Thank everybody. So I started to have this this
title here. But again, the idea is to
give you a little bit of broad overview and I
want to focus a little bit nano in mind,
but I want to have the nano seniors very broad
topic. And so what I thought I share with
you today is a little bit, um, first
of all, for example, when you look at
our director divided, we combine energy and all the
biological and climate science. So we'll have a couple
of slides showing you why we've done this and this
. And this is already mind to say that it's
not, you cannot these days uncoupled basically energy from
climate and never show a little bit why we believe
that's the case. And then I want to show
in general a lot of this new manufacturing trends and
also with this a focus also a little bit around
new materials and new process perhaps to get to some
of these materials. So if you're starting out with
this, uh world energy consumption and this is 1999-2035
is an estimate, you probably all have seen this
. We are increasing absolutely the need of our energy
. So this will not go away. I mean
, it's even accelerating even further and also very interesting
. If you don't ask who are the countries who
really need a lot of this energy, you can
see us here in the United States, we are
even relatively flat in comparison to other. Of course
, after all, you've seen, this is all
full of the newspaper, especially in in china.
Uh, so I was in china a couple of
weeks ago and every time I go, that's just
amazing. You're seeing all this construction of all these
new plants, mostly based also on cold everywhere.
And so we see this trend will continue, which
of course, as you all know, will continue
to increase some problems here on our planet. So
they C2 emissions also wears a lot of this greenhouse
gas coming. You're seeing this in all the media
and it's still interesting uh trend right now. And
we also see that this might continue coal 41 right
now or 34 gas and of course all cement industry
. So the problem is not right now with the
huge demand in electricity in china and also what they
have on resources. We see that the trend continues
in china to use coal, which, as you
all know, uh has a lot of very negative
effects. So what are the effects? So this
is some of the I. P. C.
C. Uh forecasts. I mean when you look
at this, I mean, now this is a
new thought India and we again falling very nicely the
worst scenario this R. C. P. 85
which is estimating that we would see about five degrees
increase in temperature some estimates and even say that this
might be even too too conservative. So we will
have a big problem. So then I thought it's
very interesting when you hear so where's all the C
. U. To what's happening when we admitting all
this year too? I thought through this slide in
because I for me to also be interesting to see
what's happened when we admitting all See you too.
So this is the global sea to budget. This
was for 2010. So this was a publishing in
this review. Uh So this is what we admitting
Roughly and then this is how it's splitting up.
So 50 goes into the atmosphere about 27 goes into
the land and about 23 goes and getting absorbed by
the oceans. Of course, there's a lot of
uncertainty in some of these numbers. As you can
see, for example, here, land use change
has a big uncertainty. It's very hard to capture
how much C to be emitted by cutting out uh
rainforest. For example, this big uncertainty number in
this year. And as you can see also in
the oceans, it's very hard to really quantify exactly
how much do you two goes into the oceans,
but that's that's roughly the estimate how we distribute this
year to emitted by burning a fossil fuel. You
have seen all these pictures? Probably. So the
evidence, yes, we absolutely changing our environment.
So this is some pictures out of the arctic sea
ice 1979 2000 and seven. You see uh sea
ice is absolutely shrinking. So, so there was
a record low of 4.225 million square kilometers, 2007
. It's definitely going down. Also interesting is that
you see the sea level is rising. So there's
now this data are getting getting more and more precise
. We have new measurements now where we can with
satellite ultimately really precisely measure what happens to the sea
level. And again, we see definitely an increased
trend continuing. Another very important thing is, so
what happens when you're in warming up all the environment
? So, one of the big issues and now
this leads me to some of our experiments, what
we're doing at Oak Ridge, what happens to the
permafrost? So this is a simulation of the future
in Northern Alaska to show up permafrost. And you
see where we're going up there, That and the
models predict right now by apart 20 180 of the
near surface permafrost is lost. So we definitely see
that we're changing the permafrost, thawing permafrost. And
now the big question is what happens to all its
carbon stored in this permafrost? And this again,
when we come in and trying to do some of
these very large scale environmental experiments to understand some of
this phenomenon and see what this will bring to to
our to our globe and never come back to this
one in a second to do this. And this
is now again the trend. And we also had
during the whole day, there's this wonderful discussions around
this that a lot of the very large problems with
dealing with it at our planet cannot be solved by
very one specific scientific disciplines. So it's not enough
, for example, just to be what my background
is a microbiologist, it's not enough to do only
by our chemistry. It's not enough just to electrical
engineering in new case or or mechanical or something like
this. You need to have for a lot of
these problems a holistic approach, how we addressing these
issues. And that's the reason I like this slide
too much to show what we're doing in some of
these very large scale environmental experiments in the past,
what we have done, that we only specialized in
one very specific area in some of these experiments.
But I will show you in in Alaska for example
, that this is not enough. You need to
look at this holistic through all these different scales.
So what I'm showing here, for example, if
you want to understand how we're changing the big outlook
on climate on our planet, you need to also
understand what happens in the genome with one very specific
microorganisms. And then we'll come back to this example
in a little bit to show you why this is
so important. But basically you need to work through
all these different scales from the genomes over proteins to
the oceans and to the global carbon cycle. You
need to understand all this to fully understand the picture
, what will happen in some of these areas.
So how do we do this? So this is
the first large scale experiment I want to show it
to you. This is the so called spruce experiment
. So this is in Minnesota, northern Minnesota where
we asking this question if you have in a certain
environment and you're warming the environment and you're also increasing
C. Two at the level, what will happen
at all these different scales? So not only from
some of this vegetation, what you're seeing, but
also below ground. How does the microbial population change
and how is all this intertwined? So how do
you do this? And this is uh in in
in build up as we speak. You see this
is some of these platforms what we built and on
this platform will be built this very large chambers.
So this is some of these large chambers. You
see one of these here which were built on on
our side at the oak ridge to do all the
modeling and that will be erected and that you can
warm up this environment increases ceo to also warm up
below ground to simulate the environment with about 45 degrees
warm up. And then you're doing all these different
analysis from the microbial population, all the way to
the different geologic geo biochemistry going on onto the soil
all the way up to some of the vegetation to
see how all this is linked and changing together.
And another big experiment. Now this brings me back
to some of the of the genes what I showed
you. This is another very large experiment with the
doing in the arctic is called N. G.
Arctic. So the next generation environmental experiments in the
arctic and so the idea is there, what I
showed you, what I showed you that we estimating
the permafrost will disappear. So now when you're warming
up all the soil, we know that there's a
lot of carbon stored inside these sediments. What will
happen to the sediments? Will they go toxic means
in in areas like this Or will they go and
toxic if they go and toxic if you're building this
lake environments or speak. So if there is a
certain ph limit, certain microorganisms might be turned on
or off. So the best example you might have
all seen this experiment. If you go out in
a swampy area and go into some of this water
and you stomp your feet, having all this gas
bubbles coming up is a method, a chance there's
this microorganisms produce methane and then then they would basically
take a lot of the carbon and convert it over
to to natural gas or speak. As you all
know. Natural gas is much worse to our global
environment from from a greenhouse gas S. C.
02 So the idea is that can be one thing
in species who might be responsible at the end to
convert it over to methane. Or if you stay
more in their city side, you can go to
see you too. We do not understand what triggers
this or these others. We have no idea.
So this is an example where you it's not enough
just to study some of the large, let's see
masses or whatever you need to go and also understand
how the microbial population changes by the warming of this
environment. This is just one example where a single
species might have a major impact on our climate modelling
because as soon if you can can forecast that a
lot of the carbon would get emitted into methane,
then we really have a problem. So this is
some of the we did this big visit in August
2012. So last year in the summer you see
this is one of the not so nice time.
So this is wherever they end up in march to
throw some of the course. But the idea again
is to do this multidisciplinary research across all the different
disciplines from by geochemistry to microbiology, through all the
understanding of root penetration and so on. And you're
linking all this from the experiments up to a global
climate modeling perspective. So you're linking all these different
disciplines together. So now this brings me now over
to energy technologies. So what I showed you here
from the environment again, what I said the same
is what you need to do in energy technologies.
First of all, you cannot uncouple this because what
I said, it's definitely tight because we're all here
on one planet together. And then the other point
is what can we do to approach energy technology in
the same way that we're going across the different disciplines
and linking things together. So the first one I
want to show you there is a little bit of
this Mdf. Some of you might have heard this
. This is a facility, this is one of
this picture here, this manufacturing demonstration facility at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory which is almost like a portal into
the laboratory. Let me having gonna show you a
couple of pictures from the inside where we're working with
different technologies and the Mdf as a portfolio has a
lot of work around additive manufacturing also around current fibre
and composite. So the idea is using this to
integrate and use some of them more fundamental science disciplines
to apply to the problem of next generation of manufacturing
technologies. So one of our solutions pollution nutrient source
. So this is the world's fastest or most powerful
way of creating nutrients. And it will show you
all some of the of the technologies how we're using
this to understand residual stress in some of this additive
manufacturing. We have high performance computing. We have
three very high performance computers at Oak Ridge. We're
using this to a lot do a lot of model
and simulation of some of these new processes. So
I show you pictures of the carbon fiber technology and
a lot of advanced materials. And this is honestly
what I believe. One of the key elements new
ways of new materials which you then combine with this
new manufacturing technologies such as additive. And we feel
that this is really important. And then of course
, similar what I've seen today here at Virginia Tech
that we have a science and technology park where you
then encourage all some of the companies coming in working
very close with us to take some of this technology
to the market. So, so first thrust areas
. This is called additive manufacturing. You all might
have seen this, or this is one of the
pictures, some of you might have seen this.
This is a hand we made, it was actually
one of the show pieces we made through through this
out of titanium. Um and this was done for
uh Secretary of Energy a while ago, where we
show what this technology can do. But this is
a so called layer by layer. So basically what
you do is you're taking this element and you're cutting
this in very thin slices and then you're using this
almost like three dimensional printing to rebuild some of these
devices. And you can see here we we build
this hand. So the key is to really develop
this technology and this is so a couple of years
ago, europe was was very much ahead of us
in this game. Uh They're focused a lot on
titanium because what it's coming more and more, for
example, if you need a hip replacement, what
they do is the X ray, your hips and
then they're taking this picture, digitalized your hip and
then going and printing out the hip with titanium.
This is one of the company's called Arkham out of
Sweden there, the leader in this area and they
specialize in their business on this replacement parts, how
to speak from hips to knees and other elements.
So this is where this technology started out and this
is also by the youth titanium. But for a
lot of other applications, we need to do different
metals. So we're looking for example, into nickel
, super large stainless steel, ultra high strength steels
, carbon reinforced materials, polymers that will show pictures
there. So the other big things that we need
to figure out is uh controls, implementing advanced controls
in see the feedback When you do the printing to
see that if you let's do 1000 of these are
always exactly the same. This is important, especially
if you go and using this technology in the aerospace
industry And of 2010 Wheeler said understanding material properties in
geometric accuracy. A lot of this is really not
understand understood how you do this very efficiently. So
printing out certain parts is a little bit black art
into this. So we're working very closely with our
computation guys to develop the models, the algorithms to
predict how you do this in a more efficient way
to use additive for certain elements. So this is
the newest machine. This is the the E B
M A two X X. To be prototyping.
This machine needed Oakridge, which basically goes more and
more to a larger print out space, that you
can print big and bigger parts by by by doing
this using this technology. So, so now a
couple of things and this is again, this is
one of the things for lifting. This is a
turban plate which is pretty with this technology and you
can see there's some of the cooling channels going through
this turban plates. But by using this technology can
imagine that this is just a million different welding points
, what you do by using this, this materials
and then you well then basically together violation, you're
also introducing residual stress into this part. So now
the key is you need to figure out what is
, where is the residuals to, It's where some
of these ports because this is some some weak points
within, let's say, in this case, your
blade. And so we're using nutrient sciences to understand
what the residual stresses in some of these new parts
. We? Re building out to then develop new
algorithms to perhaps printed in a different way, also
use different materials. So we're using different resolution capabilities
here. So this is for for imaging. So
we have current on Haifa, about 50 micron.
And we're building a new instrument which goes to venus
, which brings us down to about one micro micro
uh, in resolution, which then really can't understand
what the residual stresses by some of these new imaging
technologies inside the processing is very important. So the
idea is, could you value print, have some
technology that you can tell the machine oh, there
is something which has not really if used correctly.
Can you then go back and fix it? And
this is again while we're using different technologies, like
with different camera systems visible near infrared high speed cameras
and other technologies where you was built into your control
loop while you're printing your part that you can go
pause the machine fixed one of the poorest, for
example, and then having a part which you know
that they always are exactly identical. If you do
it again with 1000 of these, we are very
important for for validating some of these new technologies,
especially if we're gonna go into into the airspace industry
. So now in Poland the additive manufacturing and I
personally, I feel that this is a really exciting
area. I feel that this is re additive will
take off and and make it make have a tremendous
impact for all of us. So again, there's
a couple of focus areas what we're doing in civic
organization and control very similar. But its new.
So the for example, is a thermal image when
you deposit this material, how all this is done
, high strength material so that it is very simple
. Can you print out a plastic structure with the
strength of aluminum? So that's what you want,
because you can imagine if you do this, you
can print this out and you might print, for
example, out the whole air airplane wing. Or
you can print out a big plate for windmills and
so on. Uh And of course increasing see strength
is important because it's layer by layer, so how
to increase the sea strength that you're building the material
that is not so easily to peel off and increasing
the strength also in in the in the sea dimension
. So this is some of the big areas what
we're working on. Because the other big thing is
, I don't know, some of you might have
seen this machine. So you're very limited in the
print space because a lot of these two uh or
decreased warping doing this in a heated oven. So
the idea is, can you take this outside of
the ovens? And that's what we started. So
this is one of our gantry system. So this
is about 888 ft where you can see that,
that we're using this system to do out of the
oven, printing with different uh, plastic systems and
also then using this to mix in carbon fiber into
this. And so the first data coming out of
this are very encouraging by having these new materials.
We can go out of their oven, can print
out materials without the warping. We can deposit a
lot of more material, can print through their big
parts and also creates strengths which are vehicles or even
exceeding the strength of aluminum. So we feel that
this is revolutionizing the debate. We're doing some of
these polymers structures in in the future. So,
so now the next thing where you need, you
need to integrate and this this is again now coming
down into the wave and giving a big program in
using biofuels for transportation. So what we're working on
is that of taking some of the two polymers that
saying a tree or ingress cellos and heavy cellos.
And they're going down this route to go to biofuel
. I want to talk about this this pathway today
. So the idea is, can you use some
of this lignin to do something else with this materials
? At the moment? We just burn it to
get a couple of cents per pound. So there's
almost no value in there. So the idea was
, can you take lignin melt, spin it and
produce carbon fiber and and creating a higher value stream
in addition to the fuel you're creating with this by
refineries. I want to focus a little bit on
this whole topic around carbon fiber because what has told
you before we see that this is a very nice
synergy between additive and using carbon fiber as a new
material in this area. So I used this slide
because again, we still have this ongoing collaboration uh
within some of the chemistry department uh where you guys
working on precursor chemistry and micro structure. This is
for ultra high strength carbon fiber. So there's two
ongoing projects uh between us and and Virginia Tech.
