Public Funding for Glass Technology Services Ltd

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The rapid decommissioning of coal power plants in the UK has inadvertently created a supply chain crisis in the construction industry, as most cement and concrete producers use coal fly ash as a staple supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in cements. The lack of local SCMs from the coal power and steel industries has led to increased imports from mainland Europe and elsewhere, further exacerbating the carbon emissions associated with the UK construction industry. Carbon Upcycling Technologies UK (CUT) is a subsidiary of Carbon Upcycling Technologies, an award-winning Canadian startup (e.g., Carbon X-Prize winner and Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label owner) scaling a carbon utilization technology that can activate a range of abundantly available waste materials such as landfilled ash, glass, clays, and volcanic rocks to permanently store CO2 and produce reactive low carbon cements. For this project, CUT will bring together a consortium of partners from two critical foundation industries: the glass industry--represented by Glass Technology Services and MKD32--and the cement industry, represented by CEMEX. This consortium will create a first-of-a-kind circular economy solution that converts local low-grade, contaminated glass cullets into high-performance SCMs. CUT and its project partners will work together to produce a first-of-its-kind CO2-enhanced glass pozzolan that will lower the carbon footprint of cement and concrete while simultaneously upcycling contaminated post-consumer glass into cementitious materials, diverting it from its current use as an inert filler in precast blocks. This CO2-enhanced glass pozzolan will be blended into cement at the CEMEX Rugby plant and used in ready-mix and precast concrete for sidewalks, curbs, gutters, driveways, foundations to lower the carbon footprint of UK built infrastructure. The glass-derived pozzolan will reduce the amount of cement in a concrete mix by over 25% through superior strength activity performance, and improve concrete durability by up to 45%; improving infrastructure resilience against environmental impacts of climate change. This project will directly facilitate the UK's aspiration to move towards a more circular economy \[1\] and will help support the UK's commitment to achieving an 80% reduction in its carbon emissions by 2050\. With the infrastructure sector having control over almost one-sixth of total emissions, it will play a key role in contributing to the national reduction.\[2\] Currently, low carbon cement and concrete are projected to be responsible for a 12% reduction towards reaching net-zero \[3\]. \[1\]Policy paper: Circular Economy Package policy statement, 30 July 2020 \[2\]HM Treasury: Infrastructure Carbon Review, November 2013 \[3\]thisisukconcrete.co.uk/TIC/media/root/Resources/MPA-UKC-Net-Zero-Roadmap\_Summary2pp\_October-2020.pdf

This collaborative, cross sector R&D demonstration project furthers previous industrial research to advance & showcase novel technology developed to support transformation of Foundation Industry production process optimisation. The primary aim is to increase efficiency to achieve greater productivity by increased energy and resource efficiency. This will be achieved by using advanced robotics integrated with 3D machine vision systems which are augmented with bespoke sensors creating a data rich environment. The robotic, vision and sensory technology will be applied and demonstrated with foundation industry production processes building on previous R&D to digitally inspect defects in metals, glass and ceramics. With additional utilisation of machine learning (ML) on data collected, the advacned artificial intelligence (AI) developed can begin to enhance these traditional Foundation Industry production processes to enabling greater industrial productivity whilst significantly reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions in both glass, metals, and ceramic manufacturing. Current manufacturing methods are inflexible, often requiring the time-intensive pre-programming or manual intervention of production tasks responding to unexpected occurrences or production errors. This means that foundation industries are unable to respond to the demands of future environmental targets and cannot make further improvements within the manufacturing process until the production methods are updated. This is critical to address; success will allow UK manufacturing to remain competitive when facing increasing global competition where labour rates and emissions regulations are significantly lower. This project aims to use advanced 3D vision sensor data to produce ML and AI algorithms to monitor and improve the metals, glass and ceramic production process. To guarantee the repeatability and accuracy of measurement, automation through the flexibility offered by modern multi-axis robotic systems will be demonstrated. The ultimate output of the system will result in foundation industry-wide benefits in glass, ceramics, and metals production. This project will address specific needs in these foundation industries by offering an augmented, existing manufacturing process brought about by digitised inspection & intelligent machine learning. It is anticipated that a reduction in energy costs and improved production yields associated with the manufacture of tempered glass & kiln fired ceramic materials will be significantly and positively impacted, as is the case in the foundry castings industries.

