Limitations of The Conventional Manufacturing Technology: There are many drawbacks associated with the current state of manufacturing technology. Some of these are major obstacles to solving 21st Century Engineering problems. The need to manufacture individual parts separately before their final assembly into a complete complex device is one such obstacle preventing full utilization of scientific ideas in the energy devices field. This process increases labor costs, leads to excessive materials waste, and limits device utility. As a result, important energy devices, such as fuel cells, supercapacitors, batteries, and electrolyzers are not only too expensive to manufacture, but functionally too inefficient, wasteful, and difficult to market effectively. For example, a simple metal part produced by forging and machining can easily start out as molten metal 10 to 11 times its final weight. Even then, it may require secondary processing before and during assembly, such as coating, drilling, and joining with other parts. As a consequence, device cost increases and world mineral resources are more quickly depleted, worsening environmental damage and unnecessarily increasing energy usage up to 10-11 fold. A second drawback of current manufacturing technology is its inability to produce large amounts of surface area per unit volume. This is a major problem in the fields of energy- conversion and energy-storage devices, which convert one form of energy to another (hydrogen to electricity, water to hydrogen, solar radiation to electricity) or store energy in the form of electricity or hydrogen. More surface area available for reactions would allow more energy to be converted or stored. Currently, in order to create sufficient surface area for reactions, energy conversion and storage devices are manufactured in large size. Large fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors, and electrolyzers (devices that produce hydrogen from water) require too much material, occupy scarce space (as in vehicles), break down too often due to thermal expansion mismatch or vibration stresses. With such problems, device costs become excessive. The third major drawback of current manufacturing technology is its inability to produce parts of necessary thinness. This causes particular difficulties in the area of membranes, such as those used in fuel cells. Currently, charged particles traveling across fuel-cell membranes have to travel much longer distances than is optimal, leading to excessive energy loss as waste heat. Waste heat not only reduces the amount of energy produced, but also requires additional equipment to cool the fuel cells. Similar difficulties are true for supercapacitors as well. Our Manufacturing Process: Our process solves all the issues mentioned above. This is because, we look at manufacturing from a different perspective. To us “manufacturing is functional distribution of materials and spaces in three dimensions.” Based on this definition, our three step manufacturing process, regardless of the product type, is:
This process allows the manufacture of complete devices at the same time as its components are manufactured, joined, or coated. In contrast, the conventional approach involves the separate production of parts and components before their final assembly into a complete device. For example, using our method, a stack of fuel cells or supercapacitor cells can be produced simultaneously with the required plumbing, electrical connections, coatings, etc., in just three steps. To produce stronger yet lighter metals (and other materials), powder particles are typically distributed randomly. Using the same three steps described above, hollow ceramic dispersoids are produced as barriers to dislocation movement. Thus, dispersion hardening is obtained while the material density is lowered. Major Advantages:
Benefits arising from these advantages:
conventional) o Elimination of parts manufacturing and assembly operations o Elimination of secondary processing, such as coating, shaping, cleaning, etc. o Less maintenance costs: robust devices able to withstand vibrations and thermal-expansion loads in service o Lowering or elimination of the need for cooling equipment
High reaction surface area results from: o Thinner and smaller components o Micro/nano scale pores created in reaction sites o 3-D designs
Significant increases in energy-conversion efficiency are possible with our manufacturing methods. This reduces possible danger of explosion, delayed response to power demand, oxidation-caused performance loss, and the need for cooling equipment. |
| Some Comments By Experts |
TECHNOLOGY
| Micro-structure of a copper sample dispersion strengthened with in-situ formed hollow ceramic particles. This is a first in the field of metallurgy. |
| Our innovative consolidation methods are part of the energy device manufacturing technology. Stainless steel parts shown here cannot be produced in any other way, but ours. |
"It is a superior fuel cell technology....a very innovative and in fact a brilliant architecture/design..." An energy devices newsletter editor "This is a very clever patent" A Hydrogen fuel cell consultant "Looks great" A fuel cell manufacturer "It has high value for novelty. Neat technology…that’s what the world needs…wonderfully creative…" A fuel cell company R&D Director "Solid theory" A Professor of Physics at MIT |