We're also working on new processing, let's say,
in microwave, created internal heating processes and then also
in in plasma based conversions, were doing melt spinning
. And the idea is again, another show is
having a fully integrated pathway from creating something in the
laboratory and producing something at very large scale. And
now we have accomplished this with in Oak Ridge Also
, of course, including our partners language in your
take on this one And this is where it's all
come together. So this is the carbon fiber technology
facility. So this is a new facility which can
produce 25 tons of carbon fiber a year. So
it is designed from the beginning that you can be
very flexible in putting different precursors in there. So
for example, pan uh and others and also lignin
because the idea is creating enough material to give to
industry that they can then evaluate and test this materials
for different applications. So this is why Department of
Energy funded this facility, just to give you a
little bit the size feeling. So this is huge
. I mean that's the length of a football field
and you can also see there's people standing here.
So this is the current fiber facility it is designed
and the length is like like a traditional commercial plant
size. Just what's different is that we are not
as wide. So if you would do this in
a full scale commercial plant, you would come much
wider than what we do. So we don't need
this To create the 25 tons. The length.
And the way it's designed is the last basically before
scale it up to a full commercial scale plan.
So now bringing back why? Why you why this
? This is interesting. So within this facility we
also put this in that we can melt spin our
own fibers. So no other facility has this that
you can also create the fiber which they convert over
to current fiber in the same facility. And we
have done this again to create fibers which are very
very unique. And so this is a technology by
Hills who created this that you can can take these
fibers. So let's say in this case with islands
in the middle. So basically you're mixing two different
materials to create uh together and then spin and create
your fiber. And the next slide shows to this
, you can do all these different shapes and forms
. But of course what you can see now in
this case, look we we remove the island here
, but you also can flip it around. So
basically you can do that. This certainly getting you
nano fibers. So suddenly you having a technology where
it can create tremendous amount of nano fibers by using
this technology. And we feel this is important because
this man if I was thinking go straight into our
additive manufacturing process. But again, what I showed
you where we're combining carbon fiber with different plastics to
create the strength. So we're very excited about this
technology and how this to really now can link together
. So now let's go over to another area which
again comes comes back to my my old again I
originally well I'm a microbiologist and that's the reason I
I really excited about this new low temperature material synthesis
. And you were seen in a second uh why
? Why this is happening? Very excited. So
we started out and this again is was done by
serendipity almost that that one of our scientists isolated these
microorganisms which they found that they always saw this this
nano materials particles produced in the in the in the
culture media. So we found out that we had
these organisms which actually produced out of oxidized port salts
. And then we found this peculiar and cheap sugar
. We were able to create a procedure to but
also nanoparticles. And we could see that we could
create magnetite semiconductor materials material for fault of attacking us
for phosphorus. And they will show you some of
this data what you can imagine is that this bacteria
it's very similar. They just pooping out these nano
materials. That's basically what they are doing. So
basically what this is. So you see this is
a material and then they're creating these nanoparticles. So
basically now we could create we can easily scale this
uh about 500 kg per month. Uh we could
really reduce the cost of some of these materials to
a dollar to$10 per gram. Which and you
know some of these nano materials extremely expensive. So
I showed you in some of these different different applications
where we are in this process. So this is
what we call the platform for this. So we
could do metal oxides which of course we all know
there's some hard disk and others superpower Magnetics. So
for for the new drug delivery system of course sequencing
and other big applications. So we have fair fluid
X for some ability speakers to some of the electric
engines, motors and so on and of course also
quantum thoughts which are interesting for lighting but also in
in the in the solar area. So we could
we feel that this really is a potential revolutionizing the
way we creating some of these nano materials in a
in a very cheap form. So and of course
there's a lot of companies who were interested in in
getting access to this and be working with with a
lot of these companies on on this chart, some
of them have our materials already to explore and test
what they can do with this new way because because
as you mentioned this is very differently. So you
need to understand when you have this nano materials,
how can you lay them down that might behave differently
? They're coming out of a hydra filic environment.
So how do you deal with this? Uh A
lot of things which we need to learn how we
actually work with this new nano materials. So what
we have done. So we demonstrated capability in in
some of this in magnetic oxides, we could do
pure, we can do this with a lot of
different dope magnetite. Uh so there's swimming also r
and. d 100 award in this one. So
this is really taking off very nicely. It's getting
used evolved with tiger mirrors. So we we focused
on captain sulfide and zinc sulfide. And again we
also now about the 24 liters stage at this at
this at this time. And then producing that materials
for further testing. You put this down into some
of the uh cells and and see how they're doing
, uh, and then also in folded, tight
absorbent spinal traction. Very extraordinary compounds. So we
also about the same stage we'll be having all these
materials and now be giving this to, to our
material folks to learn how to work with some of
these new materials and therefore calls for catalyst is something
where we, it's a little bit further behind.
