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A manufacturing process developed by Bradford researchers has revolutionised the way endodontists perform root canal treatments. When coated with a hydrophilic polymer, the highly-filled hygroscopic material has enabled UK company DRFP to develop SmartPoint — a new endodontic technique that dramatically reduces failure rates of root canal treatments from 11-30% over five years to approximately 1%, and gives lower levels of post-operative pain when compared with conventional techniques. The technology has won three awards for innovation and DRFP has expanded significantly, with a dedicated production facility and sales team offering visits to dentists to demonstrate the benefits of the technology.
Research at Kingston University into the use of flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) to manufacture metal oxide nanoparticles has resulted in the creation of an industrial FSP nanoparticle production line. This achieves production rates an order of magnitude higher than was previously achievable, while allowing particle size to be controlled at the same scale as existing small FSP processes.
TECNAN, a Spanish SME, established in 2007, that manufactures and sells nanomaterials on the international market, has used this production line to produce a range of nanoparticles for commercial customers, for use in a wide range of applications. As well as allowing a broad product range to be offered, the production line also achieves a cost reduction of over 30% compared to previous manufacturing methods.
Research at Heriot-Watt University (HWU) has led to the development of a new continuous oscillatory baffled reactor and crystalliser technology. This has direct economic and environmental impact in the chemical, pharmaceutical and food industries. Waste is substantially reduced, while the scale of the equipment and plant is dramatically decreased, reducing time to market, start-up and maintenance costs and on-going energy usage. The reactor/crystalliser was taken to market through a spinout, NiTech Solutions Ltd, with a peak of 16 employees in the REF period. Genzyme (now Sanofi) has implemented NiTech's technology for biopharmaceutical manufacture since 2007, with multi-100 ton production and sales of multi-£100M pa. The technology now underpins the larger-scale joint venture, the Continuous Manufacture and Crystallisation (CMAC) consortium, launched in 2010. CMAC has attracted over £60M investment, much of it from three major industrial partners, GSK, AstraZeneca and Novartis, with additional second-tier investors. CMAC is accelerating the introduction of new process-intensification technologies in the process industries.
Initial research into polymer nanocomposites and their formation took place at Strathclyde from 2000 - 2010. This was followed by a collaboration with the world's largest manufacturer of composite kitchen sinks, Carron Phoenix Limited, through a 6-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) which resulted in a successful new production process of its high-end synthetic granite kitchen sinks. This led to £4 million of capital investment in new production facilities at their Falkirk site, enabling the company to sustain its leading position in the designer kitchen sink market and retain its workforce of over 400 employees in central Scotland, including the 170 workers in the composite sink division in Falkirk. Within the REF period, the research has led to the manufacture and sale of in excess of one million kitchen sinks, generating sales revenue in excess of over £50M and supporting the UK economy.
Research in materials modelling by the Computational Science and Engineering Group (CSEG) is helping aerospace, defence and transport companies design advanced materials and new manufacturing processes. From lightweight components like aeroengine turbine blades to the control of magnetic fields to stabilise the next generation of International Space Station levitation experiments, CSEG is supporting innovations which have:
In the assessment period, CSEG collaborated closely with leading industries in steel-making (ArcelorMittal, Corus), primary aluminium (Dubal, Rusal, Norsk-Hydro, SAMI) and lightweight structural materials for transport and aerospace (European Space Agency, Rolls-Royce).
Research at GCU led to a novel method for backfilling pipeline tunnels providing the ability to fill tunnels three times more quickly than the traditional method resulting in a cost saving of £1.5M on a single project. This approach is now best practice at Murphy Pipelines Ltd (MPL) and features in current tenders to a value of £30M. The change in fill material lowered the carbon footprint by 5000 tonnes in a CEEQUAL award winning project, in addition, the removable fill material allows the recycling and re-use of tunnels, adding to the assets of the company and reducing costs.
BEAA research has impacted positively on commerce in brewing and biotechnology companies worldwide through continuous collaboration with Aber Instruments, an AU spin-out company formed to commercialise university research. Aber Instruments has supplied over 1000 fermentation monitoring systems world-wide for the on-line measurement of viable biomass concentration, providing improvements in speed and accuracy over previous off-line, culture or stain-based procedures. On-line, real-time monitoring of viability during fermentation reduces costs and improves product quality, leading to practitioners in large breweries including Anheuser Busch, SABMiller, Inbev, Coors, Diageo, Heineken, Suntory and San Miguel adopting the Yeast Monitor as part of their standard operating procedures. The new Futura instrument, which utilises the same technology developed from BEAA research, was launched in 2009 and is now used by major biotechnology companies including Genetech, Novo, Biogen Idec, GlaxoSmithKline, Centocor, Sandoz, Eli Lilly and Genzyme to monitor biomass in a much wider range of fermentations.
Prof Silver's research on the development of the technology to fabricate 3D electro-optic circuits via ink-jet and screen printing has provided a more sustainable solution to conventional back-lit posters (energy saving up to 75%) and printed displays. Due to the flexibility of the components (they can be printed in any shape or design) and low maintenance (battery operational), the technology has been commercially exploited by several industrial collaborators. Johnson Matthey have used Brunel research to gain knowledge of the market and supply chain, to sell silver and palladium nano-particles for ink-jet printing and to inform the investment of around £2M on R&D in this area. Intrinsiq Materials Ltd successfully marketed copper-based inks for ink-jet printing of ACEL displays, allowing the company to employ 22 additional staff. In addition, they have secured $4M of venture capital investment to develop the technology. Printed Electronics Ltd have secured £8.6M of investment to develop a high-volume supply chain for printed electronics, and have employed an additional 9 staff within the company. As a result of working with Brunel, Keeling and Walker have begun to sell ink that contains antimony-doped tin oxide nano-powders.
Novel vapour sorption experimental methods for the characterisation of complex particulate materials have been developed in the Department of Chemical Engineering. This research and expertise resulted in the creation of Surface Measurement Systems Limited (SMS), whose Dynamic Vapour Sorption (DVS) and Inverse Gas Chromatography (IGC) instruments are now found in >500 laboratories around the world. They are recognised standard research and development tools in the global pharmaceutical industry (DIN 66138). SMS has contributed >270 man-years of employment and generated £27M of turnover, whilst SMS instruments have generated over £300M of economic value, over the REF period.
The production of plastic (polymer) waste and the difficulties associated with its disposal is a major environmental challenge. Many polymer food packaging structures are made using thermoforming processes in which hot thin oil-based polymer sheets are forced under pressure into moulds and then cooled to become thin-walled packaging structures. These structures are not eco-friendly and do not degrade after use. Thus unless they are recycled, which is a complicated process and mostly does not happen, these structures cause major environmental problems worldwide.
Researchers in Brunel Institute of Computational Mathematics (BICOM) have undertaken extensive computational modelling of the thermoforming of packaging structures made from bio-materials (thermoplastics). This computational work, together with the necessary laboratory experiments which were executed by Brunel engineers, has contributed to a far better understanding of the behaviour of starch-based biodegradable food packaging. In turn, the availability of such knowledge has contributed to the steady move by food packagers and food retailers towards the adoption of such packaging which is helping to reduce the amount of long term non-biodegradable waste produced.