Tag Archives: SINTEF

A jellyfish chat on November 28, 2017 at Café Scientifique Vancouver get together

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Café Scientifique Vancouver sent me an announcement (via email) about their upcoming event,

We are pleased to announce our next café which will happen on TUESDAY,
NOVEMBER 28TH at 7:30PM in the back room of YAGGER'S DOWNTOWN (433 W
Pender).

JELLYFISH – FRIEND, FOE, OR FOOD?

Did you know that in addition to stinging swimmers, jellyfish also cause
extensive damage to fisheries and coastal power plants? As threats such
as overfishing, pollution, and climate change alter the marine
environment, recent media reports are proclaiming that jellyfish are
taking over the oceans. Should we hail to our new jellyfish overlords or
do we need to examine the evidence behind these claims? Join Café
Scientifique on Nov. 28, 2017 to learn everything you ever wanted to
know about jellyfish, and find out if jelly burgers are coming soon to a
menu near you.

Our speaker for the evening will be DR. LUCAS BROTZ, a Postdoctoral
Research Fellow with the Sea Around Us at UBC’s Institute for the
Oceans and Fisheries. Lucas has been studying jellyfish for more than a
decade, and has been called “Canada’s foremost jellyfish
researcher” by CBC Nature of Things host Dr. David Suzuki. Lucas has
participated in numerous international scientific collaborations, and
his research has been featured in more than 100 media outlets including
Nature News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He recently
received the Michael A. Bigg award for highly significant student
research as part of the Coastal Ocean Awards at the Vancouver Aquarium.

We hope to see you there!

You can find out more about Lucas Brotz here and about Sea Around Us here.

For anyone who’s curious about the jellyfish ‘issue’, there’s a November 8, 2017 Norwegian University of Science and Technology press release on AlphaGallileo or on EurekAlert, which provides insight into the problems and the possibilities,

Jellyfish could be a resource in producing microplastic filters, fertilizer or fish feed. A new 6 million euro project called GoJelly, funded by the EU and coordinated by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Germany and including partners at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNNU) and SINTEF [headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia; more about SINTEF in its Wikipedia entry], hopes to turn jellyfish from a nuisance into a useful product.

Global climate change and the human impact on marine ecosystems has led to dramatic decreases in the number of fish in the ocean. It has also had an unforseen side effect: because overfishing decreases the numbers of jellyfish competitors, their blooms are on the rise.

The GoJelly project, coordinated by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Germany, would like to transform problematic jellyfish into a resource that can be used to produce microplastic filter, fertilizer or fish feed. The EU has just approved funding of EUR 6 million over 4 years to support the project through its Horizon 2020 programme.

Rising water temperatures, ocean acidification and overfishing seem to favour jellyfish blooms. More and more often, they appear in huge numbers that have already destroyed entire fish farms on European coasts and blocked cooling systems of power stations near the coast. A number of jellyfish species are poisonous, while some tropical species are even among the most toxic animals on earth.

“In Europe alone, the imported American comb jelly has a biomass of one billion tons. While we tend to ignore the jellyfish there must be other solutions,” says Jamileh Javidpour of GEOMAR, initiator and coordinator of the GoJelly project, which is a consortium of 15 scientific institutions from eight countries led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel.

The project will first entail exploring the life cycle of a number of jellyfish species. A lack of knowledge about life cycles makes it is almost impossible to predict when and why a large jellyfish bloom will occur. “This is what we want to change so that large jellyfish swarms can be caught before they reach the coasts,” says Javidpour.

At the same time, the project partners will also try to answer the question of what to do with jellyfish once they have been caught. One idea is to use the jellyfish to battle another, man-made threat.

“Studies have shown that mucus of jellyfish can bind microplastic. Therefore, we want to test whether biofilters can be produced from jellyfish. These biofilters could then be used in sewage treatment plants or in factories where microplastic is produced,” the GoJelly researchers say.