AI6S will develop a novel toolkit for process optimisation in foundation industries (FI), enabling process efficiency improvements resulting in reduced energy consumption and reduced waste and improved ability to meet challenging (and commercially attractive) specifications and short turnaround times. Current lean six-sigma methodologies provide efficiency gains through continuous improvement following highly manual procedures over process iterations. AI6S will make a step change in the ability of companies to achieve "right first time" production output to challenging specifications and stringent quality criteria whilst reducing energy consumption, waste and cost through higher yields, more efficient processes and faster throughput with potential for annual savings 21,800,111 kgCO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)/ £58M for the UK and 675million kgCO2e/ £1,800million globally. These benefits will be achieved through the use of a machine-learning optimisation approach tailored, for the first time, specifically to the needs of foundation industries (FIs) and integrated within a lean six-sigma framework. The system will automate and massively speed up process improvement and reuse of historical data to optimise process conditions. Novel aspects of our approach include the use of a special two-stage optimisation process which provides rapid global optimisation even for complex processes involved in high energy thermal processes and the use of data synthesis to achieve faster and more accurate model training. This novel technological approach will be integrated into a lean six-sigma framework for rapid adoption by practitioners within the foundation industries. The algorithms will be implemented in a software platform for ease of use and integration with other quality and enterprise software tools. The effectiveness of the toolkit will be demonstrated trough two use cases in metal forging and glass production, providing the two foundation industry companies with direct gains in process performance.

The UK Government is committed to moving to a zero-carbon economy, including within the most energy-intensive sectors. These sectors consume a considerable amount of energy, but also play an essential role in delivering the UK's transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy, as well as in contributing to economic growth and rebalancing the economy. UK Foundation Industries generate 10% of the UK's entire CO2 emissions and for three of these industries, glass, cement and ceramics, manufacture is energy and capital intensive. Future environmental regulations create challenges in competing with new plants from the developing world but also offer new opportunities. COVID-19 impact resulted in near total suspension of foundation industry production. Subsequent recovery is further challenged by new, UK policies and plummeting raw material values which are compounding negative impact to decimated sectors. This energy efficiency industrial research project aims to deliver a transformative new instrument for the glass, cement and ceramics industries, utilising analytical Raman gas measurement instrumentation, originally developed for nuclear decommissioning by project lead IS-Instruments. The data provided by the instrument will enable these Foundation Industries and others, to make a step-change in process control, energy consumption and environmental emissions monitoring. Significant energy savings will be directly enabled through accurate, near-to-real-time hot gas measurement, realising the future potential of mixing natural gas with cleaner energy sources such as hydrogen, when combined with more accurate and near-to-real-time burner in-process control. The optimised environmental monitoring capability of this instrument will enable greater understanding and the value added by additional in-process monitoring technologies will deliver a new technology enabling step changes to prcessing within the foundation industries. To deliver this collaborative, innovative project, IS-Instruments will be supported by UK Foundation Industry partners Glass Technology Services (Glass), Breedon Group (Cement) and Wienerberger (Ceramics) with world class University expertise from Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre and Sheffield Hallam's Materials Engineering Research Institute.

Each year in the UK, approximately there are 48 TWh/yr industrial waste heat sources which is equivalent to one sixth of overall industrial energy use. Of this amount of industrial waste heat, technically 11TWh/yr (2.2 MtCO2/yr) could be potentially recovered for useful purposes such as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) through specially designed energy conversion technologies. Globally one third of energy consumption is attributable to the industrial sector, with up to 50% ultimately wasted as heat. The market of power generation with industrial waste heat is thus enormous. The project will create an innovative CO2 transcritical power cycle (iT-CO2) for energy conversion systems with industrial waste heat. Instead of using an inapplicable CO2 liquid pump, a combined CO2 transcritical compressor and vapour-liquid ejector will be developed and installed in the system to create thermal-to-electrical efficiency of a target 30% (i.e. double state-of-the-art). The project outcomes will target heat-intensive industries such as steel, glass and other heat-intensive planets that require CHP solutions on sites or grid connections.

