US Gas Boom Lures Overseas Investment

Lost in the economic benefits shale gas drilling has been providing for the American economy

domestically are the issues it's caused for businesses overseas, especially Europe, where natural gas costs three-quarters more than here.  Consequently, the US natural gas landscape has very quickly become a magnet for foreign investment.   Many businesses are rather loudly musing about the possibility of expanding to the US, and a few have already moved to outright action:

BASF, the massive chemical corporation based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, has announced its intention to further expand investments in North America, citing cost advantages in keeping production near cheap, natural gas as a factor.  The company has already shifted $5.9 billion in investment to the US, as well as construction of a formic acid plant in Louisiana.  In addition, the Canadian Methanex announced back in January of plans to begin moving their Chilean facilities to Louisiana as well after coming to a partnership agreement with Chesapeke Energy Corporation to supply them with natural gas.  Austrian Voestalpine has also announced plans to build an iron-ore plant in Texas to take advantage of low prices as well.  It's estimated the plant will create 150 permanent jobs.

Construction has already begun on BASF's formic acid plant in Geismar, La.

These developments are not just limited to the energy markets.  Natural gas is involved in the production power of pretty much every major industry worldwide, from plastics to steel to, of course, oil.  And while current prices may not continue, the natural gas boom is projected to be on course in
its current trajectory for quite awhile; music to the ears of corporations looking for staying power.  Investment potential is also in the interests of Asian-based businesses that are at the mercy of even higher gas prices than their European counterparts; this could very well be a migration trend that goes on well into the decade.

Voestalpine's reduction plant in Texas will be a $715 million investment.

Conversely, it's important to keep in mind through all this that the gas boom is in a sweet spot where the gap between supply and demand is so vast, with resources so un-allocated, that it's only a matter of time before demand catches up.  More businesses, domestic and international, will mean more production, driving up prices.  In addition, the Obama Administration is also contemplating raising natural gas exports, which would lower rates overseas.  So far, however, none of this has been enough to discourage the companies that have already taken the plunge, clearly signaling widespread confidence across the global manufacturing landscape in the future of North American natural gas production.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

New Composite Can Strengthen Seawalls

Our seawalls are not in good shape.

This normally wouldn't be the most newsworthy bombshell if the US hasn't had five straight years of climate shift, including rising sea levels affecting previously unaffected regions (see: "Sandy, Hurricane").

Your average seawall is mostly concrete, vulnerable
to erosion and weathering.

So, in considering the changing weather-scape, and just how ill-prepared the highly populous areas of this country are to even understand just how vulnerable they are right now, yyyeah our seawalls are not good.  Outdated and more importantly, too expensive to make with materials that are too porous to be considered adequate for inevitable flooding.

Back in the 20th century, we used concrete and wood.  Nowadays we use polyester resins, glass-based that need a gel coating to block water effectively.  Even then, the average life for polyester seawalls is a mere 25 years.  More recently, manufacturers have been turning to polyurethene resins, a much stronger ingredient for composite sheet piles, but they've so far been too expensive to use on a large scale.

This pure polyurethane resin seawall is laced with Bayer's
new PURloc composite. 

Enter Bayer MaterialScience, who, in collaboration with Gulf Synthetics, crafted PURloc; a synthetic resin made with Bayer's polyurethane system designed to be the strongest seawall material yet.  Using a process called pultrusion, Bayer experts were able to inject pure polyurethane resin into every dense layer of the sheet pile.  The result is seawall material stronger and more elastic than Gulf's newest brand, as well as cheaper because of the pultrusion process.

Gulf Synthetics is currently putting the PURloc composite sheet piles to work in areas of New York and the Cayman Islands.  If it proves its worth, this could be an exciting new development, as well as an opportunity to re-manufacture a much-needed product for the immediate future.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

GM Announces 4G WiFi In Vehicles Starting 2014:

The 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was chock full of announcements and events.  Cloud technology proved to be more integral to the standard mobile product.  WiFi moved in industry discussions from alternative platform to legitimate profit-potential.  And some dude recapped the past year where he worked exclusively from his mobile.

To me, though, one announcement stood out from these:

General Motors revealed it plans to install 4G wireless modems in vehicles of all its brands, beginning in 2014 with Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and its Opex/Vauxhill brand in Europe.  This means that starting next year, American consumers will be able to buys cars that double as internet hotspots, ones GM pledges will apply to any brand of smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device.

