Students to address wastewater management, measure performance of materials used in transportation sector The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center is sponsoring final-year capstone projects for 18 undergraduate engineering students at 91Âţ»­app. In this year’s projects, students will assess a range of industrial problems and work in teams to find solutions. Using Herty’s expertise and resources, one team of students will address the issue of wastewater management to reduce water usage, and another team will focus on the equally important challenge of developing a process for measuring the performance of materials produced at the Center and used in the transportation sector. The capstone project, required for graduation, is designed to solve real-world problems through process design, technology selection and budget constraints. The project allows students to demonstrate their capabilities as an engineer by bringing together all the skills and knowledge learned during the students’ undergraduate programs. “The capstone project is an important part of the undergraduate experience as it combines all the learnings into a focused effort while emphasizing teamwork to solve problems,” said professor Brian Vlcek, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We are thrilled the Herty Advanced Materials Development Center, which is a world-class research facility, is undertaking this endeavor to help develop our undergraduates and give them the experience in research and industrial applications they will need as they move forward in their careers.”   Wastewater management is a $600 billion a year industry that is becoming an increasingly important field. According to the United Nations, one-fifth of the world’s population is challenged by water scarcity, and another 1.6 billion have limited access for economic reasons. “This means that three billion people have poor to limited access to clean water,” said Alexander A. Koukoulas, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Herty Center. “With much of the western United States in severe to exceptional drought conditions, water management has become an issue of national importance.”    Under the mentorship of Herty, one student team will assess current water use and water pretreatment processes to develop a system that will recover and reuse 90 percent of all water used at the facility. The goal is also to design the system to meet water quality targets and provide a payback period of three years that would justify the capital expenditures for the new system. “We are pleased with this opportunity to work with great young minds and use their creativity and capabilities to solve a problem that is becoming a key challenge for government, communities and industry, namely, the management of water,” added Koukoulas. “Herty conducts a range of development projects where we typically discharge up to 100,000 gallons of wastewater per day. By working with these student engineers, our goal is to reduce this amount by 90 percent, essentially eliminate wastewater discharge and drastically reduce our need for fresh water. The environmental benefits and cost savings in doing this will be significant, and the knowledge we gain through this project could be used as a model for local industries looking to conserve their water use.” The students completing this project will first assess current water use at Herty to establish a baseline of water use and quality. They will then use client-defined water quality targets to select appropriate water treatment technologies. Herty currently pretreats its wastewater by removing solid materials. The challenge for the students is to find cost-effective technologies that will further clean the wastewater stream so that it can be returned to the facility and reused without compromising operations. Treatment options that will be considered include nanofiltration and reverse osmosis (RO) and forward osmosis (FO). The FO system, an emerging desalination technology, is particularly attractive because of its low operating costs and other far-reaching applications. The second team will undertake a completely different but equally important challenge to develop a process for measuring the performance of materials that are produced at Herty and used in the transportation sector. The students will design and construct a test rig that will be used to measure material properties that Herty scientists believe will be predictive of end-use performance. “At this time, the only measure of end-use performance is actual use in the field. Through the development of this test rig, we expect to be able to measure properties in the lab. This will not only benefit our quality control program but it will open a whole new door to product development, where we can drastically reduce cycle times,” said Walter Chappas, Ph.D., director of Advanced Materials for the Herty Center. The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center, an applied research center of 91Âţ»­app, is a world-class research, development and demonstration facility. Located in Savannah, Herty was established in 1938 as a state authority and became part of Georgia Southern in 2012 at which time the Center began working with undergraduate and graduate students to provide real-world experience in industrial processing and technology development. Herty is a new product and process accelerator providing technical, market and development expertise in short-fiber composites, biomaterials, and biomass processing. Herty’s expertise and extensive pilot-scale capabilities for prototyping new products help companies de-risk the commercialization process. For more information, visit 91Âţ»­app, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers more than 125 degree programs serving more than 20,500 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelors, masters and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education. Visit