Ceramic and glass bodies are manufactured widely in the UK and used by many foundation industries, from the production of ceramic electronic components used in all modern electronics, to glass and refractory kiln linings essential for glass and metal processing furnaces. All require sintering in their green state, at high temperature and over long timescales. With extended cycle times and high consumption of energy, the development of a sintering technology to significantly reduce the energy used, lower peak furnace temperature, and increase speed of sintering would provide a step change in resource efficiency for foundation industry users. This project will target benefits in resource and energy efficiency assessing the possibility of combining two novel and highly energy efficient sintering technologies to exploit the strengths of both systems, and provide sintering in seconds at temperatures as low as 100oC. Current state of the art sintering involves peak temperatures of 1200 oC -- 1800 oC +, applied for a number of hours. The project's objective is to develop a processing technology for use by the glass, ceramics (focused on electroceramics and refractories) sectors, each a foundation industry. The project builds on Lucideon' s expertise in the development of flash sintering technology, and the University of Sheffield's (UoS) development of cold sintering . Cold sintering is a pressure assisted densification technology that relies on the aqueous dissolution of ions from the constituent oxides followed by recrystallisation as the water evaporates above its the boiling point. Although many ceramic systems or ceramic composites cold sinter, the technique cannot yet be applied to all ceramics. Moreover parts are held under load for several minutes, which limits scaling the technique for manufacturing. Flash sintering has been successful in sintering a wide range of ceramic materials, but still requires relatively high furnace temperatures of 800 to 900oC. This project addresses these limitations by building a hybrid flash/cold system and providing densification within seconds at ultra-low temperatures compared to conventional sintering. This is a highly innovative world first that could usher in a new paradigm in materials processing. Technology route to market will be licencing via technology sales to manufacturers. The project will be industry led with a steering committee of project partners, represented by the foundation industries targeted .

The EnviroAsh project brings together partners from across the six Foundation Industries \[Glass (Glass Technology Services, Glassworks Services Ltd, Encirc, Glass Futures Ltd), Ceramics (Wienerberger), Steel (British Steel Ltd), Paper (Saica), Cement (Hanson, Breedon), Chemicals (Power Minerals Ltd. - through its Biolite division, which converts an ash-waste into a fertiliser product)\], the Energy sector (Drax) plus key academic partners (Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and the University of Sheffield (UoS) and supply-chain partners experienced in handling and processing wastes and raw materials (PML, LKAB Minerals). The project will identify opportunities to take waste ashes, slags, mineral by-products and filter dusts from across the FIs and convert them into new raw materials for a range of products produced within the glass, ceramic and cement Foundation Industry sectors. In exploring an end-to-end approach this project aims to identify routes to convert waste streams into new raw materials transforming disposal costs into opportunities for income generation by creating lower cost raw materials with potential to reduce environmental impacts of Foundation Industry manufacturing processes. The project will also explore how these new feedstocks might create opportunities to improve product performance in a cost-effective manner. The project will deliver practical lab and commercial-scale demonstrations of how these new waste-derived materials can be incorporated into existing products and processes, establishing a consortium, supply chain and new business models which can be applied to other waste streams within the FI and other energy intensive sectors.