Jellyfish can also be used as fertilizers for agriculture or as aquaculture feed. “Fish in fish farms are currently fed with captured wild fish, which does not reduce the problem of overfishing, but increases it. Jellyfish as feed would be much more sustainable and would protect natural fish stocks,” says the GoJelly team.

Another option is using jellyfish as food for humans. “In some cultures, jellyfish are already on the menu. As long as the end product is no longer slimy, it could also gain greater general acceptance,” said Javidpour. Finally yet importantly, jellyfish contain collagen, a substance very much sought after in the cosmetics industry.

Project partners from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, led by Nicole Aberle-Malzahn, and SINTEF Ocean, led by Rachel Tiller, will analyse how abiotic (hydrography, temperature), biotic (abundance, biomass, ecology, reproduction) and biochemical parameters (stoichiometry, food quality) affect the initiation of jellyfish blooms.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of triggering mechanisms, origin of seed populations and ecological modelling, the researchers hope to be able to make more reliable predictions on jellyfish bloom formation of specific taxa in the GoJelly target areas. This knowledge will allow sustainable harvesting of jellyfish communities from various Northern and Southern European populations.

This harvest will provide a marine biomass of unknown potential that will be explored by researchers at SINTEF Ocean, among others, to explore the possible ways to use the material.

A team from SINTEF Ocean’s strategic program Clean Ocean will also work with European colleagues on developing a filter from the mucus of the jellyfish that will catch microplastics from household products (which have their source in fleece sweaters, breakdown of plastic products or from cosmetics, for example) and prevent these from entering the marine ecosystem.

Finally, SINTEF Ocean will examine the socio-ecological system and games, where they will explore the potentials of an emerging international management regime for a global effort to mitigate the negative effects of microplastics in the oceans.

“Jellyfish can be used for many purposes. We see this as an opportunity to use the potential of the huge biomass drifting right in front of our front door,” Javidpour said.

You can find out more about GoJelly on their Twitter account.

Construction and nanotechnology research in Scandinavia

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I keep hearing about the possibilities for better (less polluting, more energy efficient, etc.) building construction materials but there never seems to be much progress.  A June 15, 2015 news item on Nanowerk, which suggests some serious efforts are being made in Scandinavia, may help to explain the delay,

It isn’t cars and vehicle traffic that produce the greatest volumes of climate gas emissions – it’s our own homes. But new research will soon be putting an end to all that!

The building sector is currently responsible for 40% of global energy use and climate gas emissions. This is an under-communicated fact in a world where vehicle traffic and exhaust emissions get far more attention.

In the future, however, we will start to see construction materials and high-tech systems integrated into building shells that are specifically designed to remedy this situation. Such systems will be intelligent and multifunctional. They will consume less energy and generate lower levels of harmful climate gas emissions.

With this objective in mind, researchers at SINTEF are currently testing microscopic nanoparticles as insulation materials, applying voltages to window glass and facades as a means of saving energy, and developing solar cells that prevent the accumulation of snow and ice.

…

Research Director Susie Jahren and Research Manager Petra Rüther are heading SINTEF’s strategic efforts in the field of future construction materials. They say that although there are major commercial opportunities available in the development of green and low carbon building technologies, the construction industry is somewhat bound by tradition and unable to pay for research into future technology development. [emphasis mine]

A June 15, 2015 SINTEF (Scandinavia’s largest independent research organisation) news release on the Alpha Galileo website, which originated the news item, provides an overview of the research being conducted into nanotechnology-enabled construction materials (Note: I have added some heads and ruthlessly trimmed from the text),

[Insulation]

SINTEF researcher Bente Gilbu Tilset is sitting in her office in Forskningsveien 1 in Oslo [Norway]. She and her colleagues are looking into the manufacture of super-insulation materials made up of microscopic nanospheres.

