A new formulation of superconductive wire is about to enter the electrical grid. National Grid, which has been operating two lengths of cable made from high-temperature superconductors in its electrical transmission system at Albany, N.Y., plans to replace a 30-meter superconductive cable with another made of a new type of wire.

The second-generation, or 2G, wire is yttrium based and contains much less silver than the first-generation wire, according to a spokesperson for the manufacturer, SuperPower Inc. in Schenectady, N.Y. She said that almost two-thirds of the material in the first-generation wire is mint-grade silver and that the new wire uses a small amount of silver, which is sputtered over the superconductor.

Besides using far less silver, the 2G wire is less brittle. That means it can be used in thinner strands and is more flexible and less prone to breakage in handling. It is still experimental and has not reached a market cost. SuperPower expects the price of 2G wire to equal that of 1G wire by 2009. The company forecasts that, by 2010 or 2011, the new product will be equal in price to copper wire that is standard in electrical transmission today.

SuperPower made the wire using a highly automated thin-film process. It shipped 10 kilometers of wire to Japan, where it has been fabricated into cable by Sumitomo Electric Industries.

Jon Moscovic, reliability engineer for the New York East division of National Grid, said the company will replace a 30-meter length of first-generation cable during the summer with the new cable and return the line to service in October or November.

The section carries electricity to the grid from hydroelectric stations on the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Its peak usage season is the spring. The section contains two lengths of superconductive cable, the 30-meter segment that will be replaced and a 320-meter stretch that will remain. They are underground and operate at a temperature of 77 kelvin. Together they have logged 7,000 hours of service.

Baldor Electric Co. has completed the sale of the Reliance Electric Co. power services business.

The power services unit, which represented less than 4 percent of Baldor's annual revenues, provides diagnostic support, repair, maintenance, and performance improvement consulting services for electric motors and rotating mechanical power transmission products from 11 different locations in the United States.

Baldor sold the business for strategic purposes, and all proceeds will be used to reduce debt. The sale won't have much impact on Baldor's balance sheet or results of operations, and terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Based in Fort Smith, Ark., Baldor markets, designs, and manufactures industrial electric motors, power transmission products, drives, and generators.

In the process of reorganizing under Chapter 11, Dana Corp. will sell its fluid products business that the company announced were for sale in late 2005.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over Dana's Chapter 11 reorganization proceedings, recently approved the sale.

Dana's fluid products hose and tubing business will be sold to Orhan Holding A.S., a Turkish industrial firm and joint-venture partner of Dana, for $85 million, while the company's coupled products business will be purchased by Coupled Products Acquisition LLC, a subsidiary of Wanxiang (USA) Holdings Corp., for a nominal price.

Dana, based in Toledo, Ohio, expects to close the sale of both businesses by the end of July. The assets to be sold are located in three plants in the United States and one each in Mexico and the United Kingdom. Dana also plans to sell its stock in three companies in France, Slovakia, and Spain.

The fluid products hose and tubing plants employ approximately 1,750 people in seven countries. The coupled products business operations have about 2,130 people.

Dana's customers include vehicle and engine manufacturers in the automotive, commercial vehicle, and off-highway markets.

Imagine a car windshield that displays a map to your destination. Or military goggles with targets and instructions displayed right before a soldier's eyes. Or a window that doubles as a billboard.

Northwestern University researchers report that by combining organic and inorganic materials they have produced transparent, high-performance transistors that can be assembled inexpensively on both glass and plastics.

Researchers have long worked on developing new types of displays powered by electronics without visible wires. But they've had a hard time developing material that could be transparent—to act as a window—while still acting as a display, said Tobin Marks, professor of materials science and engineering at the school in Evanston, Ill. He leads the research.

"Our development provides new strategies for creating transparent electronics," Marks said. "You can imagine a variety of applications for new electronics that haven't been possible previously—imagine displays of text or images that would seem to be floating in space."

Transistors are used for all of the switching and computing necessary in electronics, and, in displays, they are used to power and switch the light sources.

High-performance, transparent transistors could be combined with existing kinds of light display technologies, such as organic light-emitting diodes, liquid crystal displays, and electroluminescent displays, which are already used in televisions, desktop and laptop computers, and cell phones.

To create their thin-film transistors, Marks's group combined films of the inorganic semiconductor indium oxide with a multilayer of self-assembling organic molecules that he said provide superior insulating properties.

The indium oxide films can be fabricated at room temperature, allowing the transistors to be produced at a low cost, Marks said. In addition to being transparent, the transistors outperform the silicon transistors currently used in LCD screens and perform nearly as well as high-end polysilicon transistors, he added.

Prototype displays using the transistors developed at Northwestern could be available in 12 to 18 months, said Marks. He has formed a start-up company, Polyera, to bring this and related technologies to market.

The safety code for elevators and escalators has taken
a new turn, primarily to keep pace with rapid advances in technology. ASME and the Canadian Standards Association have jointly published a new performance-based standard.

The new standard—Performance Based Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators, ASME A17.7/CSA B44.7—is designed to permit innovation in design, but those innovations must now pass review by a new third-party certifying entity called an Accredited Elevator/Escalator Certification Organization, or AECO, for short.

For decades, ASME and CSA have published prescriptive elevator and escalator safety codes. Identified as A17 in the States and B44 in Canada, the codes spell out engineering design relationships to assure safety. The Canadian and ASME codes were technically similar, but had application differences. Earlier this year, the latest edition of both codes was published in a harmonized form for the first time as ASME A17.1/CSA B44 Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators.

