Nearly a year after its launch, OPITO – the UK’s Oil & Gas Academy, is making strides to secure a safe and effective workforce in the sector. Rupal Mehta explores how the industry-led body acts as a focal point for skills, learning and workforce development.

Manufacturing of durable precast concrete blocks using carbon dioxide emitted in cement production will be subject to industrial-scale pilot trials this winter. Canadian company Carbon Sense Solutions Inc, based in Halifax, claims its technique to accelerate concrete curing will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but will replace conventional energy-intensive steam and heat accelerated curing techniques. This could decrease energy and water consumption by as much as 155MJ and 142l/t of concrete, respectively, says the firm.

A cheap but effective polymeric coating to repair damaged aircraft wires and prevent them from sparking and causing an explosion is available, says a chemist at the University of Dayton Research Institute, USA. The Power-Activated Technology for Coating and Healing (PATCH) is a smart material available as a spray and a water-soluble solid material.

A water-soluble fullerene resist for lithography could make electronics manufacturing safer and more environmentally friendly by removing the need for toxic and flammable solvents. Using the resist, a team at the University of Birmingham, UK, has demonstrated a high resolution of about 30nm for the transfer of integrated circuit patterns onto silicon wafers and a strong durability to etching of these substrates.

Dynamic Photometric Stereo (PS) is new approach to inspect fast moving, difficult to analyse surfaces, such as glazed or textured ceramic tiles. It allows manufacturers to produce images of complex 2D and 3D features or flaws, and reduce waste caused by defective tiles.

A sulphide reduction process (SRP) that enables ‘fast and cheap’ extraction of gold from sulphide ores is available from Haber Inc, based in Arlington, USA. It is a water-based solution that does not rely on toxic chemicals such as mercury and cyanide. and is said to have an extraction efficiency of 97%, producing gold powder with purities of 98.8%.

Polyfect, a spin-out company from Loughborough University, UK, hopes to license a technology for dispersing functional fillers to improve the mechanical quality and reduce the weight and cost of polymer products. This could benefit applications such as automotives, packaging and electronics, where fillers enable electrical conductivity, fire retardancy, pigmentation, or barrier and anti-static properties. The technique could also be applied to polymer composites that incorporate carbon fibres or nanotubes.

The risk of fraudsters or terrorists hacking into our personal data will reduce if novel ultrathin switches are incorporated into biometric passports and contactless credit cards, says the team at Peratech in Richmond, UK. The technology is made from quantum tunnelling composites (QTCs) and allows the owner to restrict when sensitive information, contained in radio frequency identification (RFID) microchips, is read by pressing the control. Quantum tunnelling composites are metal-filled polymeric insulating materials that turn to conductors upon loading or mechanical deformation.

Applying aluminium instead of phosphorous dopant ions to optical fibre glass lasers may help manufacturers better tackle photodarkening, which reduces the lifetime of the device. This could aid materials processing where lasers are used for cutting, drilling and welding.

Spanish researchers hope to enhance the efficiency of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) by producing a super lattice that improves ionic conductivity near room temperature by a factor of almost 100 million. The scientists have combined yttria stabilised zirconia (a typical fuel cell electrolyte material) with strontium titanate (an insulator). Existing electrolytes – zirconia, samarium and gadolinium – have to achieve high temperatures of 800-1,000ºC for ionic conductivity, restricting application into the full range of heat and power products and placing high demands on the materials used.