

Liquid transportation fuels via large-scale fluidised-bed gasification of lignocellulosic biomass; VTT Technology 91, 2013. v

WO 94/01394, 1994.

World Intellectual Property ­Organization.

VTT Impulseâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 35

new Pervious pavements –

solutions

to prevent urban flooding Impermeable hard surfaces in cities overload stormwater networks and increase surface run-off. This increases the flow of impurities into natural waterbodies. New means of drainage and stormwater management are needed; demand for these solutions will rise as global warming brings increased rainfall volumes and intensities.

Text Erika Holt, Hannele Kuosa, Juhani Korkealaakso, Terhi Kling, Kalle Loimula, Emma Niemeläinen, Harri Kivikoski

36 VTT Impulse

C

ities are growing and densifying. This have drawn or are drawing up their own regumeans that more of their surface area lations on these issues. European and national is being covered by impermeable directives and strategies have pointed to permematerials. The growth in areas cov- able surfacing as a means of reducing the harm ered by water-tight surfaces is hav- caused by additional water-tight surfaces in built ing a variety of harmful impacts on buildings, environments. the environment and people: stormwater netStormwater management is regulated by the works may be overloaded, runoff water volumes EU’s Water Framework Directive (2000/60/ grow and, in places, groundwater levels may fall. EC) and the Flood Risk Management DirecHarmful effects on the environment and water- tive (2007/60/EU). Various solutions for stormways can be reduced through urban planning water management in urban environments are that takes into account hydrological factors. In presented in the EU’s Soil Sealing Guideline addition, stricter environmental regulations (2012). In Finland, stormwater management is require municipalities to find new ways of reduc- regulated by a range of laws, such as the Land ing the environmental load caused by impurities Use and Building Act, the Water Services Act, in runoff water. the Water Act, the Flood Risk Management Act, In Finland, there is a greater need for new the Nature Conservation Act and the Act on the stormwater solutions due to growing rainfall Maintenance, Cleaning and Clearing of Public volumes and harder Areas. In addition, the autumn and winter municipalities’ buildThe likely rate of increase ing ordinances and rains as a result of climate change. Variin annual Finnish rainfall instructions include ous scenarios put the provisions on stormis forecast to be as likely rate of increase water management. high as 12–24 percent. in annual Finnish Finland drew up a rainfall at 12–24 perNational Strategy for cent this century. A rise in the number of rainy Adaptation to Climate Change in 2005, which days and the frequency of torrential rain are is currently being revised. Many municipalities affecting the volume of rainfall. It is estimated have drawn up their own stormwater strategies that, in Finland, the six-hour maximum rainfall and programmes which take account of adaptavolume – which occurs once every 50 years – tion to climate change. will increase by an average of 30 percent by the The Land Use and Building Act includes proend of this century. visions on the new stormwater plans, which are In the shift towards more sustainable storm- comparable to technical plans and present stormwater management, each country must find the water management solutions and structures, means that best suit local conditions, making while accounting for future increases in rainuse of the most natural and sustainable solu- fall. Such plans must fulfil the applicable requiretions tried and tested elsewhere. Many countries ments for functionality, safety and comfort.

figure 1.

1. Concrete block paving, with pervious joint material and bedding layer 2. Pervious concrete (as a load-bearing base layer) 3. Base and subbase aggreage layer 4. A layer for water detention 5. Subgrade 6. Geotextile 7. Draining of water, when needed Two examples of permeable surfacing solutions. Rainwater penetrates the surface layer easily. Water runs into the highly porous sublayers, from which it eventually ­ 1) is absorbed by the ground; 2) is channelled elsewhere or 3) is partly absorbed by the ground and partly channelled elsewhere.

VTT Impulse 37

New, permeable pavement systems can be used in place of asphalt and natural stone.

Development alongside other actors VTT’s Climate Adaptive Surfacesproject in 2012-14 involved the development of permeable pavement solutions suitable for Finnish conditions. Such surfacing is a structure whose surface layer comprises a monolithic pervious material (e.g porous asphalt pavement (PAP), pervious concrete pavement (PCP), or paving stones or tiles (concrete/natural stone)) which itself and/ or whose seams, openings, filler and levellinglayer material enables the high filtration of water to the subsurface structures.

The subsurface structures are dimensioned for slower stormwater release to the environment or water collection system. The pore space of this water-retaining, section of mineral layers is temporarily filled with a water quantity corresponding to the dimensioned volume of rainfall, before the water is absorbed by the underlying ground and/or exits the structure. Other, supplementary materials, products and structures, such as drainage and water collection systems, geotextiles and geobarriers, can be included in permeable surfacing structural solutions. Permeable pavement systems can be used in place of traditional water-tight asphalt, concrete and natural stone for low-volume roads.

The CLASS project was funded by Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, VTT and 15 partners covering a wide value chain. The project involved major contributions in terms of work by these partners, and other kinds of collaboration with various industry-sector companies. In addition to several towns and cities, partners included material and goods suppliers, associations and designers. The project was implemented in cooperation with a Swedish parallel project, “Grå-gröna systemlösningar för hållbara städer”. Sweden had complimentary research on issues such as vegetation for stormwater management and creation of holistic good living environments.

Thanks to the extensive cooperation involved, the know-how and competencies acquired were placed at the disposal of various actors and plan38 VTT Impulse

ners while the project was still underway. For example, the cities involved in the work (Espoo, Helsinki, Vantaa and Oulu) began implementation of their own pilot demonstration areas in 2014, before the CLASS project had ended.

VTT has been engaged in the design of pilots for the application of know-how gathered during the initial research, including planning for the monitoring and long-term follow-up of pervious pavements’ in-situ performance. Theoretical knowledge was applicable to the latest real cases and Finnish design practices.

At the conclusion of the research project, urban planners and stormwater designers also participated in the creation of practical guidelines aimed at actors in the sector. In addition, the active participation of materials suppliers and players representing sectors such as the construction and natural stone industry guaranteed the practical application of the recent research.

The research into permeable surfacing suitable for Finnish conditions drew considerable public attention abroad and in Finland. Such attention included extensive exposure in environmental, infrastructure and basic materials sector conferences, and in events and articles. Around 150 people attended the project’s closing seminar held in January 2015. The Finnish television channel MTV and YLE radio have also invited VTT to tell viewers about permeable surfacing solutions and the CLASS project.

Suitability for Finnish conditions Permeable surfacing solutions need to be able to handle sufficient stormwater volumes, while their load carrying capacity and other qualities must meet the requirements of the specific location.

The CLASS project provided information on how such basic requirements can be met and the most suitable locations for permeable surfacing.

Permeable surfacing works best in areas free of excess wear caused by regular, heavy traffic. Optimal applications included streets subject to less wear and tear, pedestrian and cycle paths, parking areas, various interconnecting areas, yards, market squares and fields, playing and sports fields and exercise areas.

Permeable surfacing layers are already commonly used in other countries in areas with milder climates, in particular in Belgium, Germany, Japan and the United States. The winter conditions in Finland and the Nordic countries set special, local requirements for permeable surfacing layers with respect to durability. A key challenge in the CLASS project involved exploring the basis on which permeable surfacing layers would suit Nordic conditions in particular.

Development of surface materials Pervious concrete pavement (PCP) is a fairly new material in Finland. The aim of the CLASS project was to form a clear idea of these materials’ basic characteristics such as its strength, porousness and permeability, and in particular to confirm its freeze and thaw resistance. Meth-

ods of demonstrating and ensuring the material’s high durability were also sought. The aim was to provide the concrete industry with a basis for continuing its own product development for the new material.

Lemminkäinen Infra Oy, a participant in the project, engaged in its own product development on porous asphalt pavement (PAP). VTT had the role of investigating the new PAP products’ durability characteristics and hydrological performance as surface materials.

In the case of concrete stone and natural stone surfaces, the seams or openings are made of permeable material, i.e. mainly cleaned fine aggregate lacking the smallest particle sizes (<1 mm) and with the smallest possible quantities of fines (<0.125 mm). The seams can also be made of specially bound and permeable material.

During the project, a special filtration rig facility was prepared for laboratory research on surfacing and geotechnical structures. The entire surfacing structure and all of the layers, including the water-detaining subsurfaces, could be built with the rig. The rig has a surface area of 0.5 × 1.0 m2 and its height can be adjusted from 0.33 to 1.0 m depending on the thickness and section of the surfacing to be studied. It also includes a sprinkler device controlling rain intensity corresponding to climate change predictions, and an automatic measurement of the quantity of storm-

figure 2.

science

In a cold climate, attention must be paid to the frost-resistance of individual materials and the overall behaviour of the surface and entire structure in winter conditions. Surfacing is subject to freezing and thawing cycles, frost upheave, deicing chemical treatments and application of anti-slip grit and studded tyres.

In sensative groundwater areas, it is important to consider the possible impacts of filtration of diluted de-icing salt in stormwater. In such cases, salt must not be allowed to reach groundwater via the surfacing. Attention must also be paid to risks associated with silty substances, such as grit, that may block porous, permeable materials but can be removed with proper spring maintanence coupled with proper design and construction of the pervious pavements.

Alongside the development of materials suitable for winter conditions, attention was paid to determining the overall, actual permeability of the surfacing in cold climate conditions. In addition, recommendations were developed regarding frost durability and winter maintenance for Finnish conditions. For success, the pervious pavement should remain permeable at the planned filtration value and the surfacing should remain undamanged for its designed service life.

The following factors are fundamental to guaranteeing a well-functioning surface throughout its life cycle: a design accounting for the environmental and wear conditions, material selections suitable for the conditions, and the appropriate construction practices and techniques.

The correct maintenance procedures – particularly occasional cleaning to restore permeability – are also important.

During the project, it was observed that more experience and data were needed, particularly regarding in-situe performance in actual Finnish conditions. Although the greatest possible use was made of international pervious pavement know-how, Finnish winter conditions and practices set special requirements for the pervious systems and their use. Further know-how and experience are continuously being gathered from the cities’ pilot projects and VTT is participating in the planning, follow-up and monitoring of these demonstrations during 2015 and beyond.

VTT’s rig facility, which can be used to simulate the hydrological functioning of permeable surfacing (surface material and subsurface structures). Surface area 0.5 × 1.0 m2, height adjustable.

VTT Impulse 39

The SWMM is a flexible simulation program enabling planners to analyse overall stormwater management.

water filtering through the structure as a function of time. The permeability (m/s) of the pervious pavement was also measured from above the rig, using relatively simple standardised methods which are applicable for field measurements at the pilot sites.

Because all permeable surfacing layers are porous, they are naturally subject to partial blockage. The rig-based research included a method for assessing how clogging of the surface affected the hydrological functioning of the surfacing materiasl. VTT studied the permeability of different surfacing solutions when clean, clogged and cleaned using two different techniques. In addition, knowledge was gained about the cleaning techniques that can be used to restore permeability to a sufficient level to cope with torrential rain.

The rig apparatus will be used in future research on new surfacing and subbase filtration solutions.

Solutions will also be developed on the basis of new, innovative and ecological materials, which fulfil all of the functional requirements. One key topic of VTT’s upcoming research is adding stormwater purification characteristics to permeable pavements and their subbase layers.

Modelling tool The CLASS project also included the development of modelling techniques which take into account the special characteristics and capabilities of new materials and permeable pavement systems. A modelling tool developed during the project supports the application of the results to the hydrological measurement and design of surfacing.

The prototype tool is an Excel/VBA program.

Within the calculation pages, this tool asks for the input data for hydraulic behaviour calculations related to permeable surfacing layers and creates an input text file compatible with the 40 VTT Impulse

existing SWMM program. SWMM, the ´Storm Water Management Model´, has been developed and released by the US Environmental Protection Agency. It is mainly a stormwater runoff model for modelling both one-off and longrunning rainfall in built environments. SWMM is an extremely flexible but complex simulation program enabling planners to analyse overall stormwater management. The modelling tool developed in CLASS supports the use of the SWMM as a calculation component.

The CLASS tool includes a range of databases based on the results of the CLASS project among others, as well as data gathered from CLASS project partners and literature. Such data can be of direct benefit in dimensioning and design processes related to permeable surfacing. The calculations performed using the tool give the runoff water quantities at different sites based on various development and management scenarios, using historical rainfall data, estimated rainfall taking account of climate change predictions, or shorter-term measured precipitation and heavy rainfall for the area in question. If necessary, the prototype can easily be developed into a software product for calculating the hydrological behaviour of surfacing structures.

Planning, construction and maintenance guidelines With the help of partners representing various organisations, the CLASS project ultimately led to the creation of guidelines on pervious pavement systems, which takes account Finnish conditions and planning practices.

The main contents include the design principles, locations, dimensioning principles, instructions on the selection and quality control of materials and filler products related to pervious pavement layers, dimensioning guidelines in relation to structural, hydrological and frost and waterquality evaluation, as well as construction and maintenance directions.

The full set of project reports and t he public at ion Pervious Pavement Solutions – guidelines on design, construction and maintenance’ are available from the CLASS pages.

Photo: Anne Beeldens/BRRC

figure 3.

Permeable, concrete stone surfacing layer. Parking area.

Pilots and further development Even before the project, there was a clear need for pervious pavement solutions in Finlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities. There has long been a need for new, concrete means of stormwater management and the prevention of urban flooding. Planning of the CLASS project pilot demonstrations in the cities involved (Espoo, Helsinki, Oulu and Vantaa) began in 2014 and the construction has started in spring/summer 2015. Pilots are required in order to gain practical experience of the planning, implementation and overall functioning of pervious pavements. Some technical factors also impact on the performance of permeable solutions in Finnish conditions. Useful information on these will be accumulated from the pilots and the related long-term performance monitoring. Such performance data will bring additional certainty for the basis of how permeable pavements can become a more widely used, as a normal and successful method for stormwater management. The pilots will involve gathering experience and additional quantitative data through methodical monitoring performance evaluations.

VTT will have the role of contributing the specialist expertise developed and gathered during CLASS and its Swedish sister project to the pilots. The Chief Consultant of each project will be in charge of the design and dimensioning of each site. The pilots will involve the follow-up and measurement of freeze-thaw behaviour, the permeability and condition of various surfacings, surface conditions such as slipperiness, as well as runoff water quantities and the surface water level in water-detaining structures. Measurements will be performed on a more frequent basis during the first two years and then continuing occasionally during the long-term monitoring. A general aim is to verify the suitability

of permeable surfacing for Finnish conditions.

On the basis of the know-how gained during the pilots, it will be possible to verify and possibly revise the guidelines regarding the design, construction and maintenance of pervious pavement solutions in Finland.

The development of products and innovative solutions suitable for pervious pavements are providing Finnish industry with new business opportunities. The results obtained during the CLASS project provide a sound basis for this.

VTT aims to be involved in further development such as work on quality assurance practices and the creation of new applications, material innovations and modeling for stormwater management. The latest plans involve issues such as the purification of urban stormwater using pervious pavements and ecological subbase materials, and the overall management of stormwater from heavy rain and of the related risks.

Actors from both Finland and abroad have shown extensive interest in participating in the follow-up projects. Further research is already being planned under the EU H2020 programme, the Nordic Built Environment programme, Tekes Smart Cities and within the framework of US-European cooperation. n

Sources Homesite, research reports, articles and presentations related to the CLASS project: http://www2.vtt.fi/sites/class/?lang=en VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Pervious Pavement Solutions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; guidelines on design, construction and maintenance. VTT TECHNOLOGY 201. 59 pp. + appendices

VTT Impulseâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 41

technology Expertise in the field of winter conditions to become an export item

Smartwatch to assist smooth traffic flows when the situation calls for alertness, for instance in traffic, a smartwatch can be activated more quickly than a mobile phone. Smartwatch software is best suited for situations in which making a decision in a matter of seconds might be vital.

VTT has developed various kinds of software for smartwatches that utilise speech recognition in social communication and show smart traffic data on the watch display. Now you no longer need to peek around a bend in the rails to see whether the train is approaching yet; you can simply have a quick look at your watch. You can also inform others of a hold-up in traffic simply by dictating a speech message on your watch that is then forwarded as text to the smart devices of other people nearby.

VTT has also created an intelligent mobile app for use in traffic. It supports notifications that are delivered through a smartwatch, provided that the user has one in addition to a mobile phone. The app can, for example, direct drivers to the most convenient car park or suggest alternative public transportation connections to the destination if conditions are detected along the driving route that hinder traffic. The mobile app notifies the user of important events on the smartwatch display also through a vibration alert.

In late 2014, the ‘Park&Ride’ app was tested in the Helsinki area by an agile pilot test group.

Finnish expertise in road weather forecasting and wintertime road maintenance, almost unparalleled globally, and the associated technological solutions contain a clear export potential. VTT has acted as a research partner in a project where Finnish companies have developed increasingly better road weather and winter maintenance services, and combined them into services or into product and service packages. Such services and products provide more accurate and timely information on wintertime road and weather conditions. There is promising export potential for such services.

0,2 mm Solar panels produced by means of VTT’s gravure and silkscreen printing technologies are approximately 0.2 mm in thickness.

Solar panels as part of interior decoration The new mass production methodology enables transforming organic solar panels into interior surfacing boards that recuperate energy from interior lighting or sunlight to supply power to small gadgets and devices. The panels can be placed e.g. on window and wall surfaces and on various appliances.

A graphic layer of printing ink can be added to the panel film for aesthetic purposes.

42 VTT Impulse

technology

Photo: Juho Kuva

The most precise measurement in Finland The Finnish Metrology Centre MIKES was merged with VTT from 2015. MIKES is the Finnish national metrology facility, and the most accurate measurements in Finland are performed in the MIKES building at Otaniemi, Espoo. Metrology has also an important role in the future development of GNP. The photo depicts the famous ellipsograph, i.e. trammel, constructed by Osmo Valtonen in 1995, on display in the MIKES building.

Read more about the subject on page 44.

VTT Impulseâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 43

technology

Keywords Measurement technology, MIKES, metrology, science of measurement, International System of Units (SI) Key persons Heikki Isotalo, Mikko Merimaa, Petri Kalliokoski, Arto Maaninen Key message VTT MIKES Metrology performs high-precision measurements for industry and develops measurement technology.

VTT contact heikki.isotalo@vtt.fi More information www.vtt.fi

By measuring

you can improve

VTTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s MIKES Metrology knows how to measure.

MIKES applies the International System of Units (SI) and performs high-precision measurements meeting the needs of Finnish industry. This enables improvements in products and competitiveness.

44â&#x20AC;&#x201A; VTT Impulse

T

he science of measurement, or metrology, goes largely unnoticed until something goes wrong.

However, reliable measurement is needed in every corner of Finnish industry and business life.

– Over half of Finland’s GDP involves measurement in some form or other. Without reliable measurements, activities such as product development, quality control and the supervision of security, the environment and food safety – as well as the provision of health services and scientific research – would not be possible, says Petri Kalliokoski, Exe­ cutive Vice President in charge of Knowledge Intensive Pro­ ducts and Services at VTT. – It has been estimated that up to ten percent of a company’s production costs are dependent on various measurements. This means that even small improvements in measurement efficiency and automation can have a major effect on a company’s competitiveness, says Research Manager Mikko Merimaa of MIKES Metrology.

Metrology also has an impact on the flow of international trade.

– Many technological obstacles just disappear when you can be sure that both parties are using the same quantities, explains Merimaa.

Same quantities in Finland and the world The Centre for Metrology and Accreditation MIKES, which became part of VTT in the beginning 2015, is Finland’s national metrology institute.

– We maintain and develop Finland’s national measurement standards system in cooperation with our five contract laboratories. Our contract laboratories operate at Aalto University, the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland STUK, and the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute FGI of the National Land Survey of Finland, says Heikki Isotalo, Director of Metrological Research at MIKES Metrology.

From the GDP perspective, metrology is most important with respect to Finland’s measurement infrastructure. This provides a base on which companies can easily build their own operations.

Finland’s key measurements – Finland’s key measurements are performed in the MIKES building in Otaniemi in Espoo. The building has been speVTT Impulse 45

technology

Text Leena Koskenlaakso Photos Juho Kuva

teCHNOLOGY

“It is rational to engage in the encryption and decentralisation of information.” cially designed and built for high-precision measurement, explains Isotalo.

– We have performed a large number of measurements with record precision. We have also built the world’s quietest place and have used a technique developed by CERN to set a world record in time transfer from Espoo to Kajaani.

Alongside our European colleagues, we have performed million-volt calibrations with worldrecord precision on high voltage cables. We have also built the world’s most precise function gene­rator.

– Everything we do is based on our success in international comparison measurements and audited quality management systems. Our measurements and measurement instrumentation calibrations are accepted on a global basis.

Once measured, a quantity is accepted throughout the industrialised world, says Isotalo.

The focus areas of metrological research are energy, quantum metrology, nano and micrometrology, spectroscopy and the environment.

MIKES provides its customers with traceability solutions in the measurement of length, temperature, mass, pressure, humidity, elect­ricity, force, torque, water and gas flows, acoustics and time and frequency.

46 VTT Impulse

Its research activities are aimed at enabling new traceable measurements, the investigation of new measuring techniques and the development of measurement instrumentation.

MIKES’ services fulfil the needs of industry, accredited calibration and testing laboratories, science and all bodies that require precision measurement. We provide most of these services in our own laboratories, but there are times when the measurer has to take measurement instrumentation on site. Clients of this kind are increasing, both in Finland and abroad. Improving the competitiveness of Europe and, of course, Finland and creating new business are high on our list of potential impacts, explains Isotalo.

Finland’s official timekeeper Each country keeps its own national time, which is compared to coordinated global time. MIKES is responsible for keeping Finland’s official time on its atomic clocks. One of these clocks is located on MIKES’ Kajaani site. It is linked to the other clocks using the world’s longest unbroken fibre optic time link, which is 1,000 kilometres long.

An optic strontium clock is also being developed at MIKES. The best clocks are now so pre-

cise that they theoretically lose only one second every 16 billion years. It has been calculated that the clock being developed by MIKES will perform to the same standard, but in a more compact size.

International System of Units to be overhauled The International System of Units (SI) consists of seven base units: the second, metre, kilogramme, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela. MIKES is required by law to engage in the execution and development of the SI system in Finland. This is the basis on which it validates internationally recognised units of measurement for use by the private sector.

– We are currently redefining the SI. An international agreement has been reached on the issue and the system will be revised over the next three years. Under the new SI system, all quantities will be defined based on fundamental physical constants rather than the other way around.

This will constitute the greatest change in the system during its 140-year history.

– The International System of Units still includes elements which should no longer form part of it. One of these is the kilogramme, which is based on an object whose weight is very difficult to control, as it were. Fundamental physical constants will provide the new system with a firm basis. Having served well since 1890, copy number 23 of the ‘mother’ kilogramme kept in France will be placed in a museum, says Isotalo.

Synergy benefits and new research opportunities – MIKES has a good reputation in Europe – we generate added value for VTT based on our special expertise. We add up to more than the sum of our parts, Heikki Isotalo adds.

– The fusion between MIKES and VTT is a winwin situation, in which our metrology expertise benefits from VTT’s broad expertise, infrastructures and customer interface. MIKES, on the other hand, brings metrology expertise and better traceability to measurements and products provided for customers. This will benefit

Metrological added value and support for export companies – The EMRP (European Metrology Research Programme) programme, which wound up at the end of 2014, provided 400 million euros for research in this area. Its work will be continued by the new EMPIR (European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research), which aims to maintain the competitiveness of European products on the world markets. Forming part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 framework programme, EMPIR has a budget of 600 million euros. As part of the EMPIR programme, we are developing the International System of Units, as well as measurement capabilities in environmental monitoring, energy production and healthcare.

MIKES conducts metrology research on a global basis alongside its international partners.

At European level, MIKES acts in cooperation with EURAMET, the umbrella organisation of the metrology sector. EURAMET covers a total of 114 laboratories in 37 countries.

VTT Impulse 47

MIKES facilities have been designed and built for the performance of high-precision measurements.

many VTT customers, on the basis of a wider product selection or improved quality, says Research Manager Mikko Merimaa.

MIKES’ research projects are a good fit with VTT’s other research activities and its spearhead and innovation programmes. Merimaa points out that they form an ideal complement for activities such as the smart energy networks innovation programme. With its Critical Technologies Towards 5G programme, MIKES also adds to VTT’s time synchronisation offering.

In addition, MIKES can apply its radiocarbon measurement expertise to VTT’s Safe and Sustainable Nuclear Energy innovation programme.

Far reaching cooperation has already been achieved within spectroscopy in an attempt – alongside other VTT researchers – to commercialise innovations such as a stable carbon isotope measurement device for medical applications. Technology commercialisation projects of this kind are set to increase in number.

– Use will also be made of MIKES’ specialist expertise in the manufacture of printed electronics. Further development of the traceability of printed intelligence forms a new research project, adds Arto Maaninen, Vice President of Knowledge intensive products and services at VTT. n 48 VTT Impulse

mikes’ OFFERING mikes offers traceability and calibration services and

the development of high-precision measuring methods for industrial applications, says Vice President Arto Maaninen.

• MIKES’ traceability services are based on its primary standards, using which measurements can be traced back to the International System of Units. Using MIKES’ calibration services, companies can have their measurement instruments calibrated and demonstrate traceability back to the International System of Units. This enables them to show that their measurement results are correct.

• When calibrating measurement instrumentation, the reading on the instrumentation is compared to the value given by the standard in question.

• If a company has a measurement need for which there is no measurement method, MIKES begins by creating such a method. After this, measurement instrumentation can be created at VTT if needed. Currently available measurement methods can also be made more accurate.

technology

keywords Environmental friendliness, consistent criteria, ETV method, Environmental Technology Verification key persons Matti Lanu key message The European ETV method is a reliable verification of a product’s environmental friendliness.

VTT contact matti.lanu@vtt.fi more information www.vtt.fi

credible let’s have ntal environme cl aims!

Are

environmental claims

believable?

50 VTT Impulse

technology

Marketing is more and more about making environmental claims; promising lower energy consumption and less waste and emissions. So the buyer needs to know whether these claims can be trusted.

Text Milka Lahnalammi-Vesivalo Photos iStockphoto

A

s emission, waste and consumption reduction targets tighten, the environmental friendliness of products and systems is becoming a major competitive factor.

– The European ETV method provides a way of verifying a product’s environmental friendliness and performance based on consistent criteria. It is a system based on which everyone plays by the same set of rules and a technology manufacturer can show that it cares about the environmental friendliness of its technology, says Matti Lanu, Vice President at VTT Expert Services Ltd. ETV or Environmental Technology Verification is a method initiated and overseen by the European Commission, for verifying claims made about European technology. It is used in 28 countries and has three technology sub areas, as follows: Water treatment and quality monitoring; materials, waste and resources; and energy technologies. Corresponding methods are being used in for example

Canada, the USA, Japan and Korea.

VTT Expert Services is an accredited and nominated verification body in Finland. It verifies claims related to environmental technology in accordance with the methods of the EU-ETV pilot programme.

The Danes have been pioneers in ETV in Europe, but now that the European Commission has begun to champion the method and has drawn up an ETV programme, its impact is spreading from national to EU level.

– For example, ETV is mentioned as a criterion in calls for applications for the EU Horizon 2020 project, in order to ensure that the results enter the markets faster and to support the commercialisation of European innovations, explains Lanu.

Forthcoming technologies will break the mould In particular, EU-ETV is expected to boost the environmental friendliness of new innovative technology. In this way, it difVTT Impulse 51

ETV method for evaluating environmental claims

3

50

applications

33

technology sectors: water treatment and quality monitoring; materials, waste and resources; and energy technologies

IS O

2 /IEC 70 Standard 1

1

evaluated technology

28

13

accredited verification bodies

evaluations ongoing

0

Corresponding method being used in Canada, the USA, Japan and Korea.

countries participating in Europe

Source: ETV Experience (www.etvexperience.org), interview with Matti Lanu

fers from certification use – a means of verifying that a manufacturer’s products fulfil and continue to fulfil certain general criteria set in advance.

