Cars, LCD televisions, optical fiber – China takes the cake as the largest consumer, and the demand for these products continues to grow.

Corning is taking this proverbial bull by the horns as it continues to invest in China. The company just announced that it will be building an LCD glassmelting facility in China, and it will also expand its light-duty substrate manufacturing plant.

“Our total China sales exceeded $800 million last year. We are forecasting sales of at least $1.2 billion this year, and we could reach $2 billion in revenue by 2014,” Eric Musser, chief executive officer of Corning Greater China region, says.

According to Corning, more than 20 percent of the entire world demand of LCD televisions comes from China. The country’s residents became the largest consumer for cars in 2009, and China has become Corning’s largest market for optical fiber.

Corning expects China to continue making significant growth in all sectors, and plans to expand its thin-film photovoltaic glass for solar-energy applications as China’s energy sector expands.

“Corning has invested in China for more than 25 years. We have established leadership positions in each of our major businesses. With increased investments and technology innovation across each business, we should be able to continue growing in China and meeting the needs of the world’s largest consumer market,” Musser says.

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To make sure their car parts are disposed off in the most eco-friendly manner possible, Tesla has launched a new recycling strategy for its batteries, which are designed to last 7 to 10 years, or about 100,000 miles under normal use.

According to a company press release, Tesla Motors has teamed up with Belgium’s Umicore to establish a Li-ion battery recycling program in Europe. Umicore will recycle Tesla’s dead battery pack to produce an alloy that will be further refined into cobalt, nickel and other metals. Umicore plans to transform the cobalt into high-grade lithium cobalt oxide product, which can be resold to battery manufacturers (the company already supplies battery makers with LCO).

The company also acknowledges that some by-products will remain, but says it intends to turn this into a slag containing calcium oxides and lithium that can go into special grade concretes.

Tesla says the recycling program will save about 70 percent of CO₂ emissions at the recovery stage.

“While we work to help lessen global dependence on petroleum-based transportation and drive down the cost of electric vehicles, we are also taking the lead in developing a closed loop battery recycling system,” Tesla’s director of energy storage systems Kurt Kelty wrote on a company blog.

Kelty writes:

“The technology to enable this is available today – and it’s profitable!  We already reuse cobalt in the batteries. The overall closed loop recycling system becomes possible, and much more efficient, once the quantities rise to a level to justify the investment for recycling of the other components – especially the plastic.

. . .

“The only other emissions from the recycling process are CO₂, water vapor and dust. The dust makes up about 1 percent of the total output, and goes to protected landfill. In an effort to reuse every possible part of the process, the Umicore facility even sells the electricity created from an on-site combined natural gas generation plant to the copper mine next door, which uses the heat in its smelters.”

These seems to imply that Umicore is doing much better than Tesla’s North American recycler, Kinsbursky Brothers (Toxco Inc.), which Kelty says recycles about 60 percent of the battery pack.

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Ceradyne announced the opening of a new factory in Tianjin, China. Ceradyne Tianjin Advanced Materials will produce high-purity ceramic crucibles for the forming of large polysilicon ingots for use in the manufacturing of photovoltaic silicon solar cells.

According to a company press release, this is the company’s second high-purity ceramic crucible manufacturing facility in China.

Bruce Lockhart, Ceradyne’s vice president responsible for the company’s solar energy efforts, said, “This is a very exciting event for Ceradyne and particularly for Ceradyne Thermo Materials. It was only three and a half years ago that we opened the first crucible factory in Tianjin for the development and manufacture of high-technology ceramic crucibles to meet our Chinese customers’ requirements.”

Tianjin has a good transportation and educational infrastructure. Consequently, there are a number of high-tech and industrial development projects going on in the city’s “Binhai New Area,” which includes the Tianjin Airport Economic Area where Ceradyne has built a plant on a 13.7-acre plot. (It has been reported recently that, for the first time, Binhua’s GDP exceeds that of the more familiar Pudong area of Shanghai.)

Ceradyne’s scope extends well beyond solar components. In an interview filmed in 2009, Ceradyne’s founder and CEO Joel Moskowitz discussed the company’s strategy to expand into non-armor areas such as specialty crucibles for preparing solar-grade polysilicon.

“Next year they may call us a solar company and in five years maybe they will call us an aluminum company” he says.

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Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology believe that increasing the amount of fly ash in concrete up to 70 percent can result in excellent concrete in terms of both strength and durability. And it could prevent millions of tons of the waste product from ending up in landfills.

“Traditional specifications limit the amount of fly ash to 35 or 40 percent cement replacement,” says Jeffery Volz, assistant professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Missouri S&T in a university press release. “Recent studies have shown that higher cement replacement percentages - even up to 70 percent - can result in excellent concrete in terms of both strength and durability.”

Fly ash is commonly used as a concrete additive, but increasing the amount used will cut CO2 emissions, but it also brings its own set of challenges.

“Construction workers might refuse to work with it,” Volz says. “And there’s also the issue of at what point is it not a hazardous material when used for beneficial reuse. Is it once it is added to the ready mix truck, which means it is a hazardous waste in the silo at the ready mix plant? Or is it once the concrete hardens, which means it’s a hazardous waste up to that point?”

The EPA supports adding fly ash to concrete, however the agency is considering designating fly ash as a hazardous waste. And although it has been proven that adding fly ash to concrete renders is chemically altered and unable to leach toxic material, a hazardous waste label would make it more difficult to garner wide acceptance.

Volz is working with the Missouri Department of Transportation to develop guidelines for the proper application of high-volume fly ash concrete in infrastructure components.

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Argonne National Lab has licensed its cathode technology to Envia Systems. (Credit: Argonne.)

Earlier this month we reported that Argonne National Lab had reached a licensing agreement with GM Ventures and LG Chem to allow the two businesses to use a special cathode technology for lithium batteries, specifically those used in GM’s Volt.

Argonne has just announced that it is also licensing its cathode technology to Envia Systems, based in Newark, Calif. That brings the total number of businesses to five, including BASF and Toda Kogyo.

Envia Systems was also recently awarded $3.65 million from the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, a research collaboration group composed of Chrysler, Ford and GM, to develop a high-energy cathode material for vehicle applications and pouch cells.

According to a GM press release, Envia’s advanced cathode technology uses inexpensive materials that store more energy per unit of mass than current cathode materials. Since the cathode is a key driver for the overall battery cost, the more energy the cathode delivers, the lower the battery cost because fewer cells are needed.

Envia says its HCMR cathode material enables batteries that are distinct in five primary ways: using low cost safe materials, delivering unmatched energy density, providing excellent cycle life and offering an inherent ability to customize battery size and output in order to meet the demands of a variety of applications, particularly EVs and PHEVs.

Below is a promotional video by Argonne highlighting the joint venture.

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