A laser-peening technology developed by LLNL and Metal Improvement Co. is extending the lifetime of critical components for commercial aircraft.
Strengthening Competitiveness
April / May 2008
Volume 6 Number 2
Erik Stenehjem and his team of business development executives at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are people on a mission. As the new director of Livermore's industrial partnerships office, Stenehjem and his staff are attempting to move leading-edge technologies developed by lab scientists and engineers into the marketplace as quickly as possible.
"We are now in a period of globalization and one of the things we realize is that money flows in the direction of competitive advantage. As a result, a large part of our reason for wanting to rapidly move technologies into the marketplace is to bolster the competitiveness of the United States," Stenehjem says. "We are looking at technologies that can be licensed to U.S. industry to help drive products and productivity."
Livermore has technologies in a wide variety of disciplines, such as biosciences, lasers, computations, homeland security (including biological detection and radiation detection), energy production and storage and national security.
In Stenehjem's view, there are two types of technologies. The first is breakthrough technologies, which may not be applicable to any current industries in the world; and the second is sustaining technologies, which augment products and processes already in the economy.
"At a laboratory like LLNL, some of the technologies represent breakthroughs that are so transcendent that there are no industries yet that can use them. Or, if the technologies were used by an existing industry, they would so dramatically change the products and processes as to be uneconomical. These are the upstart technologies that require startup companies."
As an example of this type of technology, Stenehjem cited the work of lab researchers in developing carbon nanotubes. There is a need for an efficient means of filtering and desalinizing water that does not use excessive amounts of energy and can provide highly effective filtration of both chemicals and biological organisms. LLNL researchers, working with carbon nanotubes, discovered that water flow rates exceeded classical predictions by three orders of magnitude. These carbon nanotube membranes demonstrated permeabilities that are several orders of magnitude higher than conventional membranes, despite having pore sizes an order of magnitude smaller. This discovery points to a new possible breakthrough in how and at what efficiencies water might be desalinized.
To bring a breakthrough technology into the marketplace, four conditions (which are summed up in the simple expression 3M + T) need to be met according to Stenehjem.
First, the concept must be based on sound Technology. Second, a line of sight to Market is needed. Third, maturation, seed and future round Money is important to drive the technology from the scientist's bench to a commercial product. Gaining access to the initial maturation funds with which to cross the "valley of death" is never easy but can be particularly difficult in national laboratories. And fourth, a Management team must be assembled and a business plan prepared to successfully attract later-stage investors and launch the venture.
"What we do here that is a little bit unique is that we translate technologies into business opportunities," Stenehjem said. "Often, investors aren't scientists or engineers. They rarely get excited by looking at new technologies."
So, as a result, LLNL is working with graduate students who are scientists or engineers and part of entrepreneurship programs at several San Francisco Bay Area universities to draw up business plans for 17 Livermore technologies.
The 17 technologies are ones that the Livermore industrial partnerships office considers to be breakthrough advances that could be commercialized within two years. They are fully patented and are ready to be licensed.
Among its past work with industry, one of LLNL's premier transfers of technology started more than a decade ago, in 1997, when it licensed an advanced laser technology to a New Jersey company, Metal Improvement Co. Inc. (MIC), a subsidiary of Curtiss-Wright Corp. Together, LLNL and MIC co-developed a laser peening process for treating metal.
Since transitioning to commercial operations in 2002, MIC's laser peening process has made a major impact in the world's aviation industry by greatly improving the fatigue lifetime of costly jet engine parts. It also has led to saving many millions of dollars annually in replacement parts and even more money in reduced maintenance manpower, along with making aircraft more available.
To date, MIC has treated more than 30,000 jet engine fan blades and more than 500 discs. These blades and discs power hundreds of Boeing 777, Airbus A340, Gulfstream V and Bombardier regional jet planes. The metal treatment company also has begun treating jet engine fan blades for one of the aviation industry's newest planes, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. MIC is currently working with the Department of Defense to improve fatigue lifetimes for critical components of high performance helicopters, fighter jets, tanker and patrol aircraft.
"Laser peening is a prime example of the benefits of technology transfer for the licensee (MIC) and for the national economy," said Lloyd Hackel, MIC's vice president for advanced applications. "We are proud that our company, together with the laboratory, has led this effort to commercialize a technology that makes commercial airline travel safer and is significantly reducing the costs to maintain the world wide fleet of large and small aircraft."
Hackel, who worked as a laser scientist at Lawrence Livermore for 28 years, moved to MIC in 2004. While at Livermore, he worked with Kathy Kaufman of the industrial partnerships office.
