Exploit the Constraint to Reach 'The Goal'

The renewable supply chain constrains sustainability initiatives. New plants, production techniques, designs, and testing are elevating the constraints across wind, solar, and battery production.

David Rogers

Jun 16, 2024

Shop Talk

Capturing this week's zeitgeist

Lessons from “The Goal” for optimizing warehouse operations and training thousands how to build an airplane.

Kaizen Blitz

🏆 Golden Part
- 🇺🇸 Magrathea’s new electrolytic magnesium smelter, the first designed, built, and operated on American soil in the 21st century, has sold its initial metal produced.
🏭💰 Behemoth Factories
- 🇳🇴 Yara International is officially opening its renewable hydrogen plant at Herøya, Norway.
- 🇺🇸 Evonik starts up North America’s first ultra-pure colloidal silica plant in Weston, Michigan, USA.
- 🇸🇬 Wafer manufacturer Siltronic opens $2.9b facility in Singapore.
- 🇬🇧 The world’s first purpose-built wind turbine blade testing facility – capable of running simulations at half the speed of sound – has been opened by AkzoNobel at its Felling plant in the UK.
- 🇳🇱 BioBTX secures over €80 million to launch world’s first renewable aromatics plant in the Netherlands.
- 🇬🇧 Green hydrogen developer Meld Energy has received approval to construct a £250 million, 100-megawatt green hydrogen production facility in Hull, UK.
🏛️📜 Industrial Policy
- 🇲🇳 Mongolia seeks to expand its exploration for new deposits of critical minerals including nickel, lithium and rare earths.
- 🇳🇬 The government of the United Kingdom (UK) has helped to attract $85 million investment into Nigeria’s manufacturing sector through its Manufacturing Africa programme since 2020.
- 🇬🇧 Ulster University has joined with Queen’s University Belfast to begin construction in the delivery of a state-of-the-art Factory of the Future, part of the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC).
- 🇺🇸 Solugen Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary Bioforge Marshall receives a $213.6 million DOE loan guarantee to finance the construction of a production facility in Marshall, Minnesota, for bio-based organic acids.

Assembly Line

This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.

Micro Dispensing: From Semiconductors To Sushi

🏢 Organizations: IHI Aerospace, Yamagata University, Nordson

The phrase “micro fluid dispensing” is generally associated with applications like medical device assembly or battery manufacturing. It certainly doesn’t conjure up visions of sushi – at least not yet. If engineers at IHI Aerospace and Yamagata University have their way, though, 3D printed sushi will be served to space tourists as they circle in low Earth orbit.

To make sushi practical in orbit, where every gram of mass comes at a steep price, IHI had to look beyond specialty chefs, sharp knives, and coolers of fish and seafood. The solution? Printing the sushi with a lightweight countertop micro dispensing system. By integrating a Nordson EFD PICO Pµlse piezo valve technology with a compact robot, the group created a precision micro fluid dispensing system capable of printing sushi that rivals products from the local sushi bar.

Read more at Semiconductor Engineering

NREL Invites Robots To Help Make Wind Turbine Blades

🏢 Organizations: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have successfully leveraged robotic assistance in the manufacture of wind turbine blades, allowing for the elimination of difficult working conditions for humans and the potential to improve the consistency of the product.

A man stands next to a piece of machinery.

Although robots have been used by the wind energy industry to paint and polish blades, automation has not been widely adopted. Research at the laboratory demonstrates the ability of a robot to trim, grind, and sand blades. Those necessary steps occur after the two sides of the blade are made using a mold and then bonded together.

🌬️ Chicago’s Newest Towers Are Invisible to Wind

A propagation path-based interpretable neural network model for fault detection and diagnosis in chemical process systems

✍️ Authors: Benjamin Nguyen, Moncef Chioua
🔖 Topics: Convolutional Neural Network
🏭 Vertical: Chemical

Process monitoring through automated fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) plays a crucial role in maintaining a productive and reliable chemical process system. Developments in AI and machine learning have boosted FDD model performances especially with deep learning methods. However, these neural network models are considered black-boxes where the reasoning behind a diagnosis is unclear, preventing industrial adoption. Therefore, in this study, an interpretable neural network model is proposed for FDD in chemical processes. This framework detects and diagnoses faults based on the propagation paths of different faults which are embedded into the architecture through graph convolutional networks. A mechanism for interpreting the node activations which represent process variables is developed for decision verification. The proposed method is evaluated on the benchmark Tennessee Eastman Process where it achieves a 93.56% accuracy on selected faults.