ETV requires that the environmentally friendly technology being assessed has an innovative dimension. The technology must also be close to market entry, to ensure that it does not change fundamentally during the process.

– The ETV method tackles a problem inherent in innovative technology: new technology doesn’t necessarily fulfil old standards and specifications. New companies find it difficult to break into the market with new, innovative products without some kind of independent evaluation of the claims they are making, Lanu adds.

Lanu believes that standards should lie closer to the heart of research – both as a basis for R&D and when presenting the results. In many cases, existing standards only apply to the final product, which means that new innovations fall foul of outmoded standards.

52 VTT Impulse

– However, standards form a bridge between the R&D phase and the markets, as all users of mobile phones and DVD players know, Lanu points out.

Credibility across Europe Companies can use ETV as a single procedure for achieving credible verification – all over Europe – of the environmental claims they make for their technology. While ETV is completely voluntary for companies, it is the only consistent way of proving the truth of their environmental claims on the European markets.

A total of 13 verification bodies are involved, which have been nationally accredited in line with the ISO standard. Accreditation allows these bodies to operate on a Europe-wide basis.

The ETV method is used to verify quantitative performance claims. When a single technology is presented to an organisation for evaluation, the procedures used are based on a commonly agreed

“We will miss our chance if the idea fails to gain a foothold in Finland.”

approach. Information and outcomes are documented on a common basis and the documentation is circulated by an international technical working group. This provides a guarantee of the system’s credibility. As a result, a statement verifying the performance of the technology manufacturer’s product is posted on ETV’s website and the company can use this as a marketing reference.

– We act as a third party independent of manufacturers and officials and have experience of and expertise in handling claims about environmental friendliness, Lanu states.

At VTT, the EU-ETV approach can also be combined with research projects. In such cases, VTT Expert Service acts as an organisation independent of the research-centre, while still benefiting from the strengths of a large research organisation.

ETV can help Finnish companies Innovation has been shown to play a major role in the development of environmentally friendly

technologies. The aim of the ETV method is to expedite the market-entry of innovative European products by creating a common method of verifying environmental claims.

This method also promotes the market entry of SMEs in particular, since verifying the features of small companies’ products is a much more important but laborious process than in the case of large, well-known firms.

Lanu also emphasises the importance of Finnish companies adopting the method and using it to strengthen their position on Europe’s highly competitive markets.

– We will miss our chance if the idea fails to gain a foothold in Finland. The ETV process should be adopted on such a large scale that the public sector and society in general have come on board. Dozens of technologies are now being assessed by the EU’s ETV programme. n

VTT Impulse 53

teCHNOLOGY

Keywords VTTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new organisation, competitiveness, product development, growth, customer orientation

Aaro Cantell started as Chairman of VTT Ltd in the beginning of the year.

Key persons Aaro Cantell and the VTT Board Key message As an Ltd, VTT is more agile. Tasks and roles have also been clarified.

VTT contact olli.ernvall@vtt.fi More information www.vtt.fi

It is the duty of entrepreneurs

to seek growth According to Aaro Cantell, Chairman of the Board, VTT Ltd, this is the time to develop operations through an active customer-oriented approach.

Many businesses and organisations are completely in the dark about what VTT has to offer them.

Text Sari Alhava Photos Vesa Tyni

54â&#x20AC;&#x201A; VTT Impulse

technology

A

aro Cantell is an expert on what

works in business. He has acted as Chairman of VTT Ltd since the beginning of 2015. Cantell has versatile business experience as a CEO, owner and board member. He has worked closely with VTT for the past five years, first as a member of the VTT Board for three years and then as Chairman for two years.

However, the roles of different types of boards vary. Before VTT became a limited company, the Board had an advisory function, and it mainly shared the responsibility for risk management with the CEO. – As an Ltd, the tasks and roles at VTT have been clarified and divided more naturally between the owner, the Board, the CEO and VTT’s business areas. These responsibilities are stipulated by the Limited Liability Companies Act. I am more familiar with this model, says Cantell, Businessman of the Year 2014 in Finland.

In Cantell’s opinion, the most important task of the Board is to ensure that the company has a competent CEO. –The Board is also there to encourage and support the management. On the other hand, it is good to challenge the management at times.

It is the responsibility of the Board to see to it that everybody has the same vision of the direction of the company in terms of development and growth.

The Board’s role as a supervisor requires great care. Cantell only mentions it last because it does not provide additional value to the company as such.

Not taking risks is the greatest risk of all Operating as an Ltd, VTT is more agile.

– An Ltd can change direction quicker. It is also easier to make quick decisions on what to explore – and what not. This allows us to create, for example, new customer service and partnership models. VTT has unique expertise, an excellent reputation and a good name as an employer. We are well equipped to develop our operations further.

Cantell points out that as part of their social responsibility, it is the duty of businesses and entrepreneurs to renew and grow their operations to fully use their development potential.

– If you are satisfied with the current situation and rest on your laurels, you lose momentum and will inevitably roll downhill. An entrepreneur that thinks he is avoiding risks is in fact taking the greatest risk of all.

VTT Impulse 55

“In order to grow, we need to create something new.”

It is vital for our national competitiveness to boost renewal and growth in Finland.

– This in turn requires that Finnish companies start to grow, says Cantell.

A company has two ways to improve its competitiveness: by producing the same product at a lower price than its competitors or by providing more added value to customers through continuous development of its products or services.

Countries in which production is cheap typically choose the first strategy. Finland’s strategy is the latter: we are capable of continuous development and innovation, as proven by companies such as Nokia, Kone and Outotec. Export industry requires special focus, as it generates most of our revenue.

Further cuts should not be introduced in R&D and innovation – Since the economic crisis in 2008, decisionmakers in Finland have not taken bold action but seem to believe that cost reduction is the only way out of a bad situation. While cuts are inevitable, it is not the way to help Finnish industry succeed on the global markets, Cantell points out.

It is especially regrettable and dangerous to introduce cuts where innovations take place, such as at VTT and Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.

– A responsible business owner does not cut R&D investments when competitiveness is 56 VTT Impulse

aaro cantell Born: 1964 in Helsinki Education: M.Sc., Engineering Physics Experience: 2005– Chairman, majority owner Normet Group Oy 1997–2006 Managing Partner, owner, Fenno Management Oy 1993–1997 Investment Director, Sitra 1992–1993 Consultant, entrepreneur, Cantell Oy 1990–1992 Product Manager, Fiskars Oyj Kotelot 1989–1990 Group Management Assistant, Fiskars Oyj 1987–1989 Research and Teaching Assistant, Helsinki University of Technology

Main positions of trust: Chairman, Affecto Oyj; Chairman, Kasvuryhmä Ry; Board Member, the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries

Hobbies: competitive sailing in the X-41

OD class, fitness, golf and downhill skiing

weak. Cost cutting is only a way to stay afloat: it does not help a business to expand and grow.

Innovation and identifying new ways to create added value for customers are the keys to new growth.

Cantell points out that technologies have and will continue to play an important role in the renewal of business for decades. As a government-owned expertise organisation, VTT has a big say in improving the competitiveness of Finland.

– Finland holds the trump card: the most important R&D organisation in Northern Europe. There is no lack of potential here, but unfortunately Finnish decision-makers have failed to see it.

VTT has an important role to play in making Finland an appealing environment for businesses.

– We employ several thousand research scientist who work on new innovations, not just enhancements to existing products and services. We have vast resources in terms of experience and technology, which should be better utilised for the benefit of Finnish businesses and the country as a whole, says Cantell.

To sell, you need to understand what the customer needs Cutbacks in government funding are forcing VTT to seek more project funding from the private sector.

– This would have been inevitable in any case, but in the current situation, we have no choice but to do so immediately.

VTT and Finnish businesses should launch more projects together, and we should adopt an increasingly customer-oriented approach.

– Most businesses in Finland are completely in the dark about what VTT has to offer them.

We need to ramp up our sales activities, visit customers and listen to their future needs, Cantell suggests.

To be able to offer businesses what they need, VTT needs to know what is topical in each customer segment.

Cooperation in R&D and technology projects should also increasingly take place on a global scale. Cantell emphasises that VTT operates primarily on the Finnish markets to support businesses and organisations here. However, if the domestic market is very narrow and there are not enough projects to support the further development of VTT’s expertise in the field in question, it makes sense to find projects abroad.

This is of benefit to both VTT and Finland.

VTT’s ability to maintain and deepen its top expertise also supports Finnish organisations.

Sailing to switch off from work When it comes to continuous development, Cantell demands a great deal, and not just from businesses but also from himself. If Cantell takes something on, he commits to it fully. This would not be possible without effective time management and the ability to say no. Cantell is occasionally invited to act as a guest speaker or board member but simply does not have the time or energy to start anything new at present, no matter how tempting the offer.

A busy professional also has to take time to switch off from work. As an active person, Cantell does not head to off on a beach holiday to do so but finds it more relaxing to play golf or tackle some slopes. However, Cantell’s number one hobby is competitive sailing as a skipper in the X-41 One Design class.

– Sailing is a great way to switch off from work because it requires total focus, says Cantell, who has won a world championship title with his crew.

Not unlike a skipper, a Board must be vigilant and ready to take quick action.

– The world does not stand still. What worked in the past, may not work any more. Both Finland and VTT are at an important junction. We need to make bold decisions and explore new areas, Cantell sums up. n

Board of VTT Ltd The Board is there to encourage and support the management.

