NanoKTN Announces Seminar on Commercialisation of Nanomaterials – Overcoming the Scale-Up Challenge

Strong investment into nanomaterials and the nanotechnology sector has seeded the development of many new technologies and approaches, but difficulties with process scale-up can slow down the commercialisation of these technologies into viable commercial products. Modelling is emerging as a powerful, cost-effective tool to de-risk aspects of scale-up and to enable this technology translation to occur and realise considerable value for nanotechnology based products.

Prof Ed Lester, Technical Director at Promethean Particles will discuss the company’s patented continuous hydrothermal reactor technology to produce high-quality bespoke inorganic nanomaterials as dispersions and services a wide variety of industrial customers at a commercial scale.
The reactor can be used to create a wide range of product compositions open to this technique, but also includes control of particle size, size distribution, morphology and product formulation, while maintaining excellent product quality. The laboratory-scale reactor system (grams/hour capability) has been successfully scaled up to pilot scale (10 tons per annum) in order to service the extensive range of markets that exist in the nanotechnology industry.

Dr Richard Evans in the Department of Physics at the University of York, and Chief Executive Officer at nanoHPC Ltd, will introduce the challenges of developing future recording media and outline the role of modelling in that process. The magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) industry is currently worth around $30B USD annually and forms the vast majority of digital data storage. With new innovations in cloud computing and increasing demands for content storage there is an insatiable demand for ever more storage capacity. Increasing this capacity provides significant technical and engineering challenges and the role of modelling in understanding how materials behave at smaller length scales is now a crucial part of the development process.

Additional presentations will cover other examples of modelling techniques and include speakers from Process Systems Enterprise Ltd, Computational Modelling Cambridge Ltd, Structure Vision Ltd, Novidec Ltd, Ilika Technologies, Sheffield Hallam University and Universities of Bradford and Leeds.

Dr Barry Park, Theme Manager at the NanoKTN comments, “We have put together this seminar to offer delegates the ideal opportunity to learn more about what modelling can do to accelerate the process of scale-up and commercialisation of their nanotechnology products. At the event, modelling experts will be able to demonstrate the significant benefits that these techniques can offer companies facing scale-up challenges in production and they will be able to work together to drive the success of nanotechnology companies in the UK.”

All sectors of the nanotechnology supply chain interested in the impact that modelling can offer are encouraged to attend the conference. Further information can be found on the NanoKTN’s website: www.nanoktn.com.