Read more at Control Engineering Practice

AI at Scale. How? When? Why?

Next-generation sustainable electronics are doped with air

✍️ Author: Anders Törneholm
🏭 Vertical: Semiconductor
🏢 Organizations: Linköping University

Semiconductors are the foundation of all modern electronics. Now, researchers at Linköping University have developed a new method where organic semiconductors can become more conductive with the help of air as a dopant. The study, published in the journal Nature, is a significant step towards future cheap and sustainable organic semiconductors.

Semiconductors based on conductive plastics instead of silicon have many potential applications. Among other things, organic semiconductors can be used in digital displays, solar cells, LEDs, sensors, implants, and for energy storage. To enhance conductivity and modify semiconductor properties, so-called dopants are typically introduced.

New Product Introduction

Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services

☀️ Applied's Largest Rooftop Solar Project in Austin, TX

Nikon’s AI Reconstruction draws on Deep Learning to deliver faster, clearer CT scans

🔖 Topics: Metrology, Computed Tomography
🏢 Organizations: Nikon

Nikon IMBU has released AI Reconstruction, an innovative 3D computed tomography (CT) reconstruction software solution powered by artificial intelligence that lifts the traditional trade-off between scan speed and image quality.

By applying Deep Learning techniques to enhance image quality, Nikon’s breakthrough technology enables rapid results and superior analysis. Traditionally, CT users have had to pick between fast, lower-quality scans or slow, higher-quality scans. If scans are quick, important details can be missed. If scans are slow, fewer items can be scanned.

AI Reconstruction lifts these limits through AI enhancement tailored to individual customer needs by Nikon’s Applications Engineering team. The Deep Learning modeling underpinning AI Reconstruction is trained to distinguish relevant information from the scan artifacts to effectively filter noise and improve clarity.

Honeywell Introduces Batch Historian To Digitalize Manufacturing Operations

Honeywell introduced Honeywell Batch Historian, a software digitalization solution designed to provide manufacturers with contextualized data history for reporting and analytics, leading to more efficient and cost-effective operations. The digitalization of manufacturing operations supports Honeywell’s alignment of its portfolio to the automation megatrend.

Honeywell Batch Historian supports several industries including specialty chemicals, life sciences, food & beverage, pulp & paper, and mining, materials, and metals (MMM). By leveraging the software, manufacturers can enhance process efficiency and simplify troubleshooting, ultimately improving operational outcomes. The solution’s configuration for batch reporting simplifies the reporting and data analysis process, making it easier for operators to comply with strict industry reporting regulations.

Business Transactions

This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.

🇩🇪💿 Black Semiconductor closes €254M for next-gen graphene-based chip tech

🔖 Topics: Funding Event
🏢 Organizations: Black Semiconductor, Porsche, Project A Ventures

Germany’s Black Semiconductor, a startup in the next-generation chip technology sector, has announced €254 million in Series A funding. This is one of the largest funding for a deep tech company manufacturing chips in Europe to date. Of this, €228.7 million in public funding from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia over the next 7 years under IPCEI ME/CT. Alongside the public funding, the company has secured an additional €25.7 million in equity funding.

The round was led by Porsche Ventures and Project A Ventures, with participation from leading venture capital firms, corporates, and industry leaders including Scania Growth, Capnamic, Tech Vision Fonds, and NRW.BANK, joining the seed round investors Vsquared Ventures, Cambium Capital, and Hermann Hauser’s Onsight Ventures.

With the fresh capital, Black Semiconductor will accelerate its R&D initiatives and establish pilot line manufacturing capabilities in Aachen, Germany, an important step towards fulfilling its long-term goal of producing and implementing high-quality graphene in Europe. The company plans to inaugurate a pilot manufacturing facility in Aachen by 2026, demonstrating the seamless integration of graphene into electronic chips.

🇬🇧🔋 Echion raises £29 million in Series B investment round

🏢 Organizations: Echion, Volta Energy

The world’s leading developer of niobium-based, fast-charging battery materials, Echion Technologies, has successfully completed its Series B funding round, raising £29 million in investment capital. The round was led by specialist battery and energy storage technology investor Volta Energy Technologies (Volta), with participation from existing investors CBMM, BGF, and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures.