This collaborative, industrial R&D project will utilise machine learning to enhance artificial intelligence, robotics and vision systems when applied to foundation industry production processes. This project builds on previous work inspecting defects in metals production through digitised inspection sensor technology to enhance industrial productivity and significantly reduce energy in both glass and ceramic manufacturing. This includes the integration into factory processes visual inspection with machine learning and AI-driven automated design for the non-destructive testing of fabricated parts. Current manufacturing methods are inflexible, often requiring the time-intensive pre-programming or manual intervention of production tasks responding to unexpected occurrences or production errors. This means that foundation industries are unable to respond to the demands of future environmental requirements, and can not make further improvements within the manufacturing process until the production methods are updated. This project aims to use vision sensors to feed information into machine learning and AI algorithms to monitor and improve the metals, glass and ceramic production process. To guarantee the repeatability and accuracy of measurement, automation through the flexibility offered by modern multi-axis robotic systems will be explored. The ultimate output of the system will result in foundation industry-wide benefits in glass, ceramics and metals production. This project will address specific needs in these foundation industries by offering an augmented, existing manufacturing process thorough digitised inspection & learning. It is anticipated that a reduction in energy costs and improved production yields associated with the manufacture of tempered glass & dense ceramic materials will be significantly and positively impacted, as is the case in the steel industry.

"This project, led by GTS and supported by British Glass (representing the 8 main UK flat and container glass manufacturers) and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), creates a new consortium with Ashwell Biomass, Templeborough Biomass Power Plant, Power Minerals and Glassworks Services. The project brings together three industrial sectors (Glass, Ceramics, Biomass Energy) for the first time to develop new raw materials for the manufacture of more economical, more efficient, lower-emission glasses and ceramics. This project builds upon the outputs from IUK Energy Catalyst Feasibility Study (IUK: 132334) 'EnviroGlass Melting', which assessed a range of wastes as potential new raw materials in glass manufacture to reduce melting temperatures, CO2 emissions and costs. The project proposed here builds upon these findings to address the challenges identified, developing new raw materials and demonstrating suitability for glass (TRL=7) and ceramics (TRL=3-4) industries to improve productivity and reduce: (i) Energy requirements (up to 10%) (ii) Raw materials costs (up to 10%) (iii) UK-landfill (up to 75kT/yr)"

Osteoarthritis (OA), especially of the hip and knee, is one of the leading causes of disability across the world. Every year there are over 3 million surgical replacements of joints -- with over 0.25 million in the UK. This number is growing all the time for two reasons: 1) arthritis is exacerbated by age and body weight and the world population is getting older and more obese, and 2) in countries such as China more of the population are being able to afford this surgery. This consortium are focussing on the next big enhancement in joint replacement through a new and improved manufacturing process for a coating to accelerate the integration of the implant into the host bone. The consortium is led by JRI an SME that is a leading UK manufacturer with over 30 years' experience in making and selling coated orthopaedic implants. They have already shown with GTS, one of the project partners, through a feasibility study funded by Innovate UK that it is possible to manufacture a new combination of implants that combine 3D printing with bio-active glass. In that study they showed that this combination had improved response from bone over existing coatings. They also confirmed that the new manufacturing process should be run at a cost that is commercially viable. In addition bioactive glasses are known to have natural anti-microbial properties, which will help fight infection. In this project two other SMEs join the existing partners (Vitritech and Metron) to optimise the manufacturing processes through novel surface engineering techniques. The SMEs will also form a robust supply chain to ensure confidence for future production. This coating process will then be validated through studies by the University of Cambridge, who will also confirm and evaluate the anti-infective properties of the bio-active glass. The outcome of this project will be the development of a manufacturing process that is ready to be scaled up for the global market as well as generating the supporting regulatory documents. This will lead to a first-in-human study, followed shortly by a global launch -- the partners are targeting: European, American and Chinese markets where JRI already has a significant presence and many years' experience of their regulatory processes.

Project UltraWELD will develop photonic based processes for highly dissimilar material joining in manufacturing of complex electro optics devices for defence/aerospace applications and OLED lighting. Ultrafast (i.e. pico- or femto-second pulsed) laser welding of glass to metals is proposed as an alternative to other bonding techniques that currently fail to provide a satisfactory solution on demanding requirements for device hermetic sealing and suffer from device degradation due to outgassing of volatile components in adhesives. We will develop new ultrafast laser processes for dissimilar material joining (microwelding) and also design and build a flexible custom laser prototype machine capable of applications development to demonstrate such laser microwelding in key selected real devices at TRL level 6. The project will directly benefit all five industry partners by enabling early adoption of this technology from end users, to enhance product competitiveness by increasing reliability and in-service lifetime and reduce cost of ownership.

