Four year European PilotManu Project for Process Innovation Centre secured

Phil Black - PII Editor 25/02/2014

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PilotManu Project to design and scale-up manufacturing process to enable volume production of innovative advanced materials

The Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network (NanoKTN – www.nanoktn.com), one of the UK’s primary knowledge-based networks for Micro and Nanotechnologies, is pleased to announce that following its recommendation, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has been chosen to work on the €5.3m pan-European PilotManu project (Pilot manufacturing line for production of highly innovative materials) project.

Funded by the European Commission, PilotManu is a FP7 programme under the coordination of MBN Nanomaterialia SPA and consisting of 10 consortium partners located across Europe. The project seeks to lower the barriers to market for the use of highly innovative advanced materials by scaling-up the current research-scale manufacturing facility into an industrial pilot line. This will increase the productivity of the technology enabling the supply of cost-effective and high quality materials which will then be evaluated in several different commercial applications. The project will demonstrate the technological and economical viability of the pilot line by incorporating these advanced materials into coatings, abrasive tools and additive manufacturing applications.

Dr James Johnstone, Theme Manager at the NanoKTN, commented: “The PilotManu consortium approached the NanoKTN to recommend a UK partner with the best skills to support the project. We recommended CPI as not only is it part of the government’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult, but also has excellent capabilities to develop products and processes for companies in the UK.“

Europe has identified within its innovation priorities the necessity to scale up the most promising material production technology to pilot production level in order to progress towards industrial manufacturing using cutting edge materials in novel new processes. Manufacturing facilities for the production of advance and nano materials by high energy ball milling (HEBM) currently suffer from low productivity and high cost which is a key barrier for its application in the wider commercial market sectors. PilotManu will cover this manufacturing gap by scaling up and building a new pilot production line for the production of nanomaterials and advance materials, based on the consortium’s IPR and expertise.

Dr Keith Robson, Director of Formulation at CPI explains: “PilotManu will design and scale-up the manufacturing process to enable pilot scale volume production of innovative advanced materials with fine and homogeneous chemical distribution of elements and “ultrafine” crystalline structure. The nanoscale features of these materials will allow significant improvement of material performance such as physical-chemical-mechanical properties compared against bulk scale materials. The new improved pilot line will look to reduce the power consumption by 50%, scale up the production process by a factor of ten, which enables the supply of affordable material for industry consumption.”

The business opportunities will encompass the production of pilot volumes of cost-effective advanced materials that will be subsequently used in three product lines: wear resistant coatings obtained by thermal spraying technology; polymer and metal composites for rapid prototyping and additive micro manufacturing components; and diamond cutting and abrasive tools.