The investment will enable Echion to execute its go-to-market strategy to see its innovative niobium-based XNO® anode material utilised in real world applications, at volume. Echion is Volta’s first investment into a European headquartered company and having Volta as the lead Series B investor highlights Echion as a rising British battery technology business within the crucial global energy storage industry.

Echion’s longstanding partnership with the world’s leading producer of niobium, CBMM, will see the opening of a 2,000 tonne per year XNO® manufacturing facility this year. This provides Echion with the manufacturing capacity to satisfy the large and growing demand for XNO® across its global customer base comprised of major cell manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

🇦🇪 Tenderd secures $30M in Series A funding led by A.P. Moller Holding to supercharge heavy equipment operations using AI

🏢 Organizations: Tenderd, AP Moller

Tenderd, a global leader in digital transformation for heavy equipment management and operations, has closed a $30 million Series A funding round. The round was led by A.P. Moller Holding, a $32 billion investment company and parent company of the A.P. Moller Group, which includes A.P. Moller - Maersk. New investors in the round included Quadri Ventures and Saurya Prakash, a product leader at Stripe. Existing investors Wa’ed Ventures, Nakhla Ventures, SOMA Capital, and Liquid 2 Ventures have also re-invested, reinforcing their continued confidence in Tenderd’s growth. Tenderd’s existing backers include Peter Thiel, Paul Graham, and Y Combinator.

The capital infusion will fuel technological innovations and enable Tenderd to further expand its global footprint in its mission to integrate AI with physical operations in the construction, mining, and industrial sectors. The backing from partners across logistics, ports, energy, construction, and technology underscores the broad applicability of Tenderd’s technology and its unique global position within sector-specific data to develop industry-focused AI models, setting Tenderd apart from general models in driving industry transformation.

🇺🇸🔋 UNIGRID Battery announces $12 Million Series A round

🏢 Organizations: UNIGRID, Transition VC, Ritz Venture Capital

UNIGRID Battery, a San Diego-based startup developing advanced sodium-ion batteries, announced a successful close of an oversubscribed $12 Million Series A funding round. The financing was Co-led by Transition VC and Ritz Venture Capital and joined by new investor Union Square Ventures and existing investor Foothill Ventures. The investment will accelerate and scale-up UNIGRID’s battery production to fulfill MWh-scale customer orders in the electric mobility and stationary storage markets.

A key strength to UNIGRID’s technology is its drop-in compatibility with conventional Li-ion battery manufacturing infrastructure, along with off-the-shelf availability of materials in the existing supply chain. As such, the team currently works with battery manufacturing partners to immediately scale its products, avoiding the need for highly customized equipment or the redesigning of tools, which has been a barrier for various next generation battery technologies. This has resonated well with customers and system integrators looking for immediate alternatives to Li-ion batteries.

🇺🇸🔋 Aepnus wants to create a circular economy for key battery manufacturing materials

🏢 Organizations: Aepnus, Clean Energy Ventures

Aepnus recently raised an $8 million seed round to ship more pilot-scale electrolyzers and develop the commercial-scale version. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures with participation from Gravity Climate Fund, Impact Science Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Muus Climate Partners and Voyager Ventures.

Aepnus was founded to modernize the century-old chloralkali process, which splits salts like sodium sulfate back into the acids and bases that created them. The company uses electrolyzers to zap the salts, coaxing them into splitting. Other companies do the same thing, but they might use pricey metals to help speed the reactions. “We don’t use any expensive catalysts in our electrolyzers,” Akuzum said. The startup has over 15 customers at various stages, ranging from feasibility studies to testing the pilot-scale equipment.

FieldComm Group Acquires FDT/DTM Technology, Bolsters Integration Capabilities

🔖 Topics: Acquisition
🏢 Organizations: FieldComm Group

FieldComm Group, a leading figure in global industrial automation standards, announces that it has completed the acquisition of FDT Group’s assets including the FDT/DTM technology standards. This significant transaction underscores FieldComm Group’s dedication to addressing industrial device management challenges across the entire industrial automation market, ultimately enhancing operational efficiency for vendors and end users.

With a comprehensive suite of technologies including Information Models, the Field Device Integration (FDI) standard, and well-established communication protocols like HART, HART-IP, WirelessHART, and Foundation Fieldbus, FieldComm Group’s market offerings serve the entire process automation sector. The addition of FDT/DTM technology, a widely deployed device integration standard across process and factory automation markets, adds new technologies to the portfolio, completely addressing the industrial automation hierarchy.