"You'll be able to get in the back seat with your iPad, go to your hotspot, and do anything that you could do on any other hotspot," Greg Ross of GM's Connected Consumer Group says in an interview with Design News. "You could do voice calls or you could surf the Internet and watch Netflix in the backseat.", (to which a nation of parents trying to keep their kids quiet in the back seat rejoices, I guess....?)

Now there are bound to be a couple hitches; one of which is potentially pretty costly.  As any of us who voraciously replace our internet devices every year know, software improves rather quickly (we have Moore's Law to thank for that, although some would dispute its endurance). Automobiles, however, are designed for over a decade of use.  It follows that by the time you're a long-term owner of one of GM's vehicles, you may find its technology a little outdated with what is offered on the new generation of brands.

Personally, I don't think that's going to be too much of an issue in the long run.  The breakthrough here is your car being a wi-fi hotspot:  that basic feature is enough to keep an owner happy for a very very long time, regardless of future innovations.  Yet, it remains to be seen how sweet a deal this move makes for potential customers.  GM repeats the specific mention of streaming Netflix in their press release, and I'm not so sure entertainment is the biggest draw here.  Passengers already have quite a lot to entertain them in a car; it's not as if I can't watch a movie on a DVD or hook up my iPod to my vehicle's stereo system because I've been able to do that for almost a decade now.  This move is about fulfilling the wish of the customer who wants to use instant internet access to be productive in transit.  How much do we as a society prioritize that?  GM- and the rest of the industry- will soon find out.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Wraptillion Retail Company Uses Rotor Clip Rings In Jewelry Products

We here at Rotor Clip don't normally view our product as anything "retail-related".  Not that it would be a bad thing; as a matter of fact, the world would be a much easier place for us if buyers could simply pick up our products at their local Target.  Alas, the marketing mastermind for that trick hasn't come along yet.

Thankfully, Kelly Jones, owner of Wraptillion, has done even better than that.  Jones' company crafts handmade jewelry out of industrial parts made in America and titanium material from aerospace manufacturers.  What sort of industrial parts?  Well we don't like to brag but:

Wraptillion's Wisteria Earring line was a finalist in
NICHE Magazine's annual awards for "Fashion Jewelry"

Yup, those are Rotor Clip-made retaining rings as the centerpiece of various lines of earrings, pendants, and necklaces borne from the imaginative ingenuity of Ms. Jones and her team.  Her Wisteria earrings line (right) was recently chosen as a finalist in NICHE Magazine's 2013 "NICHE Awards", which recognize artists who provide creative products in the fine craft and retail industries.  Clearly those in her field recognize how important Ms Jones blending of aesthetics and engineering is for both the American retail and manufacturing sectors in relevance and cooperation.

Wraptillion products can be found in stores all over regions of the US like Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon.  A full list of retail locations can be found here.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Jobs Flow Back: Now What?

Linamar Corporation is a Canadian company that manufactures engine parts out of what used to be a Volvo plant in Asheville, North Carolina.  Recently, President Obama visited the plant to tout as an example of America's current trend in luring global manufacturing jobs, reversing patterns of the past twenty-five years.



Indeed, outsourcing bridges the current and past centuries as the biggest challenge of the American workforce, but recent months have confirmed that this may be on the decline.  Part of this is due to changing demands in the market, but it shouldn't be underestimated how integral businesses' rising awareness of total costs have been.  That is because of groups like Harry Moser's "Reshoring Initiative" working to inform all levels of industry as well as government of the real, hidden, and unforeseen consequences of stretching the supply chain across an ocean.  The Reshoring Initiative has been recently hailed in the American manufacturing community as a force behind the political and business effort to fight for relocation of jobs lost overseas years ago.

Moser with other experts in the manufacturing field
meeting the President, January, 2012

Moser's most important audience might have been his visit to the White House last year as part of an Inshore Forum the Executive office held to address job loss.  There, Moser personally explained to Obama that unintended costs like emergency airfreight can eat into a bottom line enough that labor savings are offset.  He also pointed out that separating manufacturing from engineering creates a gap in the kind of department communication that produces innovation and product adjustment, crucial and overlooked advantages that outsourcing can turn into a liability.

