Public Funding for Ionix Advanced Technologies Ltd

In this project, Ionix Advanced Technologies and Doosan Babcock will test the feasibility of manufacturing a new type of sensor for monitoring the integrity of high temperature plant found in power stations and the oil & gas industry. The new sensor design requires a unique piezoelectric ceramic material to be bonded directly to the steel of the vessel or pipe to be monitored. As current methods for bonding the ceramic to steel are unsatisfactory, the project will investigate 3 new manufacturing methods. The new sensors enabled by this process will allow continuous monitoring and detection of corrosion and cracks in operational plant without the need to shutdown the plant on which they are deployed. This will simultaneously improve safety and reliability whilst reducing costs to the operator and consumers.

A move away from fossil fuels will ultimately require hydrogen. There are a number of sectors that require it, including energy intensive manufacturing (steel, glass), and haulage. The future hydrogen economy will require an accurate knowledge of flow to allow for metering, charging, distribution, storage, and capacity planning, and to ensure that the network is operating efficiently and safely. Early hydrogen distribution will: (a) use existing natural gas networks and (b) be at a percentage of the total content, for example 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas, with increasing hydrogen content over time. Most high accuracy flow meters use ultrasound. The speed of sound in hydrogen is extremely high, which makes the measurement challenging, and requires innovative solutions. SMARTech and Ionix will develop a highly flexible, innovative flow meter which is able to work with a range of hydrogen percentages (from 0-100%), pressures (which will be higher for hydrogen than natural gas), pipe bore sizes, and temperatures, for suitability over the entire distribution and storage network. The team will develop the sensors, the electronics, and the software, all of which must be optimised to develop a viable solution and provide precise minute by minute data. Finally, the team will demonstrate the capability. Initial trials will be performed on test facilities constructed specifically for this project, which will allow performance to be optimised. Towards the end of the project, if possible, the demonstrators will be proven on Future Grid, a unique UK prototype facility which allows for validation of new equipment required for hydrogen infrastructure.

99% of piezoelectric materials contain lead which is hazardous. This project will develop environmentally benign lead-free materials, processed without harmful chemicals. The new materials will be showcased in three types of demonstrator.

99% of piezoelectric materials contain lead which is hazardous. This project will develop environmentally benign lead-free materials, processed without harmful chemicals. The new materials will be showcased in three types of demonstrator.

Ionix manufacture ceramic materials. Ceramic materials have holes, and in our material, smalls holes cannot be detected with off-the-shelf techniques. We have determined that infra-red provides a non-destructive technique which allows us for the first time to detect and size these flaws. In the proposal we will develop a technique which will allow us to validate parts which we supply to clients in a range of sectors.

With Covid-19 causing significant limitations on asset integrity inspections due to travel restrictions, social distancing and redundancies of key, trained inspection staff, it has left many critical facilities, such as power generation (including nuclear and renewables) infrastructure at increased risk of failure and unscheduled outage. Covid has also caused a significant 22% drop in electricity demand from reduced commercial and industrial operations, forcing many stochastic renewables sources such as wind to be stopped, as well as new builds being cancelled or delayed, causing a 6% increase in efficient closed-cycle-gas-turbine (CCGT) plants to offer flexibility and grid resilience due to the changeable supply and demand requirements. This increases reliance on ageing power generation assets which require more frequent inspection to prevent forced outages. Statutory asset integrity inspection and fitness for service is required to justify safe and efficient operation between shutdowns and service intervals under the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations (PSSR) 2000, Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and to meet climate legislation such as the Large Combustion Plant Directive. Cracks, flaws and defects in metals and welds contribute to 77% of unscheduled outages, which have significant impacts on availability to the grid as well as huge costs running in to £M's per day of lost productivity and direct costs which are passed on to the consumer. The loss in thermal efficiency due to leaks and steam loss contributes to an equivalent increase of 1-2 kTonnes of carbon dioxide per hour in UK emissions. Inspection is typically managed on these types of infrastructure using non-destructive methods such as ultrasonic testing (UT) which offers high accuracy, penetrating power and sensitivity with non-hazardous, economical hardware to directly detect, size and characterise flaws and defects within critical components such as pipes, reactor vessels and heat exchangers. The implementation of NDT inspections & subsequent maintenance is routinely undertaken around planned shutdowns when assets are cool and/or isolated. This often involves an order of magnitude increase in personnel presence on site to cover as much infrastructure as possible to limit the costly outage duration. Ionix will develop a pre-production prototype of a new ultrasonic sensor in this project, capable of the continuous monitoring of defects and flaws in alloy steel components, up to 600 C, removing the need for shutdowns to take measurements and allowing continued plant operation. These new high-temperature defect sensors will be connected to commercial WirelessHART ultrasonic nodes to be immediately accessible to power generation asset integrity end-users remotely. The project will result in a prototype to demonstrate the key deliverables, engage with service providers and end-user operators to prove the technology and enable Ionix to proceed to manufacture and productionisation. If successful, an eventual product will result in greater asset intelligence on the 32 CCGT (42% of UK electricity generation) and 14 Nuclear power plants in the UK, to defer maintenance and justify cleaner more efficient operation of existing plant.