But this is also an area what we're trying to
scale it up right now and some of these new
materials to hand over to some of our catalyst,
people to understand these materials. And of course,
then there's other applications in source good lighting and and
batteries and so on. So, another big area
, which I think is really exciting is this whole
idea about natural sub uh super hydrophobic substrate, uh
sub surfaces or surfaces. And I know, I
think there's also the china tech was engaged also in
a startup company in this area. What I've seen
a while ago as I looked into who is playing
in this area. So we have in this program
now for for a couple of years ongoing. And
the the data now showing that the results is pretty
interesting in my opinion for new materials. Of course
. Then this also links over to some of the
application of this technology in solar and in other areas
. Never show you some of the examples. So
if you take a drop of water and put this
on a cone spike, so this is basically what
you would get. So the drop cannot lay down
. And that's basically why this is showing this these
characteristics. So the idea is, can you mimic
this? And people have tried of course in a
long time, can you mimic this by some of
these materials? There were two different technologies where you
can make this bike systems. So there was a
photo lithographic based uh technology. This was hard,
it's hard to scale, is very expensive and then
a rough and polymer based which also was not durable
enough. So some of our scientists had this idea
to go back to some of the old technology,
what you're doing in class. So what they've done
, they use this micro nano glass array fabrication.
So basically what you do is you take an edge
of a tube with the left edge of the rod
and you draw this together in a drawing tower and
using this in the drawing tower is very, very
old technology almost. But the idea of combining the
two together, draw this out. And then when
you have this fiber, you bundle this and then
you re draw the fiber and then the end you
cut these bundles invaders. And then you etch the
vapors. So this is then what you do.
So you having this this drawn waivers and then you're
having these different edge surface and you're creating then spikes
your then code this with a hydrophobic material. And
you're ending up with your waivers which are having these
characteristics. So this is showing you here a live
shot. Uh This is some of the of the
of the images here when you see when you're watching
this and you're creating this this spikes here. So
you also can go and if if the breakup you
can regenerate the spikes and it's very easily to scale
. So this shows you have one uh more ECM
picture and more solution. So we have about one
million spikes prepare square centimeters in this technology. So
this shows a couple of videos what you then what
you create by doing this. So this shows you
a drop of water hitting some of these materials with
the high speed camera to see how how it bounces
off and it's basically not attaching. So this is
another one which you have a water stream hitting some
of these materials. Um and then if you slow
it down, you can see how the drops just
really completely bounce off this these materials. And then
another one, this is now comes back to self
cleaning. So this is an untreated surface. If
you have dirt on it, you see a water
drop just bounces around. But again, it's it's
not really very effective in clean surfaces, which of
course is very, very important. Let's in the
solar area. And here you see when you have
the surface treated like this, a drop comes and
really cleans out the whole surface because also dirt is
sitting very differently on some of these materials. It's
a very effective way of clean use surfaces. So
then this started as okay, what are the natural
substrates out there? Which having this this kind of
spikes And of course, data tombs coming to mind
there, You probably have seen this, you know
, this this marine little little creatures, they haven't
despite systems. So the idea is, can you
use some of this material? So even a lower
cost of of material using this. So so we
use the item of earth and created this chemical modifications
, basically what U. two. I don't want
to go into all these details. But what you're
doing is you're putting blinkers on this on this director
of earth that you then can tie it and link
it to different materials. There's two different ways.
There's the one step hydrologists and two step paralysis.
But basically what you're creating is a link system on
some of this material that you then can put it
on. Two reasons. You can couple it uh
, and and sprayed on or bind it on two
different materials and then I can show you on some
of this. So this is a water droplet coded
. So basically when you take some of the fabric
and what you create with this new, the infamous
Earth bound to this materials, you can spray it
onto some of the fabric. And again, this
is a drop on this fabric. So I've seen
this myself in your spray, you will tell your
shirt and you can dunk the shirt into water.
It comes out, it's completely dry. A big
application. And this also was funded or it's still
funded from from the Office of Electricity. Uh,
we all know be having some of these ice storms
on our power lines, there's building ice, which
can then put all the spit on and then it
collapsed. So you see that this is a coded
wire done in our climate chambers versus uncoated wire.
You can see you can really avoid the build up
of of some of these eyes. And then this
is another experiment, what we have done against anti
fouling. So this was also funded uh is to
funded from um uh some of the military applications uh
as you know, for example, if you have
a ship or some other stuff floating in the ocean
, if you can avoid that some of the microbes
allergy going and attacking something of the structures It helps
to to save energy and so on. And again
this shows you some of these uh these waivers we
have done for 12 weeks experiments and we can show
that it really reduces the settlement of some of these
uh different microorganisms um on this substrate. And the
last two slides is again now then the newest thing
what we're what we're doing. So again what I
showed you so how how do you tie a lot
of this together? So if we now go and
saying we do all moving in towards the electrification of
our fleet suddenly we are worried it's a lot of
the uh new materials will be a limiting factor for
especially if they made out of this critical materials.
