Recycled plastic rarely makes it into structural parts because recycling tends to degrade properties. Recycled milk bottles turn into bottles for motor oil, household cleansers, and other nonfood uses. Most polyethylene terephthalate soda bottles wind up as carpet fibers.

Now, however, GE Plastics, a unit of General Electric Co., has found an entirely new way to transform those PET soda bottles into a higher-value product. It says it will begin chemically modifying PET to make polybutylene terephthalate, an engineering resin, later this year.

According to GE Plastics' crystalline global program manager, Vikram Gopal, the new resin is "a virtual drop-in" replacement for GE's existing grades of Valox PBT and Xenoy PBT/polycarbonate resin grades. "We tested more than one dozen grades, and for each one, the physical properties and long-term performance are virtually drop-in identical," he said.

GE recycles soda bottles into engineering plastics that can be used for applications that are usually too demanding for recycled materials.

The new products, dubbed Valox iQ and Xenoy iQ, process just like their Valox and Xenoy cousins. Users can make parts from pure resin or fill them with glass or other reinforcements. Gopal sees potential uses in such demanding automotive applications as connectors, lighting bezels, energy absorbers, and body panels. GE is currently working with Japanese automotive supplier Denso Corp. and other companies to validate applications.

Recycling also comes with some impressive environmental benefits. According to GE, reusing PET rather than making PBT from scratch slashes carbon dioxide emissions by 1,700 kilograms and oil consumption by 8.5 barrels of crude per 1,000 kilograms of resin.

To put this into perspective, if Valox iQ and Xenoy iQ replaced all the PBT made in 2005, they would have absorbed enough PET—562,000 metric tons—to circle the Earth 120 times with 22.5 billion bottles. In the United States, about one-third of all PET bottles (and just over 20 percent of all PET) is already recycled.

The resins were developed under what GE calls its "ecomagination" initiative to develop environmentally responsible technologies. It calls for GE to more than double its environment-related product research to $1.5 billion in 2010 from $700 million in 2004. It expects this research to double its revenue from ecomagination products to $20 billion over the same period while slashing its own greenhouse gas emissions.

Gopal expects GE to begin shipping six grades of Valox and Xenoy iQ resins during the fourth quarter from facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Singapore. It plans to release additional grades, including a Valox iQ grade that combines recycled PET with bio-based feedstock, as well as an elastomer made from recycled material.

Gopal said that GE had to overcome several technical hurdles over the past two years to make the chemistry behind its iQ resins work. "We think we've done something unique," he said. "It's not just good chemistry, but something that's very practical and that has real environmental benefits."

The Timken Co. has pledged $3 million to the endowment of one of the chairs at the new International Center for Automotive Research at Clemson University.

The position, the Timken Chair in Automotive Design and Development, has been filled by an ASME Fellow, John C. Ziegert. Ziegert will leave his current post as the Newton C. Ebaugh Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida.

Ziegert said that his area of concentration is the design of precision machines and instruments for manufacturing and metrology. He founded a company, Tetra Precision Inc., that markets a device called the OmniGage, which measures machine accuracy.

The Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research is under construction at a 250-acre site in Greenville, S.C., several miles east of Clemson. One building has been completed, the BMW Information Technology Research Center. The graduate engineering center is expected to open in the spring of 2007, according to Thomas Kurfess, who will be the director of the building, to be known as the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center. Kurfess, an ASME Fellow, also holds the BMW Chair in Manufacturing Integration at the new center.

Timken will also contribute a facility for power train research. The executive director of CU-ICAR is Bob Geolas.

The program expects to admit its first automotive engineering Ph.D. candidates this fall, before the graduate engineering center is complete. The program will operate temporarily from the main Clemson campus. A master of science degree program in automotive engineering will start in 2007.

According to the university, Clemson has raised more than $200 million to support the International Center for Automotive Research. Besides Timken and BMW, contributors include Michelin, IBM, Sun Microsystems, SAE International, and the State of South Carolina.

A new industrial steam-generation system that is said to provide increased efficiency, reduced emissions, and lower fuel costs has entered the field test stage.

The Gas Technology Institute of Des Plaines, Ill., has worked with Cleaver-Brooks Inc. of Milwaukee, Wis.—a leader in packaged boilers for industrial, institutional, and commercial applications—to develop the boiler and related systems.

The gas-fired boiler—dubbed the "Super Boiler" by its sponsors—is being demonstrated at Specification Rubber Products in Alabaster, Ala. According to the manufacturer, the boiler has shown significant performance improvements over alternative technologies. In addition, the boiler has a 40 to 50 percent smaller footprint and half the weight of conventional boilers.

A critical part of the system design is its ability to meet future nitrogen oxide emissions regulations without the need for expensive post-combustion flue-gas treatments.

"The development of this technology is being driven primarily by rising energy prices combined with increasingly stringent emissions regulations," said Rick Knight, GTI's R&D manager for power generation. "Today, industry, manufacturers, and the government are teaming with GTI to develop cleaner, more efficient ways to use fossil fuels."