no public description

This project aims to develop new sensors for inspection and monitoring of operational parameters and defects in aeroengines. In the short term, the project will enable a new range of instruments capable of inspecting the engines on the ground, either whilst powered or shortly after shutdown. In the longer term, the sensors will be fully integrated into the engines to provide continuous data during flight. The sensors will effectively be either highly sensitive microphones to monitor acoustic emission from various components in the engine, or ultrasound imaging sensors. Although such acoustic and ultrasound technology is relatively common, there are no devices that are able to operate aeroengine operating temperatures. In order to develop equipment that will work under such harsh conditions, the consortium will employ a relatively new high temperature piezoelectric material that is proprietary to the lead organization, Ionix Advanced Technologies Ltd. This material can operate at temperatures up to 580C. The project will develop new manufacturing techniques to deposit thick films of the piezoelectric material on high temperature substrates and configure them electrical to produce instruments that can inspect hot engines during post-flight maintenance. In the longer term, up to 5 years beyond the end of the project, the sensors will be integrated onto test engines and finally onto flight engines to monitor performance in flight. The implementation of the new sensors will increase the reliability of engines, reduce their fuel consumption and reduce their noise footprint. The resulting increased performance of engines will result in increased sales for engine manufacturers (primarily Rolls-Royce), with a positive financial impact for the UK.

The need to test difficult to access, thick section steel components for weld defects and in-service corrosion that may lead to pressure vessel/component failure in the nuclear power generation industry requires the application of high sensitivity ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques. However the transducers that generate the beams of ultrasound do not operate well in radioactive environments and their response quickly deteriorates such that they are rendered of little use for defect detection/monitoring. This project will research the construction and testing of novel, radiation resilient, ultrasonic transducers manufactured from exotic materials and a variety of probe assembly techniques. The goal is to provide the nuclear industry with a reliable UT solution for prolonged in-service inspection and permanent monitoring. Two scenarios are envisaged: (a) elevated temperature, high radiation inspection close to the nuclear reactor (b) low radiation - inspection of nuclear waste containers stored at bespoke sites over very long periods. Our objective is to develop a series of prototype ultrasonic probes designed to suit the specific in-service inspection needs.

ENCASE develops a number of key enabling technologies required for the control system in the novel UltraFan® engine demonstrator. These include electronic core concentrator control systems architecture, sealing & sensor technology, a “super” permanent magnet alternator and architectural safety critical software. The consortium is led by Rolls-Royce with large industrial partners Curtiss Wright, TT Electronics, SMEs Porvair Filtration Group Limited, Ionix Advanced Technologies Limited, Active Sensors Limited and academics at the University of Newcastle and the University of York. A key benefit of ENCASE will be in delivering scalable solutions for both business jet and civil engines.

In this project, Ionix Advanced Technologies and Doosan Babcock will test the feasibility of manufacturing a new type of sensor for monitoring the integrity of high temperature plant used in power stations and the oil & gas industry. The new sensor design requires a piezoelectric ceramic material to be bonded directly to the steel of the vessel or pipe to be monitored. As current methods for bonding the ceramic to steel are unsatisfactory, the project will investigate 3 new manufacturing methods. The new sensors enabled by theis process will allow continuous monitoring and detection of corrosion and cracks in operational plant without the need to shutdown the plant on which they are deployed. This will simultaneously improve safety and reliability whilst reducing costs to the operator and consumers.

Piezoelectric materials are used to produce and sense ultrasound in instrumentation used to monitor structural integrity, monitor flows and measure distance variations in a rnage of industrial environments. Ionix Advanced Technologies specializes in piezoelectric materials and ultrasound devices for the high temperature applications in this field. The project will develop a new form of piezoelectric material, a composite comprising a piezoelectric ceramic and a porous glass which will exhibit advantageous properties for ultrasound use at high temperatures. The resulting instruments will have high sensitivity, improved spatial resolution and much improved signal to noise ratio, enabling new applications for these systems in safety critical applications in power generation, the oil & gas industry, plus the automotive and aerospace sectors.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

This project will test whether a new piezoelectric material, for use in structural health monitoring systems, is suitable for use in nuclear power generation plants. The material's resistance to to radiation damage will be assessed by testing the functional properties of the material after exposure to various doses of radiation. If the radiation hardness is sufficient, the new material could then be successfully used as the basis of sensors that can be permanently installed in in nuclear power plants to continuously monitor the integrity of key components, such as vessels and pipes containing nuclear materials. The sensors would greatly enhance safety and reduce the operation and maintenance costs of the plant, leading ultimately to cheaper electricity.

The aim of the project is to design, build, test and demonstrate a prototype ultrasound transducer that can be used in structural health monitoring, flow measurement and rangefinding applications in the temperature range 200 to 450°C. Such devices are required by the nuclear, oil & gas, industrial controls and aerospace industries. As currently available piezoelectric elements cannot operate beyond 250°C, the prototype will be based on a recently developed high temperature piezoelectric ceramic proprietary to the company. The project will identify acoustic matching and damping layers, compatible with the piezoelectric ceramic and the proposed applications, that can withstand the temperature range of operation and will identify techniques for making robust electrical connections to the active element. The prototype will be tested in the context of structural health monitoring and range-finding applications within the temperature range of interest.