The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center (Herty), an applied research center of 91Âţ»­app, today launched a new Advanced Chemical Processing (ACP) pilot facility.  This new pilot facility allows Herty to expand its research programs and client services to those companies seeking to develop and test new advanced materials required in today’s international and increasingly competitive markets.  Applications range from the development of active fibers for water filtration, nutraceuticals and the production of biomaterials for automotive and aerospace parts. “We listened to our industrial partners and engineered this new pilot facility to meet their future needs for material and chemical processing,” said Dr. Alexander A. Koukoulas, President & CEO. “The scale and flexibility of this system is second to none and it integrates well with our extensive in-house capabilities. It provides our partners and clients with a unique platform for accelerating the pace of new product development in a number of growing industrial sectors, including biomaterials and discrete manufacturing.” The new ACP at Herty allows the development, testing and production of a wide range of advanced specialty and high performance materials, like nanocrystalline cellulose – an exceptionally strong, low-cost, renewable composite material that has multiple applications in the automotive and aerospace industries. It also enables Herty to process a wide variety of materials from minerals to polymers for industrial, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical applications, as well as for pulp bleaching. “Nanocellulose has the strength properties similar to those of Kevlar® and is considered to be one of the most promising renewable biomaterial for the type of advanced composites used in the automotive and aerospace industries,” said Dr. Omar F. Ali, Director BioProducts. “With our newly-designed facility and our expertise in processing this renewable material for multiple purposes, we are poised to help industry partners produce these advanced materials for a variety of current and next generation industrial needs.” The versatility of the ACP pilot area will also go beyond nanocellulose, allowing Herty to process anything from minerals to polymers, and to modify those materials – turning the pedestrian into exciting. One such amazing transformation will be the production of bio-based polymers, such as lignin, which can be used to produce low-cost carbon fiber. Additionally, the ACP pilot area will allow Herty to provide more traditional chemical processes, such as pulp bleaching, as an integral part of its traditional pulp and paper services. “We now have the ability to process raw biomass feedstocks, such as wood chips and agricultural residues, and process this material to isolate the fiber. We can then bleach the fiber and produce roll goods,” said Dr. Ali. “This means we can provide product developers with a unique one-stop-shop for processing natural fibers, making the process more efficient, cost-effective and streamlined for our partners,” said Dr. Ali. Finally, the ACP area will be used to prepare advanced polymer systems that can be used in 3-D printing applications. 3-D printing is revolutionizing manufacturing because it enables on-demand production everything from electronic components and auto parts to living tissue. The ACP pilot facility, we will be able technology developers to produce master batch quantities of materials used in a range of 3-D printing platforms. At the center of Herty’s ACP pilot facility is a versatile 500 L reactor, which can be used for continuous mixing, multi-component reactions, and continuous drying. All wetted parts are Hastelloy®, which allows the processing of corrosive materials, such as strong acids. The reactor system is fully instrumented, with data logging capabilities to monitor reaction conditions. Direct reactant injection and sampling is also available. “More and more American industry is competing on razor thin differences – a lighter case or more break-resistant glass for a mobile phone, a lighter car body with an improved mpg, or lower-cost materials for manufacturing medicines,” said Dr. Walter Chappas, Director of Herty’s Advanced Materials Group.  “This new reactor system offers a powerful platform for giving US industry new and innovative materials, from plastics to specialized coatings.” About Herty Advanced Materials Development Center The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center, an applied research center of 91Âţ»­app, is a world-class research, development, and demonstration facility. Herty is a new product and process accelerator providing technical, market, and development expertise in short-fiber composites, biomaterials, and biomass processing. Herty’s expertise and extensive pilot-scale capabilities for prototyping new products help companies de-risk the commercialization process. Visit: . About 91Âţ»­app 91Âţ»­app, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers more than 125-degree programs serving more than 20,500 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education. Visit

Herty AMDC becomes a founding member of the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, U.S. Department of Energy awards $70 million grant

The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center (AMDC), an applied research center of , is pleased to announce that it is a founding member of a new national research institute created under the (NNMI). The new institute, the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI), was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop better composite materials and technologies for rapid deployment within the automotive, wind turbine and compressed gas storage industries. Partners in the new institute include the DOE and a consortium of 122 companies, nonprofits and universities that will invest more than $250 million to advance the development of low-cost, high-performance composites. “Lighter, stronger materials are key to increasing energy efficiency and fuel economy,” said Dr. Walter Chappas, director of Advanced Materials at Herty AMDC. “Herty has considerable experience in the design and production of composite materials so we are very excited be part of this national effort and contributing our expertise to this endeavor.” The new institute, announced by President Obama, will focus on advanced fiber-reinforced polymer composites that combine strong fibers with tough plastics to yield materials that are lighter and stronger than steel. While advanced composites are used in selective industries such as aircraft, military vehicles, satellites and luxury cars, these materials remain expensive, require large amounts of energy to manufacture and are difficult to recycle. IACMI is dedicated to overcoming these barriers by developing low-cost, high-production, energy-efficient manufacturing and recycling processes for composites applications. “Being a partner in this national network allows us to collaborate with other leading technology providers to solve real world problems and to create the manufacturing platforms of the future,” said Alexander A. Koukoulas, president and CEO of Herty AMDC. “Our participation also allows us to showcase the R&D and manufacturing capabilities here in Georgia and the expertise that our organization can bring to this national initiative.” IACMI is the fifth named Institute and became another important step toward fulfilling the President’s vision of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). The public-private partnership was selected through a competitive process led by the Advanced Manufacturing Office within the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Among the 57 corporate partners are: Adherent Technologies, Inc.; Altair; Ashland Performance Materials; BASF Company; Boeing Company; Celanese International; Dow Chemical Company; DuPont; Ford Motor Company; GE Water & Power; Honda R&D Americas, Inc.; Johns Manville; Lockheed Martin; Materials Innovation Technologies; Owens Corning; PPG Industries, Inc.; and Volkswagen. Key University Partners include: The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Colorado School of Mines; Colorado State University; Iowa State University; Michigan State University; Mississippi State University; National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Purdue University; The Ohio State University; University of Colorado-Boulder; University of Dayton Research Institute; University of Kentucky; University of Michigan; and Vanderbilt University. About Herty The Herty Advanced Materials Development Center, an applied research center of 91Âţ»­app, is a world-class research, development, and demonstration facility. Herty is a new product and process accelerator providing technical, market, and development expertise in short-fiber composites, biomaterials, and biomass processing. Herty’s expertise and extensive pilot-scale capabilities for prototyping new products help companies de-risk the commercialization process. Visit: . About 91Âţ»­app 91Âţ»­app, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers more than 125-degree programs serving more than 20,500 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education.