VTT Board in 2015: Chairman Aaro Cantell, Chairman of the Board, Normet Oy Vice Chairman Matti Hietanen, Government Councillor, Ministry of Employment and the Economy, Enterprise and Innovation Department

Kaija Pehu-Lehtonen, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Metsä Fibre Oy Anneli Pauli, President, Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology Kari Knuutila, CTO, Outotec Oyj Petra Lundström, Vice President, Nuclear

Development, Fortum Power and Heat Oyj

Harri Leiviskä, CFO, Suunto Oy

VTT Impulse 57

teCHNOLOGY

Key words Bioeconomy, Bioruukki Key persons Yrjö Solantausta, Kai Sipilä, Kari Larjava Key message New research and piloting centre Bioruukki provides companies with an opportunity to speed up the launching of innovations.

VTT Contact anu.kaukovirta-norja@vtt.fi, mika.harkonen@vtt.fi More information www.vtt.fi

Let’s make

bioeconomy a reality VTT’s new piloting centre Bioruukki provides a unique collaboration platform for developing products for bioeconomy and for creating new competitive edge.

Text Irma Lind Photos Timo Kauppila

58 VTT Impulse

R

esearch and piloting centre Bio­ruukki in Espoo, is an investment in the future of Finland. The centre is one of VTT’s most significant investments this decade, and the largest bioeco­ nomy-related research environment in the Nordic countries.

Bioruukki enables studying and assessing both the technological and economic feasibility of biotechnological development concepts and ideas. This applies particularly to the development of production methods for biofuels and valuable chemicals. At the same time, Bio­ ruukki provides companies with an opportunity

to speed up the launching of innovations onto the global markets.

– Bioruukki promotes commercialisation and productisation of solutions based on bioeconomy and circular economy. The entire value chain from raw materials to final products can be piloted in the same environment, which combines biomass processing, thermochemistry and chemical synthesis with one another. In the future, also the storage of solar energy can be integrated with this entity, describes VTT Executive Vice President Kari Larjava on the significance of Bioruukki.

The markets are already there.

– There was a clear order for this investment: the global goals of sustainable development and the associated regulatory framework in the EU and also elsewhere have created a need for products developed in Bioruukki. We have no other choice but to look for alternative power sources to replace fossil fuels. Markets for biofuels and other products based on bioeconomy enabling technologies have already been established, states Principal Scientist Yrjö Solantausta from VTT. According to Solantausta, Bioruukki will raise VTT’s performance capability up to an entirely new level.

– This environment will open up new possibilities, because we now have more space. We have assembled gasification and pyrolysis research equipment here, which can be easily modified to accommodate any customer needs. Previously, the available space itself set a number of restrictions to potential technological solutions, but the new premises are flexible and suitable for the designed use. This is also a development environment for our customers. Here, they can demonstrate their solutions to their own customers. Smaller companies can use the premises even for production purposes, says Solantausta.

Tangible tool for promoting bioeconomy Apart from symbolising faith in the future, the Bioruukki piloting environment is also a tangible

teCHNOLOGY

Operating at Espoo, Bioruukki is the largest research environment for bioeconomy.

proof of the efforts to create new business activities and opportunities on the basis of bio-based and circular economies.

– Bioeconomy based on sustainable use of renewable natural resources is a global trend.

Finland is in good positions to benefit from such growth. Bioruukki has an important national mission to develop new technologies enabling bioeconomy based on forest biomass and to speed up commercialisation of such solutions together with enterprises. This is a bold investment, says Petri Peltonen, Head of the Enterprise and Innovation Department of Ministry of Employment and the Economy.

– Finland needs more high-tech investments and new competence and knowledge-intensive companies and jobs they help to generate. No new business activities or growth emerge without concrete demonstration. The investment made by VTT on the growth and development corridor along the West Metro in the Helsinki Metropolitan area is an excellent example of actions needed right now, says Mayor of Espoo City Jukka Mäkelä.

From idea to production through piloting Valmet is a prime example of a business partner that has successfully utilised partnership with VTT in its technology development.

– Piloting is a necessary stage in any development project to proceed from ideas and laboratory research to demonstration trials and industrial-scale commercial production. Along the route, piloting equipment and installations of various sizes are required to validate the newly created technologies, describes Director, Technology and R&D Jussi Mäntyniemi of Valmet Sellu’s energy business line.

According to Mäntyniemi, Valmet’s current business operations provide a solid foundation for the development and production of products and solutions for bioeconomy. At Valmet, the starting point for development work is always based on customer needs, such as generVTT Impulse 59

ation of new revenue flows or products from existing processes, further development of production plants already in operation, or commercialisation of entirely new solutions.

The prerequisites of any successful commercialisation process comprise the assessment of the business potential afforded by new products and solutions, and extensive and open collaboration with various actors, such as customers, other equipment manufacturers and research facilities, which, in turn, enables full utilisation of synergy benefits, as well as allocation of risks between the parties concerned. Public sector’s support has also a significant role, in the form of laws and regulations, education and funding, for example.

Collaboration delivers results Biobased and circular economies have become global trends rather recently. VTT, however, has been engaged in development work in this field already for a long time, for example, in research focused on pyrolysis technologies. VTT conducted laboratory research on pyrolysis as early as in the 1980s, inspired by an American experiment.

– In the 1990s, the time was ripe for VTT and the major companies to undertake the first large-scale pyrolysis R&D projects. In 2007, VTT, Valmet and UPM established a technology development consortium for the development and commercialisation of pyrolysis technology. In 2009, Fortum joined in to the consortium, tells VTT Senior Advisor Kai Sipilä, who has been actively driving forward pyrolysis research since the beginning.

The development work resulted in the Fortum plant in Joensuu that produces bio-oil from woodbased raw material. The production of bio-oil integrated with the cogeneration installation generating both electrical and thermal energy is based on rapid pyrolysis technology patented by VTT. Currently, the quantity of bio-oil produced by the plant

Jussi Mäntyniemi at Valmet believes that his company has a solid foundation for developing solutions for bioeconomy.

60 VTT Impulse

“Finland needs more hightechnology investments.” would suffice provide heating energy for 10,000 buildings in the cold Nordic climate.

–Bioruukki, together with its partner networks, provides good opportunities to hasten projects associated with bio-based economy, confirms CEO of the Finnish Bioeconomy Cluster FIBIC Christine Hagström-Näsi.

– Bioruukki will also serve the ends of FIBIC’s programme activities, when we define and create our enterprise-driven, tendered programmes that seek to meet long-term challenges. We can also apply for European Union funding now that we have all the appropriate facilities at our disposal.

We are faced with global competition. It is vital that we can build a team of our own that will prevail. FIBIC is more than willing to build and coach such a team, outlines Hagström-Näsi.

A network of piloting environment in bioeconomy VTT makes available to its customers and partners a comprehensive network of research environments of bioeconomy, circular economy and cleantech technologies. In the initial stage, VTT focuses on gasification and pyrolysis. In addition, VTT has testing equipment for biomass processing and fractionation at Otaniemi in Espoo. At Otaniemi, there is also a piloting environment for biotechnology and food technology, complete with fermentation and extraction installations, bioreactors and high-throughput screening robotics equipment. The process equipment for polymeric materials is located at Tampere and the piloting environment for fibre products at Jyväskylä.

VTT’s own resources are supplemented by the resources provided by the partners. The shared research environment for bioeconomy of VTT and Aalto University form the Finnish nationallevel research infrastructure whose activities comprise education and both fundamental and applied research, and spans the entire development spectrum from molecule-level cutting-edge research to process development and innovative technological solutions.

VTT operates in a close collaboration with its international partners. On a global scale, individual testing environments for bioeconomy, for example in Karlsruhe, Sweden, and in Holland supplement VTT’s own resources, but are not at

teCHNOLOGY the moment capable of offering a similar wholesome research environment. The services provided by VTT’s research unit in Brazil are also available.

VTT’s expertise in materials technology, process chemistry or, for example, in the utilisation and standardisation of digitalisation support also research projects associated with bio-based eco­ nomy.

Industrial sectors approach each other A fifth of Finnish exports consist of bulk products of the forestry industry, and in the future too, the reforming forest and chemical industries and related machine engineering will serve as drivers of export trade. The energy and food industries and agriculture will also rise by the side of the forestry industry, the main driving force of bioeconomy.

– In Finland, various consortia covering the entire value chain could be formed for the purposes of development activities. Once the roles have been clearly defined, no conflicts of interest will arise, and it will be easy to agree on IRP, for example, assesses Jussi Mäntyniemi the potential afforded by partnering and strategic partnerships.

– A frequently encountered problem hampering full-scale utilisation of biomass arises from the fact that such mass is dispersed across wide areas.

In Finland, we have the advantage that, because of the pulp and paper industry, material is already concentrated to a few locations and the existing logistics will support also the new solutions. On the basis of the materials available in the coniferous forest zone, we have a natural competitive edge. In Finland, public-sector funding and the whole innovation system have provided the longterm support required for development work, says Solantausta as encouragement to process and product developers.

– Bioeconomy challenges the actors to adopt a new kind of thinking. In the future, bio economy will enforce different industry sectors to combine their efforts to locate new business opportunities in compliance with sustainable development, in such a way as never seen before. Now we need visionary innovative thinking, and utilising the potential inherent to the open innovation approach is of a great benefit in this context, says VTT Executive Vice President, Strategic Research Anne-Christine Ritschkoff. n VTT Impulse 61

teCHNOLOGY

Key words PrintoCent, Printed Intelligence, Pilot Plant, Micronova, Bioruukki, Research Infrastructure, R&D Key persons Kari Larjava, Ilkka Kaisto, Kari Rönkä, Marika Kurkinen Key message Availability of an existing research environment will reduce the costs and risks associated with the pre-production of new products.