“Our aim is to create a low thermal conductivity construction material “, says Tilset. “When gas molecules collide, energy is transferred between them. If the pores in a given material are small enough, for example less than 100 nanometres in diameter, a molecule will collide more often with the pore walls than with other gas molecules. This will effectively reduce the thermal conductivity of the gas. So, the smaller the pores, the lower the conductivity of the gas”, she says.

…

[Solar cells]

As part of the project “Bygningsintegrerte solceller for Norge” (Building Integrated Photovoltaics, BIPV Norway), researchers from SINTEF, NTNU, the IFE [IFE Group, privately owned company, located in Sweden] and Teknova [company created by the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation {NIFU}, located in Norway], are planning to look into how we can utilise solar cells as integral housing construction components, and how they can be adapted to Norwegian daylight and climatic conditions.

One of the challenges is to develop a solar cell which prevents the accumulation of snow and ice. The cells must be robust enough to withstand harsh wind and weather conditions and have lifetimes that enable them to function as electricity generators.

…

[Energy]

Today, we spend 90 per cent of our time indoors. This is as much as three times more than in the 1950s. We are also letting less daylight into our buildings as a result of energy considerations and construction engineering requirements. Research shows that daylight is very important to our health, well-being and biological rhythms. It also promotes productivity and learning. So the question is – is it possible to save energy and get the benefits of greater exposure to daylight?

Technologies involving thermochromic, photochromic and electrochromic pigments can help us to control how sunlight enters our buildings, all according to our requirements for daylight and warmth from the sun.

…

Self-healing concrete

Every year, between 40 and 120 million Euros are spent in Europe on the maintenance of bridges, tunnels and construction walls. These time-consuming and costly activities have to be reduced, and the project CAPDESIGN is aiming to make a contribution in this field.

The objective of the project is to produce concrete that can be ‘restored’ after being exposed to loads and stresses by means of self-healing agents that prevent the formation of cracks. The method involves mixing small capsules into the wet concrete before it hardens. These remain in the matrix until loads or other factors threaten to crack it. The capsules then burst and the self-healing agents are released to repair the structure.

At SINTEF, researchers are working with the material that makes up the capsule shells. The shell has to be able to protect the self-healing agent in the capsules for an extended period and then, under the right conditions, break down and release the agents in response to the formation of cracks caused by temperature, pH, or a load or stress resulting from an impact or shaking. At the same time, the capsules must not impair the ductility or the mechanical properties of the newly-mixed concrete.

…

You’ll notice most of the research seems to be taking place in Norway. I suspect that is due to the story having come from a joint Norwegian Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)/SINTEF, website, Gemini.no/en. Anyone wishing to test their Norwegian readings skills need only omit ‘/en’ from the URL.

Self-healing (high voltage installations) in the subsea and a search for funding

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More concept than reality, nonetheless, the possibilities offered by this Scandinavian research are appealing. From a Dec. 16, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

Embryonic faults in subsea high voltage installations are difficult to detect and very expensive to repair. Researchers believe that self-repairing materials could be the answer.

The vital insulating material which encloses sensitive high voltage equipment may now be getting some ‘first aid’.

“We have preliminary results indicating that this is a promising concept, but we need to do more research to check out other solutions and try the technique out under different conditions.” So says SINTEF [largest independent research organisation in Scandinavial researcher Cédric Lesaint, who is hoping that the industry will soon wake up to the idea.

A Nov. 26, 2014 SINTEF press release, which originated the news item, describes the concept in more detail,

The technology used involves so-called ‘microcapsules’, which are added to traditional insulation materials and have the ability to ‘sniff out’ material fatigue and then release repairing molecules. The team working on this project is made up of chemists, physicists and electrical engineers. If they succeed, they may have discovered the next generation of insulating materials which can be applied in costly electrical installations.

The press release then describes a phenomenon named ‘electrical trees’,

So-called electrical trees develop in electrical insulation materials that are approaching the end of their useful lives. Electrical stress fields exploit small weaknesses in the insulation material and generate hair-thin channels that spread through the material like the branches of a tree. When the channels finally reach the surface of the insulation material, the damage is done and short-circuiting will occur.