Uh So how do you deal with this? So
the U. S. Department of Energy had a
new hub around this critical materials. So we be
teamed up with AMES Laboratory then I. Nl and
Lawrence livermore in some universities and companies and we created
the Critical Materials Institute. So we just got this
hub awarded uh nine months or six months ago roughly
. Uh And now we're working on this idea of
how can we work on new methods that we cannot
or that we will not be running down into this
next bottleneck let's say on some of these critical materials
. So the Al Qaeda Material Institute has a three
D. Approach how we call this. So we
want to divide diversify the supply. So we're working
around from the mining. So with some of these
materials so new sources how you can get access to
this. How can you separate them out a lot
of times. If you look at these minds they
are not only having critic materials in their earth,
how they call it, there's other metals in there
. How do you separate this in more efficient way
? What some of the transformative processes and also that
you're looking for new uses of some of the core
products. A lot of these minds only can survive
and cost using many of the different elements that could
isolate into the market. So if you look for
one with Earth but this is the only way you
have a function and the rest you have no use
for them. It's very hard for some of these
minds to survive. The other d is to develop
substitutes. So for example we're working on some new
magnets which avoiding rare earth. A new ways of
lighting without this and new material development framework. Can
this a lot of this manufacturing technology is also tied
linked back to our manufacturing demonstration facility. What I
showed you earlier and then the last one is of
course his driver used recycling inefficient use of materials in
manufacturing, uh separation and concentration. I mean,
you all know in all our cell phones, we
have rare earth India and some of our speakers,
but the amount is really low. How do you
deal with this? I mean a lot of times
right now we're not recycling because to get access to
this material is more expensive than trusting it out again
. So the idea is what new processes can be
developed to go and drive to reuse and the recycling
of some of these very precious metals. And this
brings me to my last slide. And now what
I showed you in some of the new ways of
from the manufacturing side, from the environmental side,
how do you even tie this up higher? And
this is why I will like to end with this
, what we call sustainable communities. So now let's
let's go into a time machine and fly forward,
let's say 100 years. So I will predict that
we will live in a very different way. So
I think the way we even having our cities will
be very different. Some of the big city planners
I talked to, it's very interesting. They predict
that we might move backwards in time, we might
develop cities more in the medieval time frame. So
that what what what he meant with this is when
you look back, let's say 100 years. Look
at some of the cities in europe, they were
to sign all around the people. So there was
people, there were small manufacturing, the agriculture was
around through the city. Also self sustained in in
their kind of boundaries. Of course we all especially
in the US we were crawling out so I was
serious, getting broader and broader with this, uh
, I'm guilty as well. We have, we
have a little farm in, in, in,
in Knoxville with this, my carbon footprint is much
high as I would live in Manhattan in an apartment
and have no cars because I couldn't afford it.
So this is, for example, some of the
big questions we, as a country, as a
nation, as a globe will have to to rattle
to see how we can tie all this together with
our started out by having a problem on our environment
, by increasing and changing our our climate. And
how do we do this? That at the end
we all want to have a certain quality of life
freedom by driving around traveling, working, having fun
. So how do you tie all this together?
And I think this will lead us that we need
to look at all different angles of our communities from
building to smart, great renewables, the climate impact
transportation will not go away. And also of course
industry, we all have to work one way or
the other. So how do we tie all this
together and what do we need to do right now
that our next generation or your Children's Children have the
same freedom and quality of life like we have.
And this is something which I'm sometimes very concerned because
I don't want to be seen as the generation who
screwed it up for our grandchildren basically. And and
that's something we we need to start worrying how we
putting this in place that they have the same freedom
like we enjoy and the end is having a good
environment, good climate and energy to do all this
what we need to do so with this, I
don't know if if you have time for questions.
25 okay. Yeah. Mhm. This one.
Uh huh. So so again, how does this
hubs Getting structured, this, this, this is
large, this$20 million dollars hub structure Idaho is
to lead on the recycling side. Um so so
again, what I said there, there is at
the moment, there's a lot of this concept,
development can be working and you also can see this
on some of our industry, we have some of
the large recycling companies being part of this. So
there the idea is how to tackle this problem that
you have some of this earth in very small quantities
in for example the best example cell phones as you
know in the speaker, there is some of this
rare thing there but how to get access to,
so so I don't know all the details honestly exactly
how they tackle some of this. But I mean
there is there is there is a big concept going
on to see how from from the collection way into
the separation way because where for example you can melt
a lot of this together and create a mixture of
all your medals. But then how do you then
separate it back out again? Or do you do
this like like you're doing the aluminum recycling which is
relatively easy in comparison to some of these metals,
which is not so easy to separate out. So
this is where it goes. I mean it goes
all the way from collection to new ways to then
take it apart and get access by separating them the
precious metals back out. So all the details I
honestly don't have for you right now. Absolutely correct
. Absolutely. So this again, what this reason
we picked these three different areas. Go go into
new processing from the mind. But then even avoiding
it, for example, can you make magnets without
uh rare earth? But then also how do you
then get it back in the case you really have
to use it? Okay, what is the outlook
for carbon fiber? Yeah. So so there so
the outlook. So now I give you a couple
of different scenarios. So in lignin based carbon fiber
, we're having this what we call the stage program
. So the very next step, what we have
shown already is that you can take lignin carbon fiber
and use it for non structural lingering carbon fiber of
all carbon fiber. Uh so for example, if
there's one company who is interested in invalidated the lignin
carbon fiber material, whether taking recruiting this match and
depressing this in some of this insulation material for high
temperature furnaces. So this company gets the fiber right
now from china and they're worried that they're getting cut
out out of their uh, the distribution list because
china might want to have the fiber more and more
for themselves. So we know what the prices,
we know we can produce it at a much cheaper
value out of uh, lignin. It has all
the specs they would need about 600 tons. So
, so what we still need to work on is
that the time right now? To when you have
this so called stabilization time, when five goes through
your your plant, we need to decrease this.