The performance-based code is intended as a complement to current prescriptive codes, and will not replace them. Instead, the issuers say, it "provides an alternative process to prescriptive requirements of ASME A17.1/CSA B44 Code for establishing elevator safety."

The consensus process to make changes or additions to a code can take years. As in other areas of technology, design of elevators and escalators is advancing at a rate too fast for the consensus process to keep up. There are cables of new materials that have not been addressed by the traditional standards. It took eight years to build a provision into the codes for an elevator that can operate safely without a separate machine room.

It also took years to develop the performance-based code. A trade association, National Elevator Industry Inc., approached ASME and CSA with the idea in September 2002. The New Technology Committee, which developed the code, first met in January 2003. The code is only now being issued.

The new code sets out a series of Global Essential Safety Requirements that a designer must consider—considerations from adequate lighting in cars to the ability to withstand earthquake.

According to Jim Coaker, who chairs the A17/B44 New Technology Committee, the Accredited Elevator/Escalator Certification Organization is a new idea, at least in North America. To qualify for AECO accreditation, an organization must be certified under an International Standards Organization Guide 65 program. An applicant must also make a tangible demonstration of its technical depth, breadth, and expertise to comprehensively evaluate design work and competently determine that the safety of a new design is at least equivalent to that achieved by following the traditional prescriptive design code.

AECO applicants are to be accredited in the U.S. by the American National Standards Institute and in Canada by the Standards Council of Canada. Discussions are being held to pursue possibilities of joint accreditation and reciprocity between the two certifying organizations.

Under the new code, a manufacturer can present a new design, whether it is a new component or an entire new system, to an AECO for independent evaluation. The certification organization subjects the design to physical examination to determine if it meets safety standards. The AECO's responsibilities are spelled out in Mandatory Appendix I of the new code.

According to Coaker, "An organization which survives the rigor of AECO accreditation will engage in top-shelf professional practice to assure design integrity and service to the interest of public safety."

The Canadian Standards Association published the new document on behalf of both issuing parties. It was made available as a portable document format file, in May and was issued on paper in mid-June.

Westport Innovations Inc., a developer of gaseous-fueled power technologies, said it is the supplier of engines for 20 trucks ordered by the South Coast Air Quality Management District of California. The district's board has approved $2.9 million to buy 20 heavy-duty trucks, which will be powered by Westport liquefied natural gas engines, at the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach.

Total Transportation Services Inc. of Los Angeles will replace 20 of its pre-1990 diesel trucks with the 2006 model trucks that are equipped with the Westport engines.

The Boeing Co. has received a contract that could be worth as much as $28 million over five years for service and support of four research airplanes.

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., will receive engineering and technical support for the four specialized research aircraft—two F-15s and two F/A-18s. They have been modified with research instrumentation to fly missions for NASA, other government agencies, and private industry.

Under the pact, which runs through April 2012, technical assistance will include providing design support for unique Boeing aircraft systems, assisting in ground support operations, and reviewing additional planned aircraft modifications.

Boeing may be required to modify control systems hardware and software, perform actual modifications, and fabricate experimental hardware for these aircraft, along with performing specific research studies using Boeing-developed models and simulators.

Researchers in England are perfecting a technique that allows silicon wafers to be stacked accurately in 3-D structures.

According to one of the researchers, Michael Kraft, a senior lecturer in MEMS at the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in Southampton, England, the major challenge when stacking silicon wafers is to align one wafer to another, matching all the features.

"The alignment needs to be accurate," Kraft said. "At the moment, big chunky machines are being used and the process is being carried out optically. The optical path is long and this introduces errors.

"But we've have demonstrated that we do not need expensive machines to create alignment," Kraft said. "Our system will automatically fit the wafers together like Lego."

Kraft and his colleagues, Mark Spearing and Lliudi Jiang of the School of Engineering Sciences, have developed a stacking approach that fabricates and aligns convex pyramids and concave pits.

Chips are bonded through a microfabrication process. They've achieved an alignment precision of 200 nanometers, Kraft said.

ASME has published its 2007 Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code. ASME updates the code to reflect advancements in technology and issues a new edition every three years. The 2007 code includes a completely revised and updated Section VIII, Division 2, covering the construction of pressure vessels.

Sandia National Laboratories and Boeing are collaborating on a project looking at the feasibility of using a hydrogen-powered fuel cell for providing backup power in aircraft. Sandia is leading research into electrical and environmental requirements, storage issues, and efficiency.

The Banner Engineering Racing Team scored its first win of the 2007 racing season in the Grand-Am GT Classic at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut. Drivers Leighton Reese and Tim Lewis Jr. of Banner Engineering's Pontiac GXP.R took the lead on lap 94 of 139 and held it for the remainder of the race.

National Technical Systems Inc., an engineering services company in Calabasas, Calif., has acquired TRA Certification of Elkhart, Ind., through a joint venture company, National Quality Assurance, USA. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. NQA is an ISO certification body.

BlueCielo ECM Solutions Inc., a provider of engineering content management software formerly known as Cyco, has acquired DataCore Technology in an all-cash transaction. DataCore, a specialist in implementing electronic data management systems, and BlueCielo will merge their activities and operate as one company.

Pyramid Petroleum Inc. of Houston is acquiring Capco Energy of Calgary, Alberta. Following the transaction, Pyramid expects to raise funds to expand the oil and gas production of the combined company, mainly in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Defense Energy Support Center, based in Fort Belvoir, Va., awarded a $1.1 million contract for 315,000 gallons of synthetic jet fuel to Shell Oil Products of Houston. The fuel will go by tanker from Houston to several Air Force locations and a NASA facility in the United States.

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© 2007 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers