Innovation Observatory helps customers to exercise that curiosity, and provides the tools, and expertise to help them exploit the findings. For great insight you need to combine great technique, and understanding of a variety of industries, with in-depth knowledge of their trends and dynamics. Innovation Observatory helps clients to search beyond their immediate context, to identify, evaluate, or open up new opportunities. We focus on fast moving technological markets, exhibiting rapid change. We have in-depth specialist knowledge in the following areas:
Innovation Observatory researches, analyses and interprets fast-moving technology markets to help our clients:
identify great product or service investment opportunities
avoid wasting time and money on the wrong products, services or markets
We combine best-in-class research, analysis and consulting techniques with deep sector knowledge and a track record of demonstrating how technology markets evolve. We are currently working in the telecoms, IT, media, health and environmental technology sectors.
As part of the Energy 2050 project a hybrid battery / flywheel energy storage solution will be installed at the University of Sheffield’s energy storage facility in the UK. The result of the EUR4 million project will be connected to the Irish and UK grids to help respond to energy demand. Flywheels work by accelerating a rotor to high speeds using electrical energy which effectively becomes stored in there as rotational energy. It can then be converted back to electrical energy when demand requires. Flywheels have a longer life span than batteries. This flywheel battery combination will produce 1MW of power and store 10kWh of energy.
Japanese company creates several devices that can scavenge heat to make electricity
Japanese company KELK plans to launch three thermoelectric energy harvesting products in June 2017. These are:
University of Texas scientists have demonstrated the use of magnets and nanoparticles to remove oil from water – a technology that could have uses in the oil and gas industry, environmental cleanup operations and clean drinking water. Modern oil production methods separate about 95 percent of the oil from produced water but leaves behind small oil droplets. The use of magnetic nanoparticles enables the removal of those remaining particulates. The team used a method called high gradient magnetic separation that is used in mining to remove metals, and in the food industry to remove toxic particles. The team’s advance was designing a coating for the nanoparticle that allows it to bond to oil droplets in the water using electrostatic force – the coating is a polymer that has a positive charge; the oil droplets have a negative charge. After the bonding, the small droplets can be pulled from the water with a magnet. The team plans to develop a treatment system for oil and gas production plants that could handle high volume capacities.
A British start-up called LIG Nanowise has developed microspheres that promise to increase the magnification strength of optical microscopes fourfold. The company, using microspheres which have a negative refractive index, has created Nanopsis a microsphere microscope attachment that can see in ‘super-resolution’ to 90nm using light. The level of magnification being offered here could potentially allow scientists to see viruses, live and in real time – although this model is still in the development stage the company has released the Nanopsis M for use in materials research. LIG Nanowise are researching the use of microspheres in smartphone displays – to act as sapphire crystal slicers.
Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) Southern Regional Research Center (SRRC) in New Orleans, Louisiana, have developed a method to trap silver nanoparticles inside cotton fibres. Silver nanoparticles are widely used for their anti-microbial properties. The scientists have made fabrics with silver nanoparticles more resistant to the effects of washing by producing the nanoparticles directly in the cotton itself. The process allows for the growing of small nanoparticles of about 12nm in diameter. Tests of the technique showed that after 50 laundering cycles the silver-cotton nanocomposite fibre retained about 93 percent antimicrobial silver nanoparticles. The scientists see fabrics made with this method having potential for use in bandages to help keep a wound or burn clean. The researchers plan to further investigate the efficacy of their material at killing bacteria on a floor surface.
The Nanocathedral Project is researching nanomaterials for the conservation of five historic cathedrals across Europe. Nanomaterials such as nanoparticle-based consolidants and polymer nanocomposite coatings will be developed that will provide conservationists with methods to consolidate, protect and control pollutant decomposition, preventing further degradation of the old stonework.
University of New South Wales scientists have invented a catalyst for splitting water with electric current to produce hydrogen, which they claim is cheap and efficient. The technology uses ultrathin slices of a porous nickel-iron metal-organic complex material coated on a foam electrode. Usually splitting water involves two different catalysts but this catalyst can split water into oxygen and hydrogen with no help. The scientists now intend to adapt their approach to enable the production of ultrathin nanosheet arrays made of these metal-organic materials.
New material could help smartphones become more resistant
Researchers at Queens University, UK, have discovered a new material which could make electronic device screens more resistant to cracking and breaking. The material consists of semiconducting molecules C60 and layered materials such as graphene and hBN. According to the team, hBN provides stability, electronic compatibility and isolation charge to graphene, while C60 can act as a solar cell – converting sunlight into electricity. The scientists say that the new material has similar physical properties to silicon but shows improved chemical stability, lightness and flexibility that could mean less propensity of breakage and damage when used in devices. A problem with the material that must be overcome, though, is the material’s lack of a band gap which is crucial to applications within current electronics. The scientists are investigating a potential solution – transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).
