CMPND

Sustainability: Both a Business and a Communications Strategy

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 14:15

Owens Corning (OC) was in a lot of good company in 2009; we dropped in sales due to economy, said Frank O’Brien-Bernini, VP of Sustainability at OC, at a recent 2010 Emerging Technology Forum sponsored by PolymerOhio. “What’s new, however, is that OC has been on path of sustainability since we set our 2002 baseline,” Bernini said. “We have been in a do-say mode (avoiding say-do or just say), wanting to get a few years of sustainability successes under our belt before talking about it.” Obviously, others were noting OC’s progress. For example, Newsweek’s green rankings placed OC at 56 in a list of the top 200 companies making good sustainability progress. In fact, quite a few companies ahead of OC in the list are financial companies, O’Brien-Bernini notes, and they do not really “have a manufacturing environmental footprint.”

Nano-Network on the Move

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 13:55

The Nano-Network was formed in 2003 by scientists, entrepreneurs, and financiers in Northeast Ohio to improve and expand nanotechnology development and commercialization efforts, originally focused in Northeast Ohio. The Nano-Network is one of the largest and best-known privately-funded, “grass roots” nanotechnology organizations in the U.S. This very dynamic organization has continued a very high level of activity, especially in the past couple of years.

A Global View of (Green) Coatings

Monday, 23 August 2010 19:29

Sherwin Williams Sure Green Logo While the marketplace seems very interested in “green” coatings, including paints and stains, the drivers for such coatings are still in quite a state of flux, according to Duke Rao, director of polymers, at Sherwin Williams. Rao was a featured speaker at a recent Emerging Technology Forum presented by PolymerOhio in Columbus. “Terms like ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ have a lot to do with what’s good for the environment, what’s good for society, and they must also include the ability to be profitable for the company that makes a commitment to offering green or sustainable products,” Rao said. Thus, green coatings exclude chemicals that are toxic or otherwise harmful.

Sustainable Energy Solutions: The Value Proposition

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 13:51

OIS Since reduced power consumption seems to be out of favor, what can we do locally to use the technologies we have and make up some of the inefficiencies of our current power demands? This was the premise of a panel discussion held at the Ohio Innovation Summit (OIS) in April 2010. The event was organized by the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio (UCEAO) and the Center For Multifunctional Polymer Nanomaterials and Devices (CMPND) at The Ohio State University.

What we have in many areas of Ohio, coal-fired power plants, are very inefficient. The transport of coal typically requires long-distance travel. Coal-based power generation needs better point-of-use cost efficiencies, but achieving the obvious solution – to bring the point-of-generation and the point-of-use closer together – is complex. If we want to be able to generate what we consume, we have to look at the relationships between energy and sustainability, rather than address each of these issues in isolation.

Ohio NIST Technology Innovation Program Winners

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 13:11

Of the 50 projects awarded funding in the last round of the Technology Innovation program (TIP), offered through U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), three of them went to Ohio companies. This article provides information about recent winners and a company that is applying to the next round of NIST TIP funding.

Lockheed Martin’s Lighter-Than-Air Program Continues to Benefit Ohioans

Tuesday, 17 August 2010 22:25

The Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) awarded Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors in Akron a $1 million grant for advanced materials development. The grant will support Lockheed Martin’s effort to develop the next generation of lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicles for use in persistent surveillance, reconnaissance and communication applications.

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Nanoparticle Film Reinforcements: New Structural Process Yields Promising Results

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 13:38

BuckeyBall High-performance, fiber-reinforced polymeric composite materials are the preferred materials for many aerospace industry, defense industry, and wind energy applications due to their high modulus-to-weight ratio and their high strength-to-weight ratio. As the applications for such materials become increasingly demanding, the materials performance must be improved. A common approach to improve the performance of such materials is to incorporate nanomaterials as an additional reinforcement to offer improved mechanical, thermal, electrical, and barrier properties plus good flame retardance if the processability challenges can be overcome while addressing the possible safety risks associated with nanomaterials. However, to date, significant improvements have been a great challenge to the research community. Now, a group of researchers from several engineering disciplines at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Dr. L. James Lee’s laboratory has developed what might be a revolutionary strategy for combining the advantages of both long-fiber reinforcements and nanomaterial reinforcements to create a superior long-fiber-reinforced polymeric (FRP) nanocomposite.