“Short-circuiting is almost always linked to an electrical tree”, explains Lesaint’s colleague, Øystein Hestad.

Faults of this kind are extremely expensive to repair, especially if they occur in a device installed on an offshore wind farm or a subsea oil production installation – perhaps even under inhospitable Arctic conditions.

Under such conditions, say researchers, self-repairing insulation materials represent a cost-effective alternative to traditional repair methods.

The specific solution the researchers propose (from the press release),

SINTEF researchers have based their work on an established idea developed to repair mechanical damage and cracks in composite materials. The composites are mixed with microcapsules filled with a liquid monomer – single molecules which have the property to join with each other (polymerise) to form long-chain molecules. If cracks or other forms of damage encroach on the capsules, the monomer is released and fills the cracks.

“As far as we know, we’re the first to have tested this technique on damage resulting from electrical stress fields”, says Lesaint.

The microcapsules they incorporated into the insulation materials burst when they encounter one of the branches of an electrical tree. The liquid monomer then invades the thin channels forming the ‘tree’ and polymerises. The channels are filled in and the electrical degradation of the insulation material is halted.

In this way the ‘immune defences’ of the insulation material are strengthened, and the lifetime of the installation extended.

As promising as the research is, the scientists are looking for funds (from the press release),

This summer [2014], the SINTEF research team presented the concept at a conference in Philadelphia, USA.

“Many people were surprised, especially when they realised that we had chosen to share the concept with others”, says Lesaint. “Taking the chance that other researchers might steal such a good idea is a risk we have to take”, he says.

The industry has also expressed some interest, but so far not enough to consider funding further research.

“We’re being met with curious interest, but have been told to come back when we have more test results”, says Lesaint. “The problem is that at present we have insufficient funds to conduct the research needed to carry the project forward”, he says.

Next year [2015?] will thus decide as to whether this self-repairing project will take the step from being a promising concept to becoming the next generation of insulation materials.

You can also find the press release/article by Lars Martin Hjortho here in  a Gemini.no newsletter.

Here’s an illustration the researchers have made available,

Subsea installations can get longer life-time with self-repairing materials. Illustration: SINTEF Energy [downloaded from http://gemini.no/en/2014/11/self-repairing-subsea-material/]

Subsea installations can get longer life-time with self-repairing materials. Illustration: SINTEF Energy [downloaded from http://gemini.no/en/2014/11/self-repairing-subsea-material/]

Norway and degradable electronics

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It’s a bit higgledy-piggledy but a Nov. 20, 2014 news item on Nanowerk highlights some work with degradable electronics taking place in Norway,

When the FM frequencies are removed in Norway in 2017, all old-fashioned radios will become obsolete, leaving the biggest collection of redundant electronics ever seen – a mountain of waste weighing something between 25,000 and 30,000 tonnes.

The same thing is happening with today’s mobile telephones, PCs and tablets, all of which are constantly being updated and replaced faster than the blink of an eye. The old devices end up on waste tips, and even though we in the west recover some materials for recycling, this is only a small proportion of the whole.

And nor does the future bode well with waste in mind. Technologists’ vision of the future is the “Internet of Things”. Electronics are currently printed onto plastics. All products are fitted with sensors designed to measure something, and to make it possible to talk to other devices around them. Davor Sutija is General Manager at the electronics firm Thin Film, and he predicts that in the course of a few years each of us will progress from having a single sensor to having between a hundred and a thousand. This in turn will mean that billions of devices with electronic bar codes will be released onto the market.

Researchers are now getting to grips with this problem. Their aim is to develop processes in which electronics are manufactured in such a way that their entire life cycle is controlled, including their ultimate disappearance.

A Nov. 20, 2014 article by Åse Dragland for the Gemini newsletter (also found as a Nov. 20, 2014 news release on SINTEF [Norwegian: Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk forskning]), describes the inspiration for the work in Norway while pointing out some signficant differences from US researchers in the approach to creating a commercial application,

In New Orleans in the USA, researchers have made electronic circuits which they implant into surgical wounds following operations on rats. Each wound is sewn up and the electricity in the circuits then accelerates the healing process. After a few weeks, the electronics are dissolved by the body fluids, making it unnecessary to re-open the wound to remove them manually.

In Norway, researchers at SINTEF have now succeeded in making components containing magnesium circuits designed to transfer energy. These are soluble in water and disappear after a few hours.

…

“We make no secret of the fact that we are putting our faith in the research results coming out of the USA”, says Karsten Husby at SINTEF ICT. “The Americans have made amazing contributions both in relation to medical applications, and towards resolving the issue of waste. We want to try to find alternative approaches to the same problem”, he says.

The circuit containing the small components is printed on a silicon wafer. At only a few nanometres thick, the circuits are extremely thin, and this enables them to dissolve more effectively. Some of the circuit components are made of magnesium, others of silicon, and others of silicon with a magnesium additive.

But the journey to the researchers’ goal from their current position leaves them with more than enough work to do. Making the ultra-thin circuits is a challenge enough in itself, but they also have to find a “coating” or “film” which will act as a protective packaging around the circuits.

The Americans use silk as their coating material, but the Norwegians are not in favour of this. The silk used is made as part of a process which involves the substance lithium, which is banned at MiNaLab – the laboratory where the SINTEF researchers work.

“Lithium generates a technical problem for our lab”, says Geir Uri Jensen, “so we’re considering alternatives, including a variety of plastics”, he says. “In order to achieve this, we’ve brought in some materials scientists here at SINTEF who are very skilled in this field”, he says.

The nature of the coating must be tailored to the time at which the electronics are required to degrade. In some cases this is just one week – in others, four. For example, if the circuit package is designed to be used in seawater, and fitted with sensors for taking measurements from oil spills, the film must be made so that it remains in place for the weeks in which the measurements are being taken.

“When the external fluids penetrate to the “guts” inside the packaging, the circuits begin to degrade. The job must be completed before this happens”, says Karsten Husby.

Geir Uri Jensen makes a sketch and explains how the nano researchers use horizontal and vertical etching processes in the lab to deposit all the layers onto the silicon circuits. And then – how they have to etch and lift the circuit loose from the silicon wafer in order later to transfer it across to the film.

“This works well enough using sensors at full scale”, he says, “but when the wafers are as thin as this, things become more tricky”. Jensen shrugs. “Even if the angle is just a little off, the whole assembly will snap”, he says.

…

There’s no doubt that as the use of consumer electronics increases, so too does the need to remove obsolete electronic products. Just think of all the cheap electronics built into children’s toys which are thrown away every year.

The removal of “outdated electronics” can also be a very labour-intensive process. Every day, surgeons place implants fitted with sensors into our bodies in order to measure everything from blood pressure and pressure on the brain, to how our hip implants are working. Some weeks later they have to operate again in order to remove the electronics.

But not everyone is interested in the new technologies developing in this field. Electronics companies which manufacture circuits are more interested in selling their products than in investing in research that results in their products disappearing. And companies which rely on recycling for their revenues may regard these new ideas as a threat to their existence.
Eco-friendly electronics are on the way

“It’s important to make it clear that we’re not manufacturing a final product, but a demo that can show that an electronic component can be made with properties that make it degradable”, says Husby. “Our project is now in its second year, but we’ll need a partner active in the industry and more funding in the years ahead if we’re to meet our objectives. There’s no doubt that eco-friendly electronics is a field which will come into its own, also here in Norway. And we’ve made it our mission to reach our goals”, he says.

Here’s an image of dissolving electronic circuits made available by the researchers,

Electronic circuits can be implanted into surgical wounds and assist the healing process by accelerating wound closure. After a few weeks, the electronics are dissolved by the body fluids, making it unnecessary to re-open the wound to remove them manually. Photos: Werner Juvik/SINTEF - See more at: http://gemini.no/en/2014/11/tomorrows-degradable-electronics/#sthash.Erh1sZp2.dpuf

Electronic circuits can be implanted into surgical wounds and assist the healing process by accelerating wound closure. After a few weeks, the electronics are dissolved by the body fluids, making it unnecessary to re-open the wound to remove them manually. Photos: Werner Juvik/SINTEF – See more at: http://gemini.no/en/2014/11/tomorrows-degradable-electronics/#sthash.Erh1sZp2.dpuf

The researcher most associated with this kind of work is John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and you can read more about biodegradable/dissolving electronics in a Sept. 27, 2012 article (open access) by Katherine Bourzac for Nature magazine. You can find more information about Thin Film Electronics or Thinfilm Electronics (mentioned in the third paragraph of the news item on Nanowerk) website here.

Norwegians hoping to recover leftover oil with nanotechnology-enabled solutions

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Sabina Griffith’s Jan. 21, 2013 article for Dailyfusion.net profiles two petroleum-themed research projects funded by the Research Council of Norway,

Two new research projects are receiving funding from the Research Council of Norway to develop nanoparticles that can dislodge leftover oil that remains trapped in reservoirs after conventional recovery has been completed.

Every percentage point of enhanced oil recovery rate represents billions in revenues.

“Nanotechnology is a generic technology with the potential for a wide variety of industrial applications,” says Aase Marie Hundere, Special Adviser at the Research Council and part of the NANO2021 program secretariat. “The petroleum industry is Norway’s largest, with vast international potential. Collaboration with the PETROMAKS 2 program provides an excellent opportunity to attract projects that involve specific users from industry.”

A Jan. 17, 2014 Research Council of Norway news release by Claude R. Olsen/Else Lie. Translation: Darren McKellep/Carol B. Eckmann describes first one project and its proponents,

Plugging errant water paths with gel

One of the problems with reservoirs that have been producing petroleum for an extended period is that the water injected flushes less and less oil out. Eventually the injected water is wasted, flowing through the same water-saturated zones rather than being diverted through new areas still containing mobile oil.

SINTEF [Scandinavia’s largest independent research organization] Petroleum Research is heading a project to develop chemical systems that can seal off these zones by sending a solution of nanoparticles and polymers down into the reservoir to the areas where the operator wants to prevent water from flowing. Once they are in position the particles, together with the polymers, will form a gelatinous structure (a gel) that prevents water from flowing through.
It may take the particles weeks or months to make their way through the reservoir, so the project researchers will have to figure out how to keep the gel from forming before the particles have reached their intended destination.

Another critical point will be to discover how the particles are transported through the porous rock: Will they slip through easily to their destination or get caught up in the pore walls along the way?

Together with NTNU, the University of Kansas and a number of petroleum companies, SINTEF will investigate two alternative solutions. Both are based on silica nanoparticles whose surface has been engineered to bind polymers together and form a gel. Developed by SINTEF Materials and Chemistry, the nanoparticles are similar to those used in certain products by Norwegian paint producer Jotun and in other products.

In the first alternative, chemicals will be used to deactivate the surface of the nanoparticles – keeping them passive for weeks or even months – before being activated to bind the polymers together at their destination point.

In the second alternative, active nanoparticles will be packaged into larger nanoparticles that transport them to the point where they are to be released in order to form the gel. The smaller particles will be produced by SINTEF. The University of Kansas has developed the transport particles and is already testing them in field experiments at North American oil reservoirs.

Project manager Torleif Holt of SINTEF Petroleum Research sees great potential for the technology, if successful.

“In the course of our three-and-a-half-year project period, we hope to have learned enough to know whether this method is viable,” he explains. “We would then able to estimate the quantities of nanoparticles needed and have some idea about when this is a financially feasible option.”