While Moser has done much to bring this issue to light, it's also important to remember an economic strategy that centers around reversing outsourcing isn't really that comprehensive a strategy at all.  "Reshoring" is most certainly a welcome sign that the manufacturing community recognizes the value in keeping its supply chain close.  However, the global economy is not going to change;  there's always going to be a location or situation overseas that will offer cheap labor, and businesses are always going to look at that as some kind of an advantage.  Is it that we bug Congress and the business community to enact laws and efforts to get jobs back, or should we be more focused on growing new ones?  And if so, how?

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip.

Methane's Real Potential: Plastics

Methane has been getting a good run these days due to it being the energy ingredient in a little-known resource we call "natural gas".....

Yet, while the gas boom has been a silver lining in the cloud of the US economic recovery, it comes with a price: methane is not going to help the effort to curb greenhouse gases.  In fact, it has 21 times the heat retention properties as carbon, so hurting it seems more likely.

This chart shows the many sources of methane by-product
Unfortunately, in every case, the gas is too contaminated
for energy use.

Scientists have been trying for, really, centuries, to harness energy from biogas produced in landfills and waste management plants.  After all, what better resource to use for human energy consumption than what humans inevitably "emit" anyway?  So why haven't we done so already?  Biogas produced out of plants and landfills are mixed with too many "dirty" compounds that render it useless.  Since it costs too much to clean up, most facilities burn it off instead.

That's where Craig Criddle, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, comes in.  Criddle has a different idea for methane; while its energy seems near impossible to draw on a cost-efficient scale, turning it into plastic is very doable.

Groundwater bacteria munching on methane.

Why?  Because microbial organisms called methanotrophs do it for us.  Criddle and his staff cultivated these specific types of bacteria and developed a technique whereby feeding them lots and lots of methane enables them to produce a large amount of polymer compound called polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB for short).  Not only do the methanotrophs produce up to 60 times their body mass in PHB, but their metabolism completely rids the PHB of any kind of contamination.

While it's not going to solve energy issues, this method makes a solid argument that methane, not petroleum, should be looked at as the chief source of our plastic products.  Criddle himself gives an economic reason:

“From a business standpoint, it makes far more sense to use methane as a polymer feedstock than to burn it for power production...PHB sells for $3 to $4 a kilogram on today’s market, while methane burned for electricity production would return from 40 to 80 cents a kilo.”  - Craig Criddle to Glen Martin, Stanford Engineering

In addition, converting methane to a polymer sequesters all the carbon that would usually and eventually make its way into the atmosphere under our current petroleum-based process.  Thus using methane-based polymers are not only cheaper, but have a direct effect on greenhouse gas emittance, as well.

Seems like a pipe-dream?  Not at all.  Stanford alum Molly Morse, PhD, is the CEO of Mango Materials, which has just recently been permitted to operate a PHB production facility at a wastewater plant in the Redwood City area of San Francisco County.  If all goes well, methane-based polymers could be a commercial product- and a welcomed innovation- within a few years.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

Ford, Daimler, Nissan Agree To Push Hydrogen Fuel

Rare is the moment when companies put competing tactics aside to focus on the greater good of their industry.  Thankfully, Daimler AG, the Renault-Nissan Alliance, and Ford Motor Co. have done just that.  The three automotive monoliths have pledged a joint investment in commercialized hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

(L-R) Raj Nair, Group Vice President, Global Product Development, Ford Motor Company, Prof. Thomas Weber, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, Group Research & Mercedes-Benz Cars Development and Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Member of the Board of Directors and Executive Vice President of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., supervising Research and Development.

Fuel-cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) technology is especially promising because one of the chief components- oxygen- is pulled into the engine literally out of thin air to react with stored hydrogen.  The by-products are heat and water vapor; zero negative effect on the environment to add to the ridiculous cost-efficiency of the combustion/ process.

An FCEV blueprint for Nissan's TERRA 

Nissan's Executive Vice President agrees:  "Fuel cell electric vehicles are the obvious next step", says Mitsuhiko Yamashita,  "to complement today's battery electric vehicles as our industry embraces more sustainable transportation."

Now, it's important to stress these are automotive companies.  They specialize in the vehicles; the existing infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cells is sorely lacking in the United States.  Stations that can supply and "refuel" fuel cell vehicles are pretty scant....ten, total, according to the US Department of Energy.

Make no mistake about it, however:  this is a watershed moment for the auto landscape of the future.  Roads, Interstates, Rest Stops, fueling stations around not just the US but the entire globe will change.  Major companies who own the tech want to supply it, and the green-minded consumer community demand it.  This may be a first step, but it is a giant one.



Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.