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A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6

8

METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS

process developed as part of DOE’s

Critical Materials Institute is designed

to economically recover large amounts

of magnets made using neodymium—a

rare earth element that is mined out-

side the U.S. The permanent magnets

are used in everything from computer

hard drives and cell phones to clean

energy technologies such as electric

vehicles and wind turbines.

ORNL’s highly automated pro-

cess for recovering magnets employs

a unique system to sort and align hard

drives on a conveyer for processing. The

method uses a mapping station with

barcode scanning and a coordinate

measuring machine to populate a data-

base of each make of hard drive so they

may be positioned for correct robotic

disassembly. The process is designed

Stanford researchers modified a sheet of polyethylene with a series of chemical

treatments to make a cooling fabric. Courtesy of L.A. Cicero.

Metaldyne Performance Group

Inc.

(MPG), Southfield, Mich.,

acquired

Brillion Iron Works Inc.,

Brillion, Wis., which specializes in

the casting design and production

of gray, ductile, and austempered

ductile iron products. MPG manu-

factures gray and ductile iron cast-

ings and machines iron, aluminum,

and steel components for the trans-

portation and industrial markets.

mpgdriven.com.

BRIEFS

The Steel Market Development Institute,

Detroit, released its

2016 Steel

Industry Technology Roadmap for Automotive,

which looks at advanced

high-strength steel (AHSS) material and manufacturing technologies re-

lated to design, fuel economy, strength, durability, environmental perfor-

mance, value, and how AHSS meets those requirements now and in the

future. It also identifies AHSS solutions and recommends areas for future

research

. autosteel.org.

PLASTIC CLOTHING

COOLS SKIN

Researchers at Stanford Univer-

sity, Calif., engineered a low-cost plas-

tic material that could become the

basis for clothing that cools the wearer,

reducing the need for air conditioning.

The plastic-based textile, if woven into

clothing, could cool a person’s body far

more efficiently than the natural or syn-

thetic fabrics worn today.

The material works by allowing

the body to discharge heat in two ways

that would make the wearer feel nearly

4°F cooler than if they wore cotton

clothing. It also allows the heat that a

person’s body emits as infrared radia-

tion to pass through the plastic textile.

To develop the new textile, researchers

blended nanotechnology, photonics,

and chemistry to give polyethylene a

number of characteristics desirable in

clothing material—it allows thermal

radiation, air, and water vapor to pass

through, and it is opaque to visible

light.

stanford.edu.

RECOVERING RARE

EARTH MAGNETS

The DOE’s Oak Ridge National

Laboratory (ORNL), Tenn., and Momen-

tum Technologies, Dallas, signed a

nonexclusive licensing agreement for

an ORNL process designed to recover

rare earth magnets from used com-

puter hard drives. The patent-pending

ORNL process helps recover magnets

from used computer hard drives.