Here’s an image of trapped oil, gas, and water,

Functionalised particles to speed up oil flow While the SINTEF project focuses on plugging holes, the NTNU-led project is looking to speed up the flow of oil. Much of a reservoir’s oil remains trapped in small rock pores. NTNU researchers will be customising nanoparticles that can help to dislodge this oil and dramatically increase the amount of oil that can be recovered. One method will utilise “Janus particles”, which feature a special surface of two different hemispheres: one is hydrophilic (attracted to water), the other hydrophobic (attracted to oil). Down in the reservoir, where both oil and water are found, the nanoparticles will spin like wheels and push the oil forward. “This is an early-stage project,” says project manager Jianying He, an associate professor at the NTNU Nanomechanical Lab. “But the idea is very exciting and has major potential for raising the recovery rate of Norwegian oil.” The petroleum companies Det norske and Wintershall are signed on as partners, and project researchers will be communicating with Statoil as well. The University of Houston is the research partner. The second method involves changing the surface charge of nanoparticles to make them capable of slipping between a reservoir’s oil and rock. If development proceeds as planned, Professor He estimates that the nanoparticles will be on the market in roughly seven years. She sees two challenges to using nanoparticles for enhanced recovery: HSE and production capacity. HSE should not be problematic in this case, as studies show that silica-based particles are not hazardous to the environment. Production capacity, however, may prove to be an obstacle to large-scale utilisation of nanoparticles. Petroleum companies would need millions of tonnes of nanoparticles daily. Currently there is no facility that can produce such quantities. [downloaded from http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Nanotechnology_to_recover_stubborn_oil/1253992231414/p117731575391]

Microscope image of reservoir rock. The rock pores (shown in blue) may contain trapped oil, gas and water. Nanoparticles can be used to recover more of the residual oil. (Photo: Ingrid Anne Munz) [downloaded from http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Nanotechnology_to_recover_stubborn_oil/1253992231414/p117731575391]

The news release then describes the other project and its proponents,

Functionalised particles to speed up oil flow

While the SINTEF project focuses on plugging holes, the NTNU [Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet; Norwegian University of Science and Technology]-led project is looking to speed up the flow of oil. Much of a reservoir’s oil remains trapped in small rock pores. NTNU researchers will be customising nanoparticles that can help to dislodge this oil and dramatically increase the amount of oil that can be recovered.

One method will utilise “Janus particles”, which feature a special surface of two different hemispheres: one is hydrophilic (attracted to water), the other hydrophobic (attracted to oil). Down in the reservoir, where both oil and water are found, the nanoparticles will spin like wheels and push the oil forward.

“This is an early-stage project,” says project manager Jianying He, an associate professor at the NTNU Nanomechanical Lab. “But the idea is very exciting and has major potential for raising the recovery rate of Norwegian oil.”

The petroleum companies Det norske and Wintershall are signed on as partners, and project researchers will be communicating with Statoil as well. The University of Houston is the research partner.

The second method involves changing the surface charge of nanoparticles to make them capable of slipping between a reservoir’s oil and rock.

If development proceeds as planned, Professor He estimates that the nanoparticles will be on the market in roughly seven years. She sees two challenges to using nanoparticles for enhanced recovery: HSE  [health, safety, and environment?] and production capacity. HSE should not be problematic in this case, as studies show that silica-based particles are not hazardous to the environment.

Production capacity, however, may prove to be an obstacle to large-scale utilisation of nanoparticles. Petroleum companies would need millions of tonnes of nanoparticles daily. Currently there is no facility that can produce such quantities.

I had no idea Norway was so dependent on the petroleum industry. As for the nanoparticles referred to throughout the descriptions for both projects, I’d love to know more about them.

Bioprospecting yields sunscreen ingredient fromTrondheim Fjord microorganism

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Norwegian business, Promar, has taken out patents based on research showing that a bacterium living in the Trondheim Flord has a trait much prized by makers of sunscreens, from an Aug. 6, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

Norwegian researchers have recently discovered a microorganism with very special properties — a bacteria living in Trondheim Fjord with the Latin name Micrococcus luteus. It possesses a trait which is rare and highly sought-after by medical science and the cosmetics industry — a pigment which can absorb long-wavelength UV radiation (in the range 350-475 nanometres).