The ‘Enabling CO2 sequestration using Proppants Optimised for Pure Propane Stimulation’ project, ECO- PrOPPS, will build upon existing patented proppant technology (developed under IUK project ‘Glass PrOPPS’) to develop functional glass proppants which can be ‘activated’ on-demand to seal up a shale gas well at the end of life, as such enabling the well to be used as a store for significant volumes of CO2 gas (potentially up to three times the CO2 generated by combustion of the methane extracted). The glass proppant will be designed to be compatible with ‘pure propane stimulation’ (PPS), offering many benefits over conventional water-based fracking, one of which is the reduced damage to the shale rock thus maximising the potential for CO2 absorption. If successful this technology could enable ‘carbon-negative’ energy plants.

The Customisable 3D-Glass-Laser-Sintered-Structures project, "3D GLaSS" project will bring together the complete supply chain (material supplier, Additive Manufacturing (AM) equipment manufacturer, software developers, end-users of AM technology and their customers) to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a new (patented) glass-based additive manufacturing technology, along with associated software and glass-based materials, contributing towards the goal of realising a fully integrated glass based additive manufacturing system, with user-friendly design software. The project will show how the technology can be adapted ?for use across a broad range of applications, including for manufacturing continuous flow reactors and for adding decoration to glass bottles.

Femtosecond lasers are seeing wide adoption across a growing number of applications due to their ability to deliver precise high peak intensity energy. For microscopy high-resolution images are achievable and in micromachining high fidelity material processing with reduced recast and microcracking is enabled. Ultrafast lasers are increasingly taking over roles from other laser types and enabling new levels of precision in emerging and high value industries. A key restriction in the adoption of this leading tool is its prohibitively high price for wide adoption and many yet unexplored applications. Recently Fibre lasers have witnessed high growth as they have supplied a lower cost offering than traditional crystal based systems. Fibre lasers however suffer high levels of dispersion and restricted output powers. The aim of the present project is to investigate novel glass based laser system that could present a lower cost offering than Fibre lasers and disrupt the market. The aim of this project is to deliver a prototype glass based ultrafast laser that is low cost and demonstrate it in microscopy, where MSL has strong links, and micromachining that represents a large market and impact. Additionally the project will result in the establishment of a UK based supply chain.

This project will adapt a new coating technology to enhance surface protection of glass to increase strength and enabling light-weighting of flat and container glass products. UK glass production is an energy intensive industry consuming ~9TWh/yr, 70% of this energy is used to melt the glass in the furnace. Reducing the weight of glass products will reduce the energy required and CO2 produced during manufacture. Basic engineering formula demonstrate a direct correlation between glass strength and wall thickness; therefore increasing glass strength will enable product thickness to be reduced leading to associated weight savings. Being a brittle material, surface defects with dimensions in the order of microns can lead to catastrophic glass failure. Glass strength will be maximised through aligning coating formulation to surface flaws, maximising crack filling & pinning potential, minimising driving force for crack propagation. In demonstrating that the coating has the potential to strengthen glass and reduce weight of glass products by 10-15%, the project will show how the technology to reduce energy consumption by >1TWh and CO2 emissions by 250kT.

After years of work funded by Innovate UK, a UK partnership of two SMEs, JRI Orthopaedics and GTS are looking to scale up a new functional coating for orthopaedic implants. This will combine two successful technologies: 1) bioactive glasses and 2) 3D printed implants with complex shapes. This project will enable JRI to expand the range of its joint replacements to include highly-complex implants that are tailored to an individual. This is often required if an existing implant has begun to fail and needs to removed, or if the anatomy is unusual, such as after an accident or any growth abnormalities from birth. This project will allow the partners to check that what works in the lab can be made in large enough quantitities for it to be sold around the world. Then JRI, who already sell its own implants around the world, will ensure it gets the necesssary approval to be able to launch across the globe. This partnership will be able to make and sell these implants completely - starting with raw materials all the way through to the final sales: hopefully another Made in Britain success story.

This project is a collaboration between Glass Technology Services Ltd and Sheffield Hallam University that will undertake a feasibility study to develop lower-energy routes to produce commercial soda-lime-silica glass. We propose to make changes in raw materials composition and balance, including the partial replacement of batch ingredients in a glass melting furnace to reduce melting temperatures and melting times, and consequently reduce energy consumption, costs and emissions by 5-10% across the UK glass manufacturing industry. An innovative and critical aspect of this research will be to apply chemistry techniques to waste products from other industries (e.g. rice husk, banana waste, sea shells) to develop raw materials that can be introduced into glass melting processes to either reduce the high temperature viscosity or provide lower energy input for fusion. If successful this project will lead on to a second stage programme of applied research targeted at developing scalable technology that can be introduced into the UK's 18 glass manufacturing sites.

This project will develop and demonstrate a low cost tuneable fibre-laser Phospho-Tellurite fibre laser (BTPT- laser) operating across the 1000-1500nm bandwidth which will give endoscopic surgeons to unambiguously detect the precancerous and cancerous tissue by producing images and chemical maps differentiating between cancerous and the healthy tissue, but also determine the shape and size of the cancer/precancerous region for resection. At present this capability is not available anywhere in the world.ublic Project Summary

Glass microspheres represent a class of additives that offer enhanced mechanical performance, process control and cost benefits for the: (1) Biomedical sector - orthopaedic implants/cements, dental pastes & maxillofacial implants; and (2) Industrial sector - oil extraction, waterless gas fracking, water purification, transportation and aerospace. In 2013 the global microscopic glass spheres market was valued at US$3.4 billion [microspheres.us] and projected to reach US$5.9 billion by 2019 with growth driven by emerging applications, superior structural properties and increased demand for efficiency. Current crushing or milling methods are energy and temperature intensive affording geometrical irregularities and changes in the crystal morphology and thereby structural properties. Deficiencies include (1) non-homogeneous grain structure; (2) decreased tensile strength; (3) increased wear; and (4) premature mechanical failure. GTS wishes to conduct a Research project to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of designing, engineering and testing a small machine capable of utilising the energy associated with molten glass to (ideally) form uniform sub-micron glass spheres or (as a compromise) glass fibres or flakes which could act as precursors to spherification. Initial core focus will be placed upon servicing the biomedical industry, specifically for orthopaedic implants. Global health organisations including the NHS will economically benefit from efficiencies related to faster, less traumatic surgeries, faster mobilisation of patients and reduced risk of implant failure thus avoiding costly revision surgery. Similar benefits are also feasible for dental and maxillofacial surgical procedures which require implant coatings, cements and pastes. Emphasis will also be placed on exploring whether acquired know-how could allow technology transfer to glass sphere production for industrial applications e.g. oil and gas.

This 3 year project will enable GTS to exploit the Apollo furnace technology plus glass science knowledge from the University of Sheffield, with direction provided by Sellafield Ltd and NNL, to develop the novel ‘Hazmelt’ thermal treatment process, capable of vitrifying a wide range of Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) streams. The Hazmelt process combines customised glass frits/oxide batch mixes with the ILW stream in a refractory lined melter which uses a novel electrode design (enabling a wide range of temperatures to be achieved) to melt, mix and vitrify the ILW to create a homogenised, highly durable end product with enhanced wasteform passivity and maximum volume reduction, offering a number of advantages over existing thermal treatment technologies for ILW. The project will demonstrate the Hazmelt technology through a series of furnace trials processing a range of simulated ILW compositions.

This project will develop a novel route to manufacture millilitre-scale continuous flow reactors out of glass, with complex channel structures capable facilitating controlled flow & mixing of fluids. This technology will provide a more effective, compact and lower-cost route to manufacturing chemicals e.g. for biopharmaceuticals and functional foods. The project will deliver a number of devices with customised 3D channel structures that are capable of transporting and mixing liquids in a controlled manner without leakage or failure of the device.

