Date:
Monday, March 20, 2023
Location:
San Diego Convention Center, Room 30C
Sponsored by:
TMS Light Metals Division, TMS Magnesium Committee
Organizers:
Steven Barela, Terves, Inc; Aeriel Murphy-Leonard, Ohio State University; Petra Maier, University of Applied Sciences Stralsund; Neale Neelameggham, IND LLC; Suveen Mathaudhu, Colorado School of Mines; Victoria Miller, University of Florida
The Magnesium Technology 2023 symposium at TMS2023 will open with a session of invited presentations on Monday morning. Following the keynote, related sessions will be held throughout the week as part of the Magnesium Technology symposium, one of the largest annual gatherings of magnesium specialists in the world. Magnesium Technology Awards will be presented during this session following the second speaker.
Featured Speakers
Andrew Sherman, Terves LLC
Presentation Title: "Sustainable Domestic Manufacturing and Protecting Intellectual Property in a Post-AIA (America Invents Act) World"
About the Presentation
Ten years ago, the America Invents Act (AIA) was passed by Congress. Despite lofty intentions, the AIA significantly degrades the value of intellectual property (IP) and patents. Terves has recently gone through an enforcement action against a large importer of foreign magnesium products. This presentation argues that the current system is rigged against small company inventors, with non-technical administrative judges invalidating 84% of all patents in favor of infringers, versus <50% by multiple skilled patent examiners during reexaminations. Enforceable IP is essential for American competitiveness to compete with subsidized, unregulated, and lower cost offshore locations. Terves is a member of US Inventor, representing 60,000 inventors focused on restoring individual patent rights post AIA. Terves's experience enforcing IP rights in today’s climate, as well as US Inventor’s pending bill to restore patent rights, will be discussed along with potential strategies and actions that inventors can take to mitigate AIA limitations.
About the Presenter
Andrew Sherman, Terves chief executive officer and chief technology officer, is a seasoned entrepreneur who has been a principal or lead in eight prior technology start-ups. He possesses more than 31 years of experience developing specialty metallic and nanocomposite products, including development of advanced rocket motors, satellite, reentry vehicle, missile, and aircraft critical components; energy adsorbing and nanocomposite metallic armor; magnesium nanocomposites for oil and gas; and controlled response and multifunctional materials, including expandable, dissolvable, and reactive materials. He has raised more than $65M in early-stage financings, including federal, state grants, debt, equity financing, and Fortune 100 investments. His leadership has led to a $250M+ corporate acquisition, two smaller corporate acquisitions, and an initial public offering (IPO): Abakan Inc., ABKI:OTCQB, with peak market capitalization over $250M. His developments are recognized with three R&D 100 awards for Best New Industrial Technologies, four NorTech awards, one Wall Street Journal Tech Genius award, Forbes magazine Top Materials Science Company, NACE corrosion technology of the year, and more than 15 additional awards. Sherman is a two-time Ernst/Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, and has been appointed as a fellow of ASM International. He holds or has pending more than 105 patents, has given over 170 technical presentations at international conferences, authored over 50 articles and publications, and serves or has served as a board member for multiple nonprofit organizations, including the Edison Materials Technology Center (EMTEC), the U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen Safety Panel, and the Nanonetwork. Sherman is a professional engineer who has multiple B.S. degrees in ceramic and chemical engineering and an M.S. in ceramic engineering from The Ohio State University.
Aaron Palumbo, Big Blue Technologies
Presentation Title: "Reductant Consideration in Thermal Pathways to Primary Magnesium Metal Production"
About the Presentation
Thermal routes to produce primary magnesium metal are generally demarcated with lower capital costs. However, the range of operational costs is high depending on reduction reactor efficiencies and configuration, labor intensity, and the cost of reductant. Choosing a reductant material can be a challenge in terms of logistics, supply security, cost, and technical performance. Presented is an assessment of possible reductant materials and the interplay between heat of reaction, reactor and condenser design, byproducts, and the behavior and role of impurities. On one end of the reductant spectrum is the reaction of carbon and magnesia, generating exclusively a byproduct gas, along with the product magnesium metal, and virtually no solid residue. Conversely, the reaction between calcined dolomite and ferrosilicon generates virtually no byproduct gas and nearly 6x more mass of calcium silicates than magnesium metal. These chemistries share engineering challenges that center on the method of recovery of products.
About the Presenter
Aaron Palumbo has been working on sustainable chemical process development for the past 15 years. His work includes algal growth and extraction systems, thermochemical biomass conversion, solarthermal energy systems, water splitting, magnesium metal production, carbon capture, and lithium-ion battery recycling. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2014. Afterwards, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher on the foundational effort to develop a carbothermal reduction process technology for primary magnesium metal production. Since then, Palumbo has worked on business development of a variety of sustainability process initiatives with emphasis on lab-to-commercial scale-up.
Norbert Hort, Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Presentation Title: "Metastable – Stable"
About the Presentation
Most metallic materials are often cast. This is a highly dynamic process where composition and solidification conditions can become a challenge due to the appearance of porosity, shrinkholes, segregations, and the formation of intermetallic phases. Heat treatments are applied to get rid of segregations and stable and metastable intermetallic phases for homogenization purposes and to obtain a material that is homogeneous with an adjustable property profile. However, often it is observed that the dissolution especially of metastable phases really takes long times (hundreds or even thousands of hours) and high temperature which is accepted in the academic world but not acceptable for real industrial applications due to time and costs. Especially for biodegradable metals, metastable phases perhaps could be regarded as “stable” when the time of absorption is in range of a few weeks only and could be used to adjust properties.
About the Presenter
Norbert Hort completed his studies in materials science at the Technical University of Clausthal, Germany, in 1994 and received his doctorate there in 2002. Even as a student, he worked with magnesium and its alloys. Since 2000, he has been working in Geesthacht at the Helmholtz Centre there and is still active in magnesium research today. This concerns structural materials as well as degradable implant materials. The development of new alloys and the characterization of microstructure and properties are in the foreground. Another focus is the investigation of solidification behavior and phase transformations during solidification with the help of synchrotron radiation.
Carolyn Woldring, Magsorbeo Biomedical
Presentation Title: "Engineered Bioabsorption for Implant Applications"
About the Presentation
Bioabsorbable magnesium alloys have often been studied in the context of absorbing too fast, with the goal of obtaining a slower absorption rate for adequate use as a temporary implant material. While this is an important challenge to overcome, it oversimplifies the needs of surgeons and patients while not accounting for the requirements of various applications and the technological complexities of absorption. Through this presented work, we are building the magnesium alloy capabilities to engineer our alloy's bioabsorption profile to optimize implant performance based on requirements such as implant size, time to healing, and anatomical differences.
About the Presenter
Carolyn Woldring is a co-founder and the chief technology officer of Magsorbeo Biomedical Corp., a developer and manufacturer of high-performance absorbable implants. Woldring received her B.S. in materials science and engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2013, where she was an active member of the Advanced Metalworks Enterprise. Upon graduation, she started her career at Boston Scientific, where among many other projects, she worked on the bioabsorbable magnesium stent project and became the company’s technical expert in corrosion testing of magnesium, developing a benchtop corrosion test method utilizing learnings of the absorption process from preclinical studies. In the ten years she has worked in the medical device industry, Woldring has led new product development efforts, including product design and specification setting, test method design and validation, and design verification and validation. She is currently developing Magsorbeo's Curasorb Alloy, a bioabsorbable magnesium alloy with a tailorable absorption rate.