The researchers are from SINTEF (Norwegian: Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk forskning), which bills itself as the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia. Their July 25, 2013 news release by Christina Benjaminsen, which originated the news item, explains why this discovery is causing some excitement,

Long-wavelength UV radiation is linked to many forms of skin cancer and malignant melanomas. Currently, there are no sunscreens on the market able to filter out this type of radiation.

However, the Norwegian company Promar AS has taken out patents for both the manufacture and use in future sunscreens of a light-filtering substance extracted from this bacterium. This has been achieved with the help of researchers at SINTEF.

Researchers at SINTEF have what amounts to a library of microorganisms after years of bioprospecting (exploring for organisms with traits useful in industrial applications), from the SINTEF nrews release,

The backdrop to this project involved activities taking place at SINTEF and NTNU [Norwegian University of Science and Technology] by which we collected a variety of different microorganisms from the water surface in Trondheim Fjord. These organisms had one thing in common. They possessed a variety of naturally-occurring light-absorbing pigments. “This is why they are very colourful”, says Trygve Brautaset, Project and Research Manager at SINTEF. The end result was an entire “library” of such microorganisms.

At about the same time, the Norwegian company Promar AS had been working on the idea of manufacturing a substance with a property lacking in sunscreen products currently on the market – the ability to filter out long-wavelength UV radiation.

This is why SINTEF and NTNU were contracted to look for a pigment with this trait. After investigating hundreds of different bacteria, the researchers found Mirococcus luteus in “the library”. It ticked all the boxes. The microscopic organism, no bigger than 1-2 micrometres across, was found to contain a particular carotenoid, known to organic chemists as sarcinaxanthin. This pigment absorbs sunlight at just the wavelength which Promar wanted to provide protection against. By adding sarcinaxanthin to sunscreen, harmful solar radiation is absorbed by the cream before it reaches the skin. However, commercial production of the carotenoid required some tricky genetic engineering.

The process of isolating the particular pigment took two years, from the SINTEF news release,

Firstly, the pigments produced by the bacteria had to be characterized using a variety of chemical techniques designed to identify the desired sarcinaxanthin carotenoid. Subsequently, the genes used by the bacterium to synthesise sarcinaxanthin had to be isolated. Finally, the research team had to transfer all the genes into a host bacterium. The aim was to create an artificial bacterium able to produce sarcinaxanthin sufficiently effectively to be of commercial interest.

“After about two years’ intensive work SINTEF had the first examples of this bacterium ready”, says Brautaset. “We have now synthesised a sarcinaxanthin-producing bacterium which can be cultivated.

We will now be carrying out tests to see if we can produce it in so-called fermenters (cultivation tanks) in the laboratory. This represents an excellent method for the effective production of sarcinaxanthin in volumes large enough to make industrial applications possible”, he says.

UVAblue is the commercial name that’s been given to this new synthetically derived version of sarcinaxanthi. This new substance has aroused much interest,

… “We have been in France talking to many of the world’s largest cosmetics manufacturers”, he says. “Everyone we talked to was very interested in making use of this type of sunscreen factor in their products”, says Goksøyr [Managing Director Audun Goksøyr at Promar AS].

Among the reasons for this is that the cells which generate malignant melanomas are located deep in the skin. It is primarily long-wavelength UV radiation which penetrates to these cells when we sunbathe. By preventing this radiation from penetrating the skin will be an excellent way of averting the development of this highly lethal form of cancer. It will also act as an anti-wrinkle agent.

You can find out more about UVAblue at its eponymous website. ETA Aug. 13, 2013 1230 pm PDT: I’ve removed a citation for and a link to a paper that was incorrectly placed here.