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

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will put into service a prototype/pilot facility to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of unambiguously sorting small chips of super-alloys at high speeds. Spectramet Technology is a platform optoelectronic manufacturing technology for analyzing metals and 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 super-alloys such as nickel-, cobalt-, and titanium based metals. This proposal is aims 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 broader impact/commercial potential from this technology will be reducing the amount of strategic super-alloy 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, so it can be used again as super-alloy feedstock for making new super-alloy 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.