The 12 month ‘Glass-based Proppant Optimised for Pure Propane Stimulation’ (Glass-PrOPPS) project will create a new consortium (Glass Technology Services, GTS and Swansea University, SU), to address a major barrier to the implementation of water-less fracking technologies through the development of a range of innovative, cost-effective customised glass-based proppants that are compatible with liquefied propane gas (LPG). This new technology will maximise productivity of the well, whilst minimizing the use of chemical additives and removing the need for large volumes of water. If successful the outcome from this project will facilitate the global industry-wide take-up of water-free, chemical-free, Pure Propane Stimulation (PPS) whilst increasing well productivity through improved penetration of proppant into well fractures, increased proppant permeability (the gas can escape through the packed proppant more easily) and greater resistance of proppant to back-flow. The project will demonstrate the feasibility (TRL=4) of a range of novel glass-based proppants to address a major barrier to the implementation of PPS technologies.

GTS will develop a novel laser process, 3D Clear-Cut, to meet an industry need for low-cost, flexible manufacturing of glass components with complex, customised 3D shapes to high precision in short time-frames with minimal energy input and the option of controlling diffusing properties. 3D Clear Cut will enable several pieces to be ‘cut’ out of a single block of glass in a short time frame with high precision and minimal waste.

GTS will develop an advanced glass-based laser rod design, offering significant reductions in size, weight & power requirements compared to current sensor technology at <50% the cost. The thermal conductivity of laser glass is ~7% of a YAG crystal rod, as such conventional glass laser rods experience excessive heating during continuous use, leading to thermal lensing effects & damage to coatings, restricting glass to lower power outputs for given repetition rates/laser designs. The ‘Advanced Composite Core-clad Eye-Safe Laser System’, ACCES-LS improves the thermal conductivity of the laser rod, offering a step change in performance, with potential to revolutionise the eye-safe imaging market.

This project addresses process issues experienced when cutting flat glass substrates through the development of a novel glass-cutting technique which utilises laser technology. The process promises to deliver a cleaner, safer more cost-effective process with a payback of less than two years. If successful the technology offers a step-change in glass processing capabilities and has the potential to be applied across several other sectors (e.g. tableware, glass fibres, photonics, optical glass, solar panels etc.).

This project brings together a consortium of complementary academic and commercial organisations, including: specialists in ultra-fast lasers, materials and orthopaedic implants. The aim is to develop new technology to allow surgeons to customise joint replacements at the time of surgery on the rare occasions when there is significant bone loss either from a failed implant that needs to be revised or from bone cancer. The technology will involve hand held lasers and new orthopaedic biomaterials tuned to be laser melted without raising the temperature of the surrounding bone. The technology developed during this project has the potential to transform treatment of these complex cases and has application in other fields requiring rapid maufacturing without raising temperatures.

This project brings together partners with expertise in additive manufacturing, glass technology and orthopaedic implants. The aim is to develop the next generation of coatings for orthopaedic implants such as hip replacements. The new combination glass and metal coatings will have better mechanical stability and faster integration with bone thus improving long-term clinical performance and reducing the revision rate. This will deliver a significantly better clinical outcome for patients and savings for the health service. The technology developed during this project has the potential to transform the manufacture of orthopaedic implants and has applications in other fields requiring specialist combinations of glass and metal.

The consortium will develop and demonstrate an innovative, compact, low cost and eye-safe active laser-illuminated imaging sensor, capable of long-range operation. The active imaging application presents a significant technological challenge; hence the consortium brings together key technical expertise in photonics, material science, mass manufacturing and sensor systems integration, together with well established routes to market to ensure project outputs are exploited to the fullest extent.

This project will create a working prototype of a phosphate fibre production facility. Phosphate fibres can dissolve in water to produce materials that are present in the bones and are useful in treating damaged and broken bones. Creation of this production facility will provide the phosphate fibres in a form that can be used to make fabrics and this will be demonstrated by one of the project partners. Fabrics are much more convenient to handle than fibres alone and can be transformed into other products, such as reinforced plastics. These plastics can also dissolve in water and be applied in medicine, but also in other industries where the ability to dissolve in water would be of benefit. For example, recycling is a key issue for the future.

Awaiting Public Summary