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MS&T’10 plenary presentations: ‘Energy, Infrastructure, Policy and Security’
Audio versions (MP3) of the three plenary speakers at last month’s MS&T’10 conference are now available. We’ve broken them up into the individual presentations by Terry Michalske, Robert T. McGrath and Diran Apelian, plus a separate audio of the Q&A session that followed. The trio are introduced by ACerS President Marina Pascucci.
Terry Michalske: “Energy, Climate and Global Security in the 21st Century”
Michalske is the director of Savannah River National Lab. Building on 50-plus years of technological achievement and a framework of vital core competencies, SRNL applies state-of-the-art science to provide practical, high-value, cost-effective solutions to complex technical problems. The laboratory earns its world-class reputation because of its talented people and their unwavering commitment to safety, security and quality. SRNL applies this commitment to solving the complex problems of the times, such as the detection of weapons of mass destruction, the cleanup of contaminated groundwater and soils, the development of hydrogen as an energy source, the need for a viable national defense, and the safe management of hazardous materials.
Robert T. McGrath: “Alternative Energy Sources for Reducing Dependence on Fossil Fuels”
McGrath has 27 years experience in government lab, industry and academic settings, including previously serving as Deputy Laboratory Director for all Science & Technology programs at the National Renewable Energy Lab, and managing Ohio State University’s $720 million annual research program. He has contributed to Brookings Institute Briefings on Energy Policy and serves as consultant on Energy, STEM Education and R&D for Battelle and other clients.
Apelian is Howmet Professor of Engineering and Director of the Metal Processing Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He joined WPI in 1990 as the institute’s provost. He is credited with pioneering work in various areas of solidification processing, including molten metal processing, aluminum foundry engineering, plasma deposition and spray casting/forming. Apelian is the recipient of many distinguished honors and awards; he has over 500 publications to his credit, and serves on several technical and corporate boards.
The panelist field questions from various members of the plenary audience.
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Video of the week: Jim Marra on using ceramic and glass materials to treat and stabilize nuclear and other hazardous wastes
Jim Marra, an advisory engineer in the Materials Science and Technology Directorate of the Savannah River National Lab, is an expert on using ceramic and glass materials to convert extremely dangerous Cold War era liquid nuclear wastes to a solid form that can last for thousands of years. Untreated wastes typically have been stored in million-gallon tanks that can corrode and leak. While not eliminating the overriding dangers of highly radioactive materials, glassification can literally lock up the wastes in solid forms that prevent their escape for long, long times – until the solid wastes can be converted to safer forms or used for alternative purposes. (The transmutation of long half-life radioactive elements of short half-life elements is also underway at SRNL. John Marra, Jim’s brother, discusses some of these cutting edge techniques in this lecture.)
Marra received a B.S. degree in ceramic science and a B.A. degree in mathematics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an M.S. in materials engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in ceramic and materials Engineering from Clemson University. An ACerS Fellow, Marra is a member and past chair of the Nuclear and Environmental Technology Division and is a member of the National Institute of Ceramic Engineers.
9 minutes.
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Video of the week: A new paradigm for nuclear waste management
John Marra spoke at the Materials Challenges in Energy conference in February 2010 on new and emerging approaches to the thorny issue of managing nuclear wastes, and the fundamental changes that need to be made. Concerns about nuclear wastes have plagued nuclear power operators for decades and the Obama administration’s call for building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and commitments for over $8 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of two new nuclear reactors in the United States gives these concerns new meaning.
Although Marra takes some time to explain the political and technical context of a “nuclear renaissance,” his main points have to do with a roadmap for applying new techniques for converting spent fuel into safer and reusable assets, and moving to a fuel-recycle model rather than the existing “once-through” model. He also discusses the coming Gen III and IV reactors, and opportunities for the most significant R&D gains.
Marra is an associate laboratory director at the Savannah River National Lab where he works on Strategic Initiative Development. He has worked for over two decades in the management and treatment of high-level radioactive waste, development and application of advanced materials and advanced chemical process applications. He has coauthored numerous publications on the application of ceramic materials in the nuclear industry. Marra is also a past-president of ACerS, an Fellow of the Society and a past chair and past trustee/director of the organization’s Nuclear & Environmental Technology Division.
37 minutes.
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Mo-Sci licenses SRNL’s porous, drug delivering microballoons
SRNL microsphere filled with palladium. The top of the microsphere has been removed to display contents. Credit: SRNL/Bulletin
The DOE has just announced that a licensing agreement has been reached between Savannah River National Lab and specialty glass provider Mo-Sci Corp. The Missouri-based Mo-Sci will use SRNL’s unique porous-walled hollow glass microspheres as a transport mechanism for targeted drug delivery, hydrogen storage and other uses.
I take a lot of pride in this particular piece of news. When I joined the ACerS staff in early 2008, one of the first projects I developed for the Society’s magazine, the Bulletin, was a story about these PW-HG microspheres and their potential for medical and energy uses, and I have stayed in touch with one of the principle SRNL researchers behind the spheres, George Wicks, an ACerS Fellow. [Full disclosure - Wicks will become the president of ACerS in 2011].
When I first wrote about the microballoon-like spheres, I asked the hyperbolic question, “What looks like a fertilized egg, flows like water, can be stuffed with catalysts and exotic nanostructures and may have the potential to make the current retail gasoline infrastructure compatible with hydrogen-based vehicles of the future – not to mention contribute to other arenas such as nuclear proliferation control and global warming?”
Schematic diagram of PW-HG microspheres and wall porosity. Credit: SRNL/Bulletin
As the diagram above indicates, the microspheres typically have a 50 micron diameter, but can be range from 2 microns to 100 microns. The shells are about 10,000 angstroms. The Bulletin story has a lot of good information about how they are made and the wide range of potential uses.
Microspheres, per se, aren’t new, but there are three things particularly important about the PW-HG microspheres. The first is that they have a network of interconnected pores engineered into the thin shells. Moreover, the SRNL researchers figured out how to customize the properties and dimensions of these pores. Thus, solid, liquid and gaseous materials can pass into and be confined within the microspheres. Several mechanisms are available to attain a controlled release of the microsphere’s contents.
The second thing is that these microspheres can be coated and/or lined with nanomaterials and structures, to, for example, improve absorbency. Proteins or fluorescent indicators can be attached to guide and monitor the spheres for drug delivery purposes or to have them act, for example, as a superior MRI contrast agent.
Finally, at a macro level, large volumes of the PW-HG spheres can be made to flow like a fluid They even look like water when poured from container to container. And, they are recyclable.
SRNL originally developed the unique microspheres as a solid-state storage method for hydrogen; they have been successfully demonstrated to store and release the gas. I am not sure if the project is still active, but at one point Toyota was involved in testing the system.
Mo-Sci’s involvement is a good sign. The company was founded in 1985 by Missouri University of Science & Technology professor Del Day, and found much success in using a different type of glass microspheres to deliver tiny amounts of strong radiation in cancer treatment. Mo-Sci’s sphere have been particularly successful in the treatment of cancerous liver tumors where the spheres can be targeted fairly precisely to deliver radiation - and have the secondary benefit of blocking the blood supply to tumors.
Mo-Sci has worked with medical institutions, such as the Cleveland Clinic, and should know the ins and outs of getting PW-HG microsphere applications to market. For more information about Mo-Sci, see my video interview with Del Day.
An article (”Porous-wall hollow glass microspheres as novel potential nanocarriers for biomedical applications”) jointly written by Wick, other SRNL researchers plus investigators at the Medical College of Georgia will soon be published in the print version of Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine and is now available online. The article provides more detail about the uses of the PHWG microspheres for the delivery of anti-cancer drugs.
UPDATE: The Rolla Daily News has a great story up about this, including an interview with Ted Day and others on the staff of Mo-Sci.
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MS&T’09, ACerS Annual Meeting videos schedule
I had a great time last week at the Materials Science & Technology 2009 conference and ACerS Annual Meeting events held in Pittsburgh. Many thanks to Ann for taking over responsibilities for Ceramic Tech Today while I was gone.
I came back with lots of great footage of various lectures and interviews with some of the luminaries in ceramics and materials science. I also have some video from the MS&T09 Opening session and keynote speeches, plus a tape of the great panel discussion that followed featuring battery power expert Yet-Ming Chiang (MIT professor and co-founder of A123 Systems), solar energy expert Gregory Hildeman (Solar Power Industries) and nuclear power expert John Marra (Savannah River National Lab).
Not everything went totally smoothly with all the recordings. There were some behind-the-scenes problems initially with recording the MS&T’09 keynote speakers Jeff Wadsworth (head of Battelle Institute) and Steve Koonin (DOE), but we still were able to capture most of their talks. I also had a fleeting problems with (I think) occasional cell phone interference with our wireless mikes. Finally, I am still waiting on getting some of the PowerPoint slides from many of the speakers. So, there is quite a bit of editing ahead.
But, here is how I think the editing-posting schedule will take place over the next few months (subject to change):
• Today - MS&T’09 keynote panel (see above)
• Nov. 11 – MS&T’09 keynote speaker Steve Koonin
• Nov. 18 - ACerS Frontiers of Science/Rustum Roy keynote speaker Charles M. Vest (The National Academy of Engineering): “Engineering Education and the Challenges of the 21st Century”
• Nov. 25 – MS&T’09 keynote speaker Jeff Wadsworth
• Dec. 1 – ACerS Corporate Environmental and Technical Achievement lecturers Yet-Ming Chiang (MIT, A123 Systems) and Rudy Olson (Selee Corp.)
• Dec. 8 – ACerS Arthur L. Friedberg Memorial lecturer Gary Fischman (The National Academies): “Ceramics in the 21st Century Materials World”
• Dec. 15 - ACerS Edward Orton Jr. Memorial lecturer Ludwig Gauckler (ETH Zurich): “Innovations Through Ceramic Processing by Tailoring Solid-Liquid and Solid–Gas Interfaces”
• Dec. 22 – ACerS Robert B. Sosman Memorial lecturer Gregory Rohrer
• Dec. 29 - ACerS Alfred R. Cooper Memorial lecturer and award winner Michael J. Haynes (Iowa State Univ.): “Mixed Glass-Former Effects Seen in the Physical Properties the the yNa2S + (1-y)[xB2S3 + (1-x)P2S5] System”
• Jan. 5 – ACerS Alfred R. Cooper session lecturer John Mauro (Corning Inc.): “A Physical Approach to Industrial Glass Research”
• Jan. 12 – ACerS Alfred R. Cooper session lecturer Delbert Day (Missouri Univ. S&T): Glass Microspheres in Medicine – An Overview”
• Jan. 19 – ACerS Alfred R. Cooper session lecturer Steve Martin (Iowa State Univ.): “Mixed Glass-Former Effects on the Properties and Structure of Glass”
• Jan. 26 – Richard M. Fulrath Award lecturer Naoki Ohashi (National Institute for Materials Science, Japan)
• Feb. 2 – Richard M. Fulrath Award lecturer Ryosuke Ueyama (Daiken Chemical Co., Japan)
• Feb. 9 – Richard M. Fulrath Award lecturer Venkatraman Gopalan (Penn State Univ.)
• Feb. 16 - Richard M. Fulrath Award lecturer Andrew L. Gyekenyesi (NASA, Ohio Aerospace Institute)
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