This is still too long to be economically. So
we need to shrink the time, which it needs
to heat up to stabilize the carbon and then and
then and then get the structure done. We will
we will fix this. The next thing is then
to create a login carbon fiber at the strength.
What you need an automotive. So you take about
250 K. S. I. So we are
we still need to go about so we have a
third of the strength were there, so we still
need to do some more work. And this is
again the complexity with witness that the molecules very different
if you compare this with pan and it's a very
nice stretched fiber. So if you look at at
lignin, our problem is that you can you can
spin it, but then as soon as you have
it on a spool, it's getting oxidized and then
it's getting very brittle. You cannot unwind it.
So we're still working on some of the of the
chemistry of the lignin side. The way also you
treat it so we can do it in maths and
we can do this in this facility which is is
no problem. But as soon as you put it
onto a fiber to stretch it to align the current
molecules to get the strength, this is where the
leading carbon fiber is very brittle. So so there's
different ways to to work on this one. So
the first one is to be going all the way
back and now linking different signs together. We're working
on the modification of lignin through the modification of plant
cell wall synthesis implants. So having a big program
in in populous and also in switch grass. We'll
see can you modify the lignin structure that you're creating
lignin which is better suitable for carbon fiber spinning.
The other processes that we're working on on the chemistry
side, they can you pre treatment pre treat lignin
differently, for example, to make the molecule high
molecular and more stretched. And then we're also working
on the process side. So what is the ultimate
goal? And this isn't the face number three.
So, so now, hypothetically, if you could
create Ligon carbon fiber at the cost of steel,
you would completely revolutionize the way we're doing everything from
architecture to construction to everything. So what would this
mean? So at the moment, uh steel is
about 30 cents a pound, roughly. So,
and then they're still called displacement factor of current.
Fire to steal is 1-10. It's not completely correct
because this is without the composite, but you still
need, but just Roughly. So, if you
can go and produce linking carbon fiber about three,
let's make it more realistic to$52 a pound,
you're competing with steel. So suddenly you could create
beams like in this building, bridges, tunnels could
make them out of current fiber beams. And when
you talk to some of the very large construction companies
, they would love to go down this path at
the moment, nobody can afford it. Same when
you go to California and look at some of the
bridges, you've probably seen this, they are wrapped
with these black maths, this is earthquake kind of
protection, that is carbon fiber maths. So we
all know that current fiber has a lot of big
benefits in the construction side. The same. There's
no corrosion if you have carbon fiber reinforced concrete,
if you have carbon fiber in there, so it's
not corroding like what you have in in in steel
, but again, it's too expensive. If you
hypothetically now could achieve this, you would make a
change what I would say from a steel economy to
a carbon fiber economy, this would suddenly change the
whole scope on biofuels because suddenly there's much more value
than in the carbon fiber than it is in fuel
, and it would be created here in the US
, You would not basically take this and take a
plant from china and bring it here, you would
grow the plant here and we in the US to
the world leaders in productivity in agriculture, so you
would have your agriculture to produce the lignin to create
the current five, and it would suddenly create a
good technology jobs in the rural area where you produce
the biomass. So the idea is really linking this
to the biofuel industry and having this as a synergy
and the reason why steal, because if you do
fuel, you need to have a market which is
big and you need to have even a bigger market
than than steel is, but it would be a
very good start. So a little bit long minded
answer, but it's, it's, that's what we
would like to go. It's gonna resonate with period
, just open it over here. Or is it
pretty much this one specific here, this kind of
thing. So it's, it's both. So when
we have the sustainable campus initiative, so where we
, of course this is also do we order where
we're looking into everything from recycling too. We have
violence charging program, we have solar stations. So
we're doing a lot of this within Oak Ridge,
but then there's also the overarching theme and that's mostly
because all if you look at this, a lot
of the areas what I have here on on this
slide is run out of how directorate. So when
we're doing buildings were doing great. we're doing a
lot of the energy technology, we're doing climate,
we do transportation and we do manufacturing. So,
so what I showed you and some of the elements
be from our management, also trying to integrate this
up to see what how do you link this together
? So, for example, a very interesting idea
right now, can you create a building without going
being grid lists? And then of course, the
idea, the interesting thing is if you look at
the way we're doing transportation, there's all the building
technology and then there's transportation. So hypothetically if you
would create a car and you know, you're using
your quality five of the day, so you're having
a very interesting power plant sitting outside your parking lot
. That's not the way we're looking at transportation a
car. If you just drive, Let's see here
for Prius and you're driving on the highway with about
60. Do you create so much energy that you
can power to houses? So what would happen if
you design a car that you can create electricity markets
sitting in your garage and you're charging your house?
So when this is this is some of these elements
which uh its we're you know, we're not designed
like this because building and transportation is a very different
beast. But I think from a form of sustainable
sustainability concept, we need to bring some of these
stovepipes together please. Thank you. Mhm. So
I'm not exactly sure if I understood your questions but
how you separate this. So you know this is
very easy because the nanoparticle is uh segment to the
to the bottom of the permanent, so many permanent
like this you just stop stirring and then the nanoparticles
sediment faster than the bacteria and you just suck it
off from the bottom and it's almost pure and then
bacteria later they're floating longer. So basically you just
stop it, the other part of the sediment,
you take them off and then you continue the growth
. So we have seen this and this is honestly
was one of the big problems at the beginning that
you have the same, that all the narrow products
they aggregated into this big clumps. And they were
also so and I don't know the details, honesty
. Uh but they figured out a way that they
are not aggregating altogether. So they're still they're still
nicely and separated. So then they then they are
. But then then and this is perhaps what?