Sponsors for the Super Boiler project include the U.S. Department of Energy, Cleaver-Brooks, the Gas Research Institute, Utilization Technology Development NFP, GTI's Sustaining Membership Program, the Southern California Gas Co., the California Energy Commission, the California Air Resources Board, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District in California.

According to the researchers, steam boilers account for about 35 percent of industrial energy use, and about 80 percent of the currently operating steam boilers are more than 25 years old. Energy efficiency for gas-fired boilers is typically in the 75 to 83 percent range, and uncontrolled NO_x emissions are about 70 parts per million. While NO_x reduction measures are readily available, they generally increase capital and operating costs and consume additional energy.

The goal for the Super Boiler is to achieve fuel-to-steam efficiency greater than 94 percent, while maintaining NO_x and CO levels below 5 parts per million.

"In the industrial sector, boilers are the single largest energy consumer," Knight said, "particularly in the paper, steel, chemical, and food industries. However, 100-year-old technology is still in use. Improvements in efficiency and emissions performance are needed to maintain U.S. industrial competitiveness and help meet urgent challenges for better
air quality and reduced greenhouse gas emissions."

The Super Boiler consists of two main parts: the boiler and the heat recovery system. The boiler uses a split-combustion section (designed to address the low-emission goal), along with enhanced heat transfer innovations from Cleaver-Brooks, to achieve a very compact design.

How fast are robots entering the workplace? With 121,000 new units worldwide, 2005 installations topped 2004 (the previous record year) by 25 percent, according to a new survey, World Robotics 2006, published by the International Federation of Robotics. It estimates that more than half the world's robot population of 914,000 is in Asia, one-third in Europe, and 16 percent in the Americas.

While robotics boomed in Asia and the Americas in 2005, European orders slipped 9 percent below 2004 levels to 26,800 units, due to a 29 percent decline in investment by automakers and their suppliers in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. Other industries did better. Producers of plastic and rubber parts, food and packaging, household appliances, wood and furniture, and glass and ceramic products showed combined growth of 17 percent, but their total volume does not yet approach that of the automotive industry.

Investment in robots grew rapidly in 2004 and 2005, but is likely to slow this year. Pictured is a robot exhibition at this year's Hanover Fair.

North and South American investment in robotics jumped 34 percent to 20,500 units in 2005. Automakers led the charge. Including deliveries to Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, the automotive industry increased industrial robot orders by 50 percent in 2005. Many new orders came from Asian car manufacturers seeking to expand production and improve quality at U.S. and Canadian facilities. This prompted U.S. and European companies in North America to increase their investments in order to stand their ground against competitors.

Asian deliveries surprised observers with their strength, rising 41 percent to 72,600 units. Japanese automakers drove the increase as they replaced older units and modernized plants. That led automakers in China, Thailand, and India to invest in new robots as well, according to Gudrun Litzenberger of the IFR statistical department. Japan also invested heavily in robotics to make electronic components, communication equipment, and especially semiconductors and flat panel displays.

South Korea increased its use of robots for assembly, palletizing, packaging, and inspecting goods.

IFR is not as confident about 2006. It sees little growth ahead in Asia and North America. European demand could decline as the automotive industry rationalizes production capacity before moving ahead with new models starting in 2007. IFR expects demand to remain strong in other industrial sectors, though they are not yet large enough to compensate for slower automotive growth.

Although North American automakers invested heavily last year, they are likely to reduce spending in 2006. As in Europe, however, other industries are picking up some of the slack. Asian demand shows a similar picture, although robot deliveries to China and India continue to increase.

A subsidiary of TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., Roadster Automotive BV of the Netherlands, has acquired a Slovakian electric motor production business, Dana Emerson Actuator Systems, from Dana Corp. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The business, which employs 455 people, manufactures motors used in electrically assisted steering systems for tier one automotive suppliers, including TRW Automotive.

Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., and Naval Sea Systems Command have worked out a $95.4 million contract modification for lightweight and heavyweight torpedo hardware, engineering, and support services. Known as Team Torpedo, the agreement combines Raytheon's manufacturing, design engineering, and support services expertise with the systems engineering and testing capabilities of Naval Undersea Warfare Center operations in Newport, R.I., and Keyport, Wash.

Ford Motor Co. said it has begun to produce dedicated hydrogen-fueled, internal combustion engines, supercharged 6.8-liter V10 engines for Ford's E-450 H2 ICE shuttle bus. Ford said buses will be delivered to customers later this year.

The Boeing Co. said it will launch a program to update the C-130 by modifying avionics, wiring, structures, and systems that will extend the life of the aircraft by as much as 30 years.

Aubrey Group Inc., an engineering firm specializing in electromechanical medical instruments, has moved into a 30,000-square-foot facility in Irvine, Calif. The company said that it has doubled its available floor space for product development and contract manufacturing.

Soft Gold of Tula, Russia, has released a CAD viewer that can be installed on any pocket personal computer or personal digital assistant that uses the Windows Mobile operating system.

Executives at Tech Soft America, a Berkeley, Calif., a manufacturer of engineering development software, have renamed the 10-year-old company Tech Soft 3D.

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© 2006 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers