Transmaterial » mineral

SorbtiveMEDIA

Blaine Brownell — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:00:41 +0000

Many lakes, ponds and rivers suffer from algae blooms and depleted dissolved oxygen as a direct result of excessive nutrients entering waterways after rainstorms. Phosphorus is the accelerant that causes algae blooms to grow rapidly. SorbtiveMEDIA is an oxide-coated water filtration system engineered to remove pollutants including phosphorus. It is produced from natural and recycled aggregates, and is applied in a wide variety of low-impact development landscape applications.

SorbtiveMEDIA is an appropriate solution for impaired watersheds or protecting water resources, with proven phosphorus treatment performance exceeding current North American regulations. Available in a variety of gradations or as porous concrete products, SorbtiveMEDIA can accommodate many landscape designs and stormwater treatment systems.

SorbtiveMEDIA can be flexibly applied to sand filters, infiltration trenches, and filter cartridges, and is also a perfect match for LID applications such as bioretention cells, rain gardens, gabion walls, porous concrete pavement and permeable pavers systems. SorbtiveMEDIA is a safe, non-hazardous material that does not decompose or leach captured pollutants.

Contact: Imbrium Systems, Rockville, MD, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

Fly Ash Panels

Blaine Brownell — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:00:22 +0000

Fly ash is the waste product of burning coal that is comprised mainly of silica, alumina, iron, and calcium. Fly ash is often combined with cement as an additive, but only up to a certain percentage of concrete may be fly ash.

Carolyn Dry has developed a method of fabricating building panels and insulation out of nearly 100% fly ash in order to sequester these heavy metals so that they do not leach out and pollute the environment. Essentially cooking the ash into a solid, Dry utilizes a flux which allows processing at lower temperatures—thus using less energy and fewer chemicals. Components such as building panels, bricks, and insulation may be produced without the need for binders such as cement.

Contact: Natural Process Design, Inc., Winona, MN, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

Imagine Tile

Blaine Brownell — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:00:58 +0000

Imagine Tile, Inc. can take any two-dimensional image and incorporate it into the glaze of an incredibly vivid, commercially-rated ceramic tile. Imagine Tile uses a patented process which treats ceramic glazes like printing inks. Pure minerals and ores are ground micro-fine and suspended in a liquid to produce substances similar to printing inks. The mineral and ore-based image is printed and coated with a refractory material that creates a glass finish. Once the tile is fired at approximately 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the glazes fuse with the body of the tile. The result is a graphic and durable decorative tile.

Imagine Tile meets or exceeds ASTM standards for commercial floor and wall applications, and independent tests certify that the product is frost-proof, UV and chemical resistant, as well as ADA compliant. Moreover, Imagine Tile possesses a surface MOH rating of 7 or higher. The product is supplied with a five-year manufacturer warranty.

Contact: Imagine Tile, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial.

Self-Repairing Composites

Blaine Brownell — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:00:45 +0000

Aircraft and marine vessels are significant contributors to global warming. Airplane vapor trails release CO2 as well as other pollutants, and ships expend large amounts of energy as they carry most of the world’s cargo. Many of the polymer composites typically used for such craft are over-engineered to avoid structural failure, a fact that reduces the advantage of such light weight constructions.

Self-Repairing Polymer Composites are made from graphite oil, resulting in lighter material properties. In a recent project for the US Air Force, the composite portion of the airplane fuselage was made to be 30% lighter than conventional materials based on the use of Self-Repairing Polymers. If this material can be successfully implemented, a significant reduction in CO2 contributions from traveling craft and other applications will be realized.

Contact: Natural Process Design, Inc., Winona, MN, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

Sensitive Apertures

Blaine Brownell — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:00:25 +0000

Sensitive Apertures is a modular slip-cast ceramic building skin designed to admit a small quantity of light through a refractive glass aperture. This opening redirects sunlight onto the inside surface of the cell, projecting an even luminous glow to the interior space. The 1% open apertures admit levels of light desired for interior circulation zones as well as insulate a building from solar heat gain and loss.

Contact: Ben McDonald, Culver City, CA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

CarbonCoat

Blaine Brownell — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:00:34 +0000

Geckos possess the remarkable ability to climb vertical walls without using any adhesive glue. A gecko’s feet are covered by tiny hairs that stick to rough and smooth surfaces using van der Waals forces. Inspired by the gecko design, Ali Dhinojwala and researchers at the University of Akron have developed carbon nanotube-based gecko tapes that stick to most surfaces (even Teflon) and have self-cleaning abilities.

Carbon nanotube coatings on steel surfaces make them superhydrophobic without losing their electrical or thermal conductivity. Modifying the surface characteristics of stainless steel can lead to many new applications such as heat exchangers, electrodes for fuel cells, solar panels, fluid transport and non-fouling surfaces.

Contact: Ali Dhinojwala, The University of Akron, OH, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

Electroboard

Blaine Brownell — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:00:16 +0000

Electroboard is an interior finish material that pairs flat-wire technology with a fire resistant gypsum core. It provides an electrified low-voltage surface accessible with a proprietary connector that one pushes into the face of the wall. As an alternative to traditional track-based lighting systems, Electroboard offers unlimited fixture configuration options and may be finished to blend seamlessly with conventional gypsum wallboard surfaces.

Designed by Eric Olsen with Superficial Studio, Electroboard is economical like conventional gypsum-based cladding and creates additional value though embedded conductivity. It offers material and energy efficiencies as well as infrastructural flexibility. The low voltage power supplied by Electroboard is compatible with many technologies like liquid crystal displays and OLED light fixtures, and point-of-use electrical transformers are eliminated with Electroboard—thus creating considerable energy savings.

Contact: Superficial Studio, Hollywood, CA, USA.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.

Tiled Wall

Blaine Brownell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:54 +0000

Made of ceramic tiles projecting from an illuminated background, Rogier Sterk’s Tiled Wall offers users an opportunity to play with light. Each tile is attached to a mechanism that allows it to be pressed and released. A tile left untouched appears to be lit only around the edges. Once a tile is pressed, however, the underlying light shines across its surface, emitting a reflection. The amount of light emitted is therefore determined by the position of the tiles.

Contact: Rogier Sterk, Arnheim, The Netherlands.
Find more information in Transmaterial.

Terrart

Blaine Brownell — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:08 +0000

Today, masonry is used in building facades more often for its durability and weather protection than for its traditional qualities as a load-bearing material. NBK Keramik’s Terrart is a suspended rainscreen facade system made from terra-cotta. Terrart consists of large, precisely crafted ceramic elements designed to be ventilated from within the wall cavity. In this way, the system is designed to shed water while allowing the cavity to breathe, thus maintaining a consistent air pressure between the cavity and the exterior.

Contact: NBK Keramik GmbH & Co., Emmerich am Rhein, Germany.
Find more information in Transmaterial.

Transparent Ceramics

Blaine Brownell — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:00:08 +0000

Translucent alumina ceramics have exhibited low mechanical properties and a low in-line transmission of unscattered light (less than fifteen percent) because of their coarse micro-structures (greater than 20 μm).

New transparent corundum ceramics avoid these shortcomings and can be manufactured with complex (even hollow) shapes and with a four-point bending strength of six hundred to seven hundred megapascals and a macrohardness HV10 greater than 20 GPa. The in-line transmission of transparent ceramics is close to sixty percent in visible light and approaches the theoretical limit in the infrared range. An even higher visible light transmission (greater than eighty percent at one millimeter thickness) is enabled by new submicrometer spinel, which has a macrohardness of HV10 = 14.5 GPa.

Faceted colored gemstones of about one and a half carats have been manufactured with a polycrystalline sub-μm microstructure of transparent ceramics, and filters have been manufactured for optical applications with the same material. Future applications include superstrong and heat-resistant windows as well as transparent armor.

Contact: Fraunhofer IKTS, Dresden, Germany.
Find more information in Transmaterial.