SBIR Phase I: A Fundamentally New X-ray Driven Manufacturing System for Recycling Materials

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research develops a method of unambiguously sorting small chips of superalloys at high speeds. Spectramet Technology is a platform optoelectronic manufacturing technology for analyzing copper-rich, aluminum-rich, zinc-rich, cobalt and nickel-rich alloys at previously unachievable accuracy and high speeds into known alloys to meet smelter specifications. The technology platform is not only aimed at sorting alloys into base metal groups, but can also sort the alloys by alloy type. One part of the Spectramet Technology focuses on sorting valuable superalloys such as nickel-, cobalt-, and titanium based metals. This proposal is aimed at extending the existing technology with an entirely new innovative sensor approach to process particles one-thousandth the size of prior applications and to identifying and sorting those particles at speeds thousands of times faster than has ever been done before. The project will focus on sorting clean machine chips from superalloy scrap with 100% inspection, identification and sorting on a particle-by-particle basis. Contaminants that would make the chips unusable for recycling into the original alloy will be removed prior to reuse. The broader impact of this research will be to reduce the amount of strategic superalloy metal that is downgraded to inferior product uses and applications in the U.S. so that this very valuable scrap metal can be recycled into its highest value application, namely so it can be used again as superalloy feedstock for making new superalloy parts. The result of recycling this material rather than downgrading it to lower value applications will be reduced U.S. dependence on supplies of strategic virgin metals recovered at primary refineries from ore (most of which are purchased abroad), substantial energy savings from use of scrap rather than ore and virgin materials, and greatly reduced emissions because secondary smelting consumes much less energy than primary production followed by remelting.