VTT contact kari.larjava@vtt.fi More information www.vtt.fi

Pilot plants

forge innovative ideas into business activities Kari Rönkä reports that hundreds of visitors have visited Pilot Factory in the past three years.

62 VTT Impulse

Text Marko Jääskeläinen Photos Juha Sarkkinen

VTT has created in Finland several world-class research environments that provide companies with an opportunity for test production of pilot products and of pre-production trial series.

Pilot factories speed up the development of innovative ideas. Risks associated with commercialisation will be reduced.

I

n recent years, the City of Oulu has gone through some rough times. 5,000 jobs were lost in the ICT sector. The repercussions of the structural change were harsh, but did not manage to break the resilience of the northern people, the inhabitants of the so-called Northern Capital of Finland.

Adaptation to the new conditions was easier because contingency preparedness was already in order. As early as in 2009, a strategic framework agreement was concluded, under the name Oulu Innovation Alliance (OIA). The signatories of the alliance, the City of Oulu, Oulu University, Oulu University of Applied Sciences and VTT among others, undertook at that time to focus their activities on innovation areas that could create new business opportunities.

One such area was printed intelligence. This concept gave rise to the establishing of PrintoCent, a VTT-driven research environment and umbrella organisation whose aim is to create one thousand new jobs in Oulu by 2030.

In research environments, similar to PrintoCent, pilot productions and pre-production trial series can be tested and implemented in an effective and controlled way. Kari ­Larjava, Executive Vice President of Research and Development at VTT says that research environments suitable for piloting are a vital competitive edge both to Finland and Finnish companies.

– VTT is tasked with transforming technologies into viable business activities, and we must be capable of testing ideas before the industrialscale production and commercialisation stages.

Our research environments meet these needs.

Companies can take advantage of VTT’s research environments also for the purposes of testing their own ideas. Of course, the companies can construct piloting lines on their own

premises, but in most cases this will be the costlier, slower and more risk-prone alternative of the two options. Existing research environments support and hasten the development of new businesses.

According to Larjava, the research environments are also of critical importance for research in the applied sciences.

– Without these environments we could not carry out any research in the applied sciences at all, he says.

Larjava assures that the Finnish research environments clearly stand out among their competitors in Europe.

– The question is not about constructing the most expensive environments, but, instead, about focusing on a specific niche at which we can excel globally.

At PrintoCent in Oulu, printed intelligence means using printing technology to manufacture products on flexible materials, such as plastic or paper. Potential applications of printed intelligence are a legion, from industrial products to disposable diagnostics sticks and strips: intelligent packaging, LED lights or solar cells printed on thin film, test strips to diagnose diseases and pathogens.

At the heart of PrintoCent, there is a miniscale plant, Pilot Factory, in which the functioning and serviceability of the materials, processes, equipment and concepts applying printed intelligence can be observed already in the pre-production stage. In this way, we can obtain vital information on any problems in the production of the new products and on the subsequent problem solving.

– If this stage is implemented without exercising great care, the transfer from controlled laboratory conditions straight ahead to indusVTT Impulse 63

“We focus on a specific niche at which we excel.”

– The activities of PrintoCent arise from the needs of the companies, says Ilkka Kaisto.

trial-scale production can be too demanding, remarks Kari Rönkä, who leads the research team running the pilot plant.

The manager of the research environment Ilkka Kaisto wants to stress that PrintoCent does not carry out any fundamental research. The starting point of all operations arises from the needs of companies.

– We chart and analyse the needs of the companies and introduce our expertise as part of their R&D projects in a way that allows us to provide them with optimal assistance, Kaisto says.

Helping small companies gain access to the great ones According to Ilkka Kaisto, the companies have in recent decades discovered that global marketentry single-handedly is truly difficult.

– Of the about 50 companies participating in the PrintoCent ecosystem, every third operates internationally, i.e. we facilitate SMEs gaining access to the big players. This is an important reason for why they want to implement their projects in collaboration with us, Kaisto explains.

– In the past three years, Pilot Factory and the participant companies in the Oulu region were visited by 250 visitor groups, of which a significant portion represented international operators. This is something quite big for these companies, Kari Rönkä adds.

64 VTT Impulse

PrintoCent has delivered good results during the years it has been in operation. Under the auspices of the community, 22 new companies have been created within five years.

The combined turnover of the most successful one-third of these companies is EUR 5 million, and they employ 120 persons. The growth targets are set high: according the companies’ own estimate their combined turnover will increase fivefold in two years’ time up to EUR 30 million. The number of employees will increase to 300 persons.

At the same time, PrintoCent will raise the level of ambitions and targets of its own operations.

Thus far, the pilot plant has produced only batches of up to a few hundred items each, even though the plant’s production capacity would be sufficient for batches of one hundred thousand items. During the current year, PrintoCent aims to locate companies that would be interested in production batches of this size as part of the PrintoCent 2013–2015 programme. The plant infrastructure will also be upgraded.

– We must ensure that our environment keeps up with the state-of-the-art technology also in the future. Our role is specifically to act as facilitator of successful businesses, because enterprises and entrepreneurs are the generators of industry, exports and welfare, Ilkka Kaisto states. n

technology

Dose Coach helps MS patients PrintoCent has defined four key areas on which business develop-

ment activities will be focused. The key areas are: energy production and storage, intelligent lighting applications, body-worn electronic devices, and instant diagnostic systems and tests.

As regards the instant diagnostic systems and tests, VTT is developing a number of various platforms, whereby the patient can perform instant tests at home without visiting a clinic. One example of such devices is Dose Coach, which measures the level of active medication in an MS patient’s blood and analyses the status. The application integrated with the device provides advice to the patient, and transmits the results over a smart phone to a cloud service.

The application also incorporates an interactive dialogue in which the patients can describe their current condition – fatigue, dizziness or other symptoms. In this way, the physician can, in the future, monitor holistically the effective impact of medication and the patient’s condition.

– This is one kind of a showcase, because the device was created and implemented from start to finish at VTT, says Research Scientist Marika Kurkinen, who participated in the development of Dose Coach.

–The services of Pilot Factory were also used in this project.

– Pilot Factory was tasked with the production of a trial batch of the test strips used to measure medication levels in blood and with the development of the required production process, states Kari Rönkä.

Marika Kurkinen participated in the development of Dose Coach.

VTT RESEARCH ENVIRONMENTS IN A NUTSHELL PrintoCent, Oulu. The focus area is printed

intelligence and its applications. The target is to capture in Oulu and in Finland one per cent of the global markets of printed intelligence worth EUR 250 billion by 2030.

Micronova, Espoo. Cleanroom environment used

to produce highly sophisticated microelectromechanical components in an extremely clean space.

The production itself resembles conventional electronics production.

Bioruukki, Espoo. One of VTT’s most significant

investments in the 2010s. It focuses on bioeconomy and provides facilities for business growth and for the implementation of the Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy. It functions in cleantech sectors, which comprise bioenergy, biochemicals, biomass fractionation and recycling. This research environment can be used to demonstrate how bioeconomy enabling technologies create and deliver results, products and economic growth.

Nuclear Safety Facility, Espoo. This environment’s specially controlled atmospheric conditions can be used to study radioactive materials, e.g. in association with maintenance and servicing of nuclear reactors.

From the perspective of piloting, the hot chambers, in which materials can studied under safe conditions, are of a special interest. The Nuclear Safety Facility will be completed in 2016, and will accommodate the greater part of VTT’s nuclear safety research activities.

SUORA, Jyväskylä. VTT’s research environment for fibre processes, tasked with hastening the development of fibre-based products. SUORA is also the first pilot-scale foam forming research environment operating at industrial output speed globally. With foam forming technology it is possible to improve the properties of the existing packaging, paper and board products and enable to manufacture high-porosity, smooth and light-weight products This will further enable expanding the assortment of natural fibre-based and recyclable products. Savings in production costs produce an extra benefit.

VTT Impulse 65

business Finnish electric buses take to the road

GE Healthcare invests in Finland ge heatlhcare will start up a digital health programme in Finland, with VTT

as a strategic research partner. The programme will be launched at GE Finland’s headquarters in Vallila in Helsinki. Through this programme, the development of GE’s mobile and data transfer technology will be concentrated in Finland. The aim is to find solutions to the healthcare challenges of the future.

– Helsinki is one of GE Healthcare’s five centre’s of expertise in the development of patient monitoring solutions, and its only one in Europe. The digital health programme will bring us additional research and development expertise in health and mobile technology. With its large numbers of top mobile technology experts, Finland is a natural location for a digital health centre of expertise. Through the programme, we can create solutions that promote cost-efficient patient care in Finland and the world, says Didier Deltort, Global Vice President & General Manager of Monitoring Solutions, and President of GE Healthcare Finland.

Together with other operators, Helsinki Region Transport and VTT will launch an extensive joint pilot for the introduction of electric buses in the capital region. The first of these Finnish buses, to be purchased from Linkket Oy, will take to the roads in Espoo – where electric buses have been under testing for over two years – from the late summer of 2015.

The acquisition of electric buses is part of a wider four-year development project, by Helsinki Region Transport, for the introduction of innovative and emission-free bus transport in order to create an infrastructure and operating network for the introduction of new technologies.

90%

Helsinki Region Transport aims to cut carbon dioxide and harmful local emissions from its bus fleet by over 90 percent by 2025.

5G test network in Oulu In cooperation with the University of Oulu and the private sector, VTT is building a 5G test network, so that critical technologies can be developed and their performance tested in a realistic environment. 5G is the next major step in wireless data communication. It will enable extremely high-spec multimedia and cloud-based services as well as the future Internet of Things, while cutting material and energy consumption. The test environment will strengthen Finland’s position at the forefront of the international development of 5G. 66 VTT Impulse

Photo: Mikko Vähäniitty

Yarn like a spider’s web spinnova Ltd. was founded by long-serving employee of VTT,

business

Janne Poranen, together with his colleague Juha Salmela. The company is developing a unique method of manufacturing yarn directly from wood fibre. An invention notification was filed for the wood-fibre based yarn in 2011 and the first patent application was made at the end of 2014. Read more on page 74.

VTT Impulse 67

Small is big: growth and new opportunities

in silicon photonics There is a growing need for data transfer. As a result, electronic data transfer is being replaced by optical transfer.

Text Teemu Simola Photos VTT

A

t the heart of the future development of data transfer lies a tiny particle, the photon, an energy package in which electromagnetic radiation travels.

Combine a photon with silicon and you get silicon photonics, which offers completely new possibilities. Typical applications include various transmitter and receiver modules, routers and sensor and measurement technologies.

– Electronic microcircuits form the technological basis of modern society and are the ‘brains’ of many of the electrical devices we use. They are made up of active and passive electronic components printed on semiconductor chips, says Timo Aalto, the winner of the VTT Award 2014 and head of the related research team at VTT. A modern processor can include billions of transistors. However, silicon photonics involves the development of optical microcircuits in which light is transferred through waveguides etched 68 VTT Impulse

into the silicon. In addition to these, an optical microcircuit has active and passive photonic components which are used for the generation, modulation and reception of light.

Whereas visible light cannot penetrate silicon, silicon photonics is based on the use of infra red light, with a typical wavelength somewhere between 1.2 and 4 micrometres (µm). In optical data transfer, the 1.3 and 1.55 micrometre wavelength ranges are the key bands, says Aalto.

Until recently, VTT manufactured only passive and thermo-optical circuits for silicon chips. All so-called active components, for example lasers, optical amplifiers, fast modulators and light detectors were separate chips produced elsewhere and connected to the silicon chips.

– We developed world-class technology for this purpose as well, but still needed so-called monolithic integration directly onto the chip to enable cost-effective mass production. This is something that we are now developing in collaboration with our customers and partners. The most important of these is Rockley Photonics, with whom we began cooperating in 2014, says Aalto.

Rockley aiming for mass production The British Rockley Photonics has expanded to Finland and will begin the production of data transfer products in Espoo in collaboration with VTT. The company’s head office is located close to London and has a product development unit with

Markku Hirvonen

Faster at lower cost with greater power The key current application is short and middledistance optical data transfers, such as in data centres and local data transfer networks. Data transfer distances in such applications range from a few metres to around 40 kilometres.

– Silicon photonics can be used in transmitter and receiver modules in which electronic signals are converted into optical signals and vice versa, and in the combination and separation of signals moving at various wavelengths within the same optical fibres. Silicon photonics can also be used to route data packages optically through network nodes, which is cheaper, faster and more energy-efficient than the current electrical routing, comments Aalto.

business

around 20 staff in Pasadena, California. VTT’s expertise was one of the main factors that drew the company to Finland. Other features of Finland’s technology sector, such as its firms and university activities, provide a strong basis for the related business activities.

Now that we have completed the initial phase of collaboration with VTT, it is time to move onto the second phase and the creation of actual products in Micronova’s clean room. We’ll enter the market with a pilot product this year and aim to move onto mass production next year, says Markku Hirvonen, a member of Rockley Photonics’ Board of Directors.

The currently large number of data centres is set to continue growing. Rockley’s forthcoming solutions are intended to boost internal transfers of the huge data masses lying in these centres.

The idea is to produce silicon photonic products in Finland with the world’s highest performance but lowest power consumption. This is a unique, exciting project, since we are the only ones in the world engaging in this kind of product design, Hirvonen adds.

The first staff have already been recruited for Rockley’s Finnish unit and the number of employees will grow as the project progresses.

We will need sales and marketing experts, as well as product development specialists. This means the full range of business know-how. The time now seems to be ripe for the actual production of silicon photonics, says Hirvonen.

Cooperation with VTT has therefore paid off and silicon photonic products offer a huge range of possibilities. Timo Aalto agrees.

Through active component development, we aim to produce optical modulators and light detectors which have a speed of at least 25 Gb/s (25 billion bits per second). This would enable the transfer of a Full HD movie recorded on a Blu-ray disc in just a few seconds, for example.

Silicon photonics has a vast range of possible applications.

– Growth in optical data transfer capacity will open up a huge number of opportunities, says Timo Aalto.

The future therefore seems bright, or at least fast.

Examples of silicon photonics chips made by VTT, which include various wavelength multiplexers and long waveguide spirals.

A 110-channel wavelength selector developed for the European Space Agency, InP-based 10 and 11-channel optical semiconductor amplifiers and a photodiode have been added to the silicon chip.

VTT Impulse 69

“no competing technology can achieve this.”

Illustration (left), microscope image and a scanning electron microscope image of waveguide curves and mirrors developed by VTT, with bending radius down to one micrometre, which is around a thousand times smaller than traditional curves.

Timo Aalto

Longer wavelengths can also prove useful in various measurement applications. Silicon photonics can be used to create small and highly precise microspectrometers for the identification of gases, liquids and biological samples on the basis of their typical transmission spectra.

Silicon photonics has already been used in the production of optical gyroscopes. Future applications include silicon photonic chips that combine the low cost and small size of micromechanical gyroscopes with the huge measurement precision of the much more expensive fibre optic gyroscopes.

– Silicon photonics can also prove useful in imaging based on infra-red light. The Spanish company Medlumics manufactures medical imaging devices based on optical coherence tomography (OCT). Such devices are intended for the early detection of conditions such as skin cancer. A silicon photonics chip developed by Medlumics and VTT lies at the heart of this kind of OCT device. The chip was made in VTT’s clean room in Micronova. A range of new applications for silicon photonics, such as optical calculation and quantum computers, are sure to be

found in the future. These are at the very earliest stages of development, states Aalto.

From passive to active optical circuits VTT has been developing silicon photonics since 1997, when Timo Aalto made his M.Sc. thesis on silicon photonics as an intern at VTT. In 2004, he completed a Ph.D on the same topic.

– The development of silicon photonics began with the design of thermo-optical switches, followed by the development of silicon waveguides and the related manufacturing technology for optical components in VTT’s clean room. The results of this internationally ground-breaking work resulted in innovations such as a thermooptical 2 x 2 switch which switches its state in under a millionth of a second (~700 ns), explains Aalto.

This remains a world record for this kind of waveguide switch. Simultaneously, world-class technology was developed for the fabrication of passive silicon waveguide components.

– An extremely low-loss (0.1 dB/cm) silicon waveguide with a curve radius reaching one micrometre can be used to create very densely

A test chip used in the development of an optical memory, in which several test components, wavelength filters and optical semiconductor amplifiers are integrated with a silicon chip.

70 VTT Impulse

integrated optical circuits. Waveguides even a metre in length can be etched on a silicon chip of around one square centimetre. This is not yet possible with any of the competing technologies, says Aalto.

The technology developed by VTT includes special features such as a waveguide thickness of around three micrometres and a combination of rectangular and rib waveguides.

– Using these, it is possible to simultaneously minimise optical confinement, polarisation dependency, and the price and chip size, while achieving so-called single-mode function with an extremely wide wavelength band. In competing technologies, this is typically restricted to a narrow wavelength band. Achieving a single-mode waveguide is necessary in most applications such as ultra fast optical data transfer and precise spectrum measurements, Aalto explains. n

A test chip, in which light travelling through a 3 µm-thick silicon waveguide is either amplified or suppressed using a GaAs-based semiconductor amplifier.

What is photonics?

Photonics is a general term for the generation,

modulation and use of light, and the related components and equipment. Photon, the name for the elementary light particle, comes from the Greek word ‘fos’ which means light.

Light consists of a flow of individual photons just as an electrical current consists of a flow of electrons. Photonics and electronics are therefore corresponding terms, although people are much more familiar with ‘electronics’.

While the electronic microcircuits integrated into silicon chips are one of the key technological pillars of our information society, their optical equivalents are still rising to this position. On the other hand, photonics-based lasers and optical fibres have long been technologically indispensable, even if most people are relatively unaware of their existence.

Without them, we would have no Internet, smartphones or HD television.

The widely known term ‘optics’ principally refers to sight and the related devices, such as lenses and microscopes. Photonics is a more descriptive term when it comes to the interaction between light and matter, the combination of light with electronics (as in optoelectronics), semiconductor components related to light, or the use of light for the fast transfer of optical data or other signals.

Photonics exploits the wave and particle characteristics of light, which Albert Einstein was the first

to combine in 1905. We now know that photons are massless fundamental particles that move at the speed of light and whose energy, momentum and wavelength are determined by their oscillation frequency. Although all electromagnetic radiation, from radio waves to gamma rays, is made of photons, ‘photonics’ is usually used to refer to only ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.

The term photonics has entered the public consciousness due to the annual international Day of Photonics (http://day-of-photonics.org). The Day of Photonics was last celebrated in October 2014, when VTT arranged public events showcasing photonics. In 2015, the UN will lead the celebration of the International Year of Light, which will showcase the uses of light-based science and the related applications. www.light2015.org

VTT Impulse 71

X-ray imaging

to new heights

Ajat is an excellent example of a successful small business that has made it to the global market from Otaniemi, home to many research and development organisations in Finland. The company making X-ray imaging sensors used in medicine and industry plans to retain its technology development and production in Finland.

Text Tiina Saario-Kuikko Photos Ajat 72â&#x20AC;&#x201A; VTT Impulse

Limitations a thing of the past Ajat and VTT are working together to develop and manufacture next-generation sensors used in x-ray imaging.

Earlier X-ray imaging systems used intermediate phosphor or scintillation stages to convert

X-rays into light before detection. This indirect method of detection limited the technology’s speed, resolution and efficiency.

Generally only 50% of the X-rays were converted into light, meaning that about half of the X-ray dose is wasted as the image is created by means of indirect conversion.

– Ajat is the first company that banished these limitations to history raising X-ray imaging on to a whole new level. With direct conversion, X-rays impinge on a pure crystalline Cadmium Telluride or Silicon semiconductor substrate and are directly converted into electronic signals, describes Mr Spartiotis.

This results in a much clearer image, thus making it easier to make more accurate diagnoses. Because the stage that converts X-rays to light is no longer necessary, blurring caused by photon scattering is eliminated.

Ajat not only develops and manufactures X-ray sensors but also delivers proprietary software and post-image processing tools.

VTT Impulse 73

business

A

jat began as a three-person company funded by private investors and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation in cooperation with VTT. Today, 15 years later, the company is presenting a new type of x-ray technology: direct conversion.

– Within dental medicine, we have 20 percent of the global extraoral imaging market, projected to be 40 percent by 2016. We have also managed to get a foothold in the oil and gas industry in the inspection of girth welds for pipes, and inline inspection in the food industry and NDT, says Managing Director Konstantinos Spartiotis.

Tailored solutions The company is currently working with VTT in the RADI2014 project to develop an intraoral X-ray sensor based on Silicon direct conversion.

– Ajat is one of the major external users of Micronova cleanroom facilities. It is important to achieve as high an utilisation rate as possible for expensive infrastructures, and it is obviously a benefit to VTT if we can offer companies a production environment. With the RADI2014 project, we are in a position to develop new siliconbased X-ray sensors for Ajat, which will hopefully lead to more business between VTT and Ajat, says VTT’s Key Account Manager Kai-Erik Elers.

Ajat has protected exclusive rights to their inventions and expertise through patents, among other things. The technology applied in the X-ray sensors, imaging and focusing that is used in direct conversion has been protected in Europe, the US and Korea.

Direct conversion technology has been developed and brought to the market largely through cooperation with Siemens’ Japanese subsidiary, Acrorad.

– Our sensors are suitable not only for dental 2D and 3D imaging but also medicinal science and industry purposes. We respond to customer needs and also tailor solutions for challenging applications. We want to improve imaging products and their quality and functionality, and to reduce production costs by the use of smart processes and automation, says Spartiotis. n

full blooded export company Ajat works in cooperation with equipment

manufacturers that use direct conversion sensors in dental X-ray imaging devices based on pure crystalline Cadmium Telluride.

The company is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of hydridised semiconductor components used in X-ray imaging, making 2,500 pure-crystal cadmium telluride hybrids per month, with a monthly capacity of 4,000.

Other capacity has been directed to new market areas.

Ajat has been using the VTT Micronova cleanroom facilities right from the start in Otaniemi, Espoo. The company has a staff of 42. Net sales were EUR 8.5 million in 2014, expected to climb to EUR 10 million this year.

The biggest overseas customers are from Germany, Japan, Italy, the US, Netherlands and Denmark.

74 VTT Impulse

“our sensors are suitable for medicinal science and industry purposes.”

- Konstantinos Spartiotis

Yarn from wood fibres,

sustainably

Spinnova is developing a method of spinning yarn from wood fibres without environmentally harmful chemical processing.

Text Paula Bergqvist Photos Mikko Vähäniitty

76 VTT Impulse

J

anne Poranen has had a long career

with VTT. In the last few years before he joined Spinnova, he was in charge of VTT’s research area focusing on the development of fibre- and biobased materials. In particular, he was involved in running R&D projects related to wood-based materials.

Poranen had long aimed to start a business as soon as the right idea came along. He had been following the development of the new woodfibre technology from its very beginning.

– A year ago, we entered a situation where the best prospect of taking the technology forward was in the form of a commercial venture. Juha Salmela, my colleague from VTT, had no doubts about participating in the start-up of the company.

business

The yarn thread technology developed by Spinnova is a breakthrough technology.

Spinnova was established last autumn and officially opened for business in Jyväskylä in January. A small but motivated group of wood-fibre experts is now working in Jyväskylä.

The first task was to find partners and financiers. The company succeeded wonderfully in both.

The spider’s web idea At the turn of the decade, Juha Salmela was a Senior Scientist at VTT. He had the idea for the yarn when working alongside silk researchers at the University of Oxford. The discussions helped him to see the similarities between the construction of a spider’s web and the formation of wood fibres.

Would the manufacture of yarn from wood fibre succeed based on the ‘spider’s web’ principle? Can wood fibres form in the same direction and become something very like a filament fibre?

A method was quickly developed. Salmela filed an invention notification for the new wood fibre processing method in 2011, and the first patent application at the end of the year.

The invention is based on understanding the behaviour of various materials i.e. fibre suspension flows – rheology. This answers the question of how a fibre flow can be controlled in such a way that it forms a yarn.

– Salmela’s idea was tried out at VTT. The first trials showed that wood yarn could be made by passing pulp through a pinhole, so long as the fibres passed through in the right position. Several development stages lie ahead before woodbased yarn can be spun on an industrial scale.

The method was developed up to laboratory scale at VTT, until it became a smoothly working process. Half-metre lengths of yarn were made without continuous yarn processes.

– At Spinnova, we now need to scale the technique to industrial level.

– We have tried out the method with various types of wood pulp. We achieved the best results with Finnish wood types – spruce and pine. It looks as though the method works best when processing long natural fibres, which is a good thing from Finland’s perspective. Eucalyptus fibres are short, for example.

– We are currently developing the controllability and stability of the basic process for the method. After that, we will focus on refining the properties of the end product, says Poranen.

Spinnova started the development with small Finnish design company WoodNotes. WoodNotes manufactures fabrics and mats from paper yarns.

The Austrian company Lenzing AG is Spinnova’s industrial partner. Lenzing is one the biggest MMC (Man-Made Cellulose) companies. It uses a viscose and lyocell process to make textile fibres from wood-based material.

Spinnova’s technology is the only one capable of spinning yarn directly from wood fibres.

In viscose and other MMC processes, pulp is run through a succession of chemical processes which dissolve the cellulose fibres into ­polymers, while removing certain components.

Only after this are the fibres reconstituted from the polymer pulp. The yarn is finally spun from staple fibres.

VTT Impulse 77

Juha Salmela (left) and Janne Poranen founded Spinnova in 2014.

– Our method differs from current MMC processes. We spin the yarn directly from the cellulose pulp. No one has ever been able to do this before, says Poranen.

– This will create a much smaller environmental footprint than modern polymer or cotton fibre processes. Currently raw material demand for textiles increases faster than production of cotton and MMC. This creates a great need for new breakthrough technologies to fulfill future textile demand.

Poranen does not deny that the method involves risks. Spinnova’s plans include the development of a small-scale production environment within 2 to 3 years.

– At the moment we are in the development phase of the technology. Next we will move on to testing the markets and decide on whether to begin the larger-scale industrial phase.

Spinnova was founded by Poranen and Salmela. Private investors, as well as VTT Ventures and industrial partners joined Spinnova at the end of 2014.

– VTT has many good ideas for similar technology start-ups. But to get things moving, we need more entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking.

78 VTT Impulse

Spinnova won the international biorefinery competition of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy’s in February with its business plan. The panel mentioned that Spinnova’s fibre yarn represents a breakthrough technology that could revolutionise both the textile and forest industries, and form the basis of major business activities. n

spinnova • An R&D company which is developing a yarn thread technology that originated at VTT • Based in Jyväskylä in Central Finland • Founded by Janne Poranen and Juha Salmela • Financed by Markku Kaloniemi, Yrjö Neuvo, Timo Soininen, VTT Ventures Ltd, Lenzing AG and Besodos Oy • Established in 2014 www.spinnova.fi

VTT

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is the biggest multitechnological applied research organisation in Northern Europe.

VTT provides high-end technology solutions and innovation services for the private and public sectors, both in Finland and abroad. From its wide knowledge base, VTT combines different technologies and creates new innovations and a substantial range of world-class technologies and applied research services, thus improving its clients’ competitiveness and competence. Through its international scientific and technology network, VTT can ensure efficient transfer and utilisation of information and technology.

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VTT Impulse is a publication on science, technology and business. Published twice a year in Finnish and in English.

Publisher: VTT Ltd Vuorimiehentie 3, Espoo P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT Tel. +358 20 722 111 Editor-in-Chief: Olli Ernvall Tel. +358 20 722 6747.

Editorial Board: Erkki KM Leppävuori, Olli Ernvall, Matti Apunen / EVA, Anu Kaukovirta-Norja, Satu Helynen, Arto Maaninen, Sami Kazi, Howard Rupprecht, Paula Bergqvist Production and layout: MCI Press Oy. Printing house: Juvenes, 2015 Subscriptions and changes in address: info@vtt.fi ISSN 1798-0119. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the views of VTT.

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VTT Impulse 79