But I think the biggest challenges right now that if
you have chemically synthesized nanoparticles versus nanoparticles produced by this
technology, a lot of our material guys do not
know or have to learn how to work with them
because they behave very differently. Because a lot if
you do some of the chemical synthesis, this particles
come out and and having a very different characteristics,
they're they're more hydrophobic. These guys are hydro filic
. So I rethink that there still might be some
small protein residues left on on there nanoparticles, which
creates a very different behavior if you want to make
some thin films. So it's very different to bring
them out in a thin film. Clumping is a
problem. So this is exactly were we working on
the production is, in my opinion, done.
So that's not the problem. But then how to
work with these materials, How can how can you
create uniform films that they're all touching to create the
properties you want and so on. Thank you.
So if you look if you look under uh,
Tommy Phelps P. H E L. P S
. And so he, he published some of his
papers and probably also chat duty. D. U
. T. Y D U T Y. Yeah
. So he's actually Virginia tech graph. So he
is also working with this one. The question one
thing missing from your talk that can receive from the
favorite game. Mm praying to see a two problems
. Was hoping to see a magic bullet. God
is the answer to sustainable community. Is that,
is that what we really have to get out or
in your opinion that are now the energy research,
If you see what, what makes a dent in
that problem, it's not battlefields, right? Because
that's uh, yeah. Honestly, if you would
have talked to me five years ago, I would
have told you that the metric bullet is a combination
of uh, different renewables such as power, fuel
, solar and wind. Um, I think it
will not happen right now because the natural gas we
discovered is changing everything. So I'll tell you what
I'm worried is we could see and use natural gas
as a tremendous opportunity for a country to take the
20 years. create a long term energy policy using
this gas instead of now what we're doing and we're
starting to build a building all these terminals. We
, we, we, we take this the gas
out of the ground, bring it to the terminal's
shipping to china that they can continue to produce our
goods. We then import again, Instead of creating
a long-term energy policy to use the cheap natural gas
on a long term, 20 years to create the
renewables what you need after the natural gas. Unfortunately
, think we will not do this. Um,
it's also interesting if you then talk and you've probably
seen all the reports, we will be, uh
, exporter of crude oil very soon. Uh,
but then now what's happening is that other countries also
developing the same drilling technologies like we do. If
you talk to some of these guys, they think
we just have about 7-9 year advantage and they will
find natural gas in other areas because we don't,
we are not the only country has these resources there
. So means we were not unwind burning fossil fuel
, which means honestly between us, we will not
stop the bombing. There's no chance. So the
only hope what I have is that we learn when
we reach this tipping point and this is this is
this is my big fear. Always make this at
this tough discussion with a couple of folks there,
of course in some cells, a lot of people
still think it's all bogus about changing the climate and
the environment. But I would say because we all
know in in in Knoxville Tennessee because of T.
V. A. We have a lot of nuclear
power plants. And I said, okay, what
would you do if you live in the radius?
Lots of 20 miles of our nuclear power plant.
And the ceo of T. V. A.
Would get up and said, guys, I'm really
sorry, but there's about 5 to 10% likelihood that
the nuclear power plant has a major male function.
And we're emitting all the Iraqi activity In the next
20 to 50 years. People wake up ballistic,
I wouldn't like to live beside a power plant which
has let's say 10 probability to To melt in in
in in the next 20 to 50 years. So
now let's talk about climate. So if a climate
scientist says, well, there there's a 5-10 chance
that our data are correct, and this is very
conservative, but we don't worry about it. We
don't have we don't have an emergency plan. If
you if you run a nuclear power plant, you
have an emergency plan. You know what you would
do in this case for from from the climate side
, we don't have an emergency. We don't know
anything. We don't even know what is the natural
way of of what could we do? We don't
even worry about it. And this is a lot
of interesting discussion, especially if you go to Washington
because uh, none of our politicians are voice about
this. And look, I'm not saying That we
all need to become treehugger, that's not what I'm
saying. So, look, we are the best
example. I have a F350 to pull my horses
, so I'm not saying we need to do this
, but it would be nice to take the smartest
people around the whole world together and and talk about
this. What would we do if we would hit
some of the tipping points? And then I'm talking
about the tipping points. The model predicts that at
a certain concentration and we don't know when or when
we reach this level, that we might see significant
changes. You probably all read this that that some
of the hydrates might come up or some of the
jet stream might might change. So, so we
see tremendous potential. The model suggests that this has
huge impacts, potentially. We don't worry about it
. And and that's that's what the sometimes would like
to see. Just an idea. How would we
deal with this province, Because frankly, I gave
up that we're stopping it. It will not happen
. So we all have to move further north.
And again, I said, I don't want to
I wouldn't like to live in florida. Well,
you know that someone has been positive, but that
doctor we would have a small gift for you from
. Because thank you again for speaking with us.
And let's give Dr Keller thank you. Thank you 1125 --> A:middle L:90% .