"Lloyd is what I would term a —€˜passionate inventor,'" Kaufman said. "When he gets involved in a project, he takes it as far as possible and for as many applications as possible. An MIC official had said to us, —€˜We know that LLNL is world famous for lasers. We're wondering: Can you apply lasers to shot peening, which is our business, to make it commercially viable?' Lloyd took the application and ran with it."
Researchers advanced the technology under two CRADAs that ran for about eight years, starting in 1997, and saw the firm contribute several million dollars for research.
Beyond the aviation industry, more horizons beckon for laser peening in the view of MIC officials. Already, the firm is treating steam and gas turbine blades from several power generation equipment manufacturers to help overcome high stress problems as the turbines are pushed into ever higher levels of generation efficiency. Inroads are being made in the automotive industry through the laser peening of engine and drive train components for Formula 1 racing and in tool and die fatigue issues for parts manufactured in large volumes. The process also is in the testing phase for use in treating parts for deep-sea oil drilling equipment and for medical devices, such as knee and hip implants.
In another of the dozens of technology transfer license agreements reached by LLNL's industrial partnerships office, in September 2001 the laboratory licensed a portable and accurate explosives detector to a small East Coast company. Known as ELITE (Easy Livermore Inspection Test for Explosives), the new technology is highly sensitive to more than 40 different explosives, making it one of the most effective trace explosive detection systems available.
With an ELITE detector, about the size of a playing card, border patrol agents, security agents, airport screeners, first responders and military personnel can secure real-time results within about ninety seconds as to whether explosives are present.When the technology was licensed to Largo, Fla.-based Field Forensics Inc., the company consisted of one employee—€”President Craig Johnson.
Since then, the firm has grown to six full-time employees and several part-time employees—€”and within the last year, sold tens of thousands of ELITE units.
Since July 2007, Field Forensics has picked up more than half of its more than 100 customers, Johnson said. Its customers include: the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Army, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Southeast Pennsylvania Transport Association, the New York State Police and the British Ministry of Defence.
Stephen Wampler is an LLNL information officer.
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What Livermore Has for You
New technologies, ranging from energy production advances to sophisticated inventory and location systems, are available for licensing from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for potential U.S. industrial and commercial partners.
While some of these technologies are in the early stages of research, others have proceeded to prototypes or preliminary designs. Business plans are now being prepared for the first five technologies and should be available over the next few months.
"We have a number of the technologies that we're bullish about," said Erik Stenehjem, the director of LLNL's industrial partnerships office. And more breakthrough technologies are described at our web site."The address is: https://ipo.llnl.gov/ Then click on the icon for "Candidate LLNL Technologies for Business Plan Competitions."
Residential solar thermal power plant: This technology converts sunlight to electric power much more economically than has, in the past, been achievable with comparable solar thermal power systems. About 25 percent of the incident sunlight in the present system is converted to electrical power, with most of the remaining solar energy captured for water or space heating. Once commercialized, this technology could supply electric power for six cents per kilowatt hour for a home, significantly less than the current retail price for home electrical power of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour.
Removing metals from liquids: Scientists and engineers have combined granulated activated carbon (GAC) with silica aerogels that have been chemically modified to form a composite material that absorbs volatile organics, radionuclides, metals and petroleum products in water. Lab researchers have shown aerogel/GAC composite absorption capabilities for groundwater contaminated with uranium, groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium, and salt water contaminated with crude oil or diesel fuel.
Ultrawide band radio frequency identification (RFID) tags: RFID technology uses radio signals to identify and track objects. The objects being tracked can have battery-powered or passive tags. For high-value assets, conventional RFID uses battery-powered tags. These tags have a range of at least 10 meters, depending on the power levels, but also have the disadvantage of being bulky in size and requiring periodic battery replacements. The lab's tag technology has the same range as battery-powered tags but without the conventional battery.
Flywheel batteries for storing electrical energy: LLNL has developed a new technology for the bulk storage of electrical energy in modular electromechanical batteries (EMBs) or flywheel batteries. The technology embodies several novel design concepts for storing electrical energy as rotational energy. The EMBs can provide electrical power to ride through short interruptions of electricity from utility networks. Possible uses of the technology are for energy storage in the utility industry, the telecommunications industry and solar and wind-power systems.
Real-time individualized therapy for cancer treatment: Approximately 25 percent of drug therapies fail due to individual variation in drug processing, suggesting that the individualization of drug treatment could benefit large numbers of people worldwide. LLNL has developed a method to individually optimize drug therapy for disease treatment. This method can also be used to discover novel genes involved in drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, action and elimination.
—€”Steve Wampler
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