SOLID, HYDROPHOBIC AGGREGATORS AND METHODS OF MAKING AND USING THE SAME
This invention involves the design, synthesis, and application of a novel product to be used in the treatment of oil spills in aquatic environments. The product entails chemical modification of sawdust or wood flour (a cheap product of sawmills) to render it with hydrophobic, oleophilic, and buoyant properties. The resulting product is herein referred to as an aggregator. Aggregators modified with oleic acid (OA) were further modified with fatty acids (C3-C18) to cover surface hydroxyl groups on sawdust. The final products showed super hydrophobic and 44.2% enhancement of crude oil sorption relative to OA-modified aggregators. They also showed excellent stability and recyclability. The Invention Synthesis and property: Our earlier work included sawdust modification with OA (called 1st generation aggregator). The 1st generation aggregator entailed an oleic acid (OA: C18) modified 20-40 mesh pine flour. They showed 100-165% weight percent gain (WPG), excellent buoyance, and 4.17g crude oil sorption/g aggregator. Though they showed excellent properties and test results, XRD and TGA analysis suggested that improvements can be made to the aggregator to boost performance. We added second fatty acids with different alkyl chain lengths to the 1st generation aggregators, which have uncovered surface hydroxyl groups. We first prepared three base 1st generation aggregators: pine/OA-106, pine/OA-124, and pine/OA-160, where numbers indicate WPG of OA in pine sawdust. To the base aggregators, we added fatty acids with different alkyl chain lengths (C3, C6, C8, C10, C12, C14, C16, C18). We have several significant observations listed below: Pyridine is the most costly reagent in the synthesis ( > 45% of the materials costs). The used pyridine solvent contains HCl and p-Tosylate (p-Ts). In fact, a tiny amount of water does not affect the reaction. We tried to recycle (vacuum distillation after treated with KOH and magnesium sulfate) pyridine and about 60% pyridine was recycled. When different fatty acids were added to the base aggregators, fatty acids with C10-C14 showed highest WPG and all mixed fatty acid-modified aggregators showed very hydrodrophobic (much more hydrophobic than the base aggregators). XRD analysis showed that (002) peak of cellulose on aggregators modified with C10-C14 fatty acids was expanded from 4.23 to 4.60Å (original pine sawdust: 3.98Å) due to more fatty acids penetrated and modified. In the FT-IR spectra of aggregators modified with C10-C14 it was hard to observe OH stretching vibration at 3500cm-1, which indicates that all aggregators are superhydrophobic. The aggregators start decomposition at 230oC though the original pine does 328oC, and they leave less than 0.1wt% ash after burned off at 700oC. Crude oil sorption test: we tested our aggregators for crude oil sorption. Three base materials showed about about 4.5g crude oil/ g aggregator, and our new aggregators sorbed 5.0 -6.4g crude oil/ g aggregator. Specifically, pine/OA-106-C14 sample (second C14 fatty acid was chemically modified on pine/OA-106 aggregator) showed 6.4g crude oil/g, which is about 44.2% enhancement relative to that of the pine/OA-106. Crude oil sorbed pine/OA-106-C14 sample was recycled (washed with CH2Cl2). It is easily washed and showed same property.
POLYMER COMPOSITES FOR FUSED FILAMENT FABRICATION AND METHODS OF MAKING THE SAME
Material formulation for additive manufacturing (AM) will be central to the progression of the industry as it moves from novelty to a mainstream, disruptive technology. We disclose in the document methods and techniques of formulating highly porous specially engineered materials for use in fused deposition modeling printers, achieving high loadings of several species of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) combined with a sacrificial fluoropolymer process that enables the retention of the parent MOF chemical characteristics. We have achieved loadings up to 50% with MOFs while still retaining the ability to print the material on a standard FDM machine. Through a sacrificial process, we show that surface areas up to 712 square meters per gram of printed material can be achieved. We have further demonstrated that high loadings are required to attain the functionality of the parent MOF characteristics, and have defined the lower threshold for viability of this loading.
FUNCTIONALLY GRADED COATINGS AND CLADDINGS (iEdison No. 0685901-13-0018)
A shear assisted extrusion process for producing cladded materials wherein a cladding material and a material to be cladded are placed in sequence with the cladded material positioned to contact a rotating scroll face first and the material to be cladded second. The two materials are fed through a shear assisted extrusion device at a preselected feed rate and impacted by a rotating scroll face to generate a cladded extrusion product. This process allows for increased through wall strength and decreases the brittleness in formed structures as compared to the prior art.
METHODS AND SYSTEMS OF CHARACTERIZING AND COUNTING MICROBIOLOGICAL COLONIES
A means to rapidly count colonies of microorganisms on nutrient plates was developed. The practice may be used to speed many practices, procedures, and tests used in biology, microbiology, and medicine that rely in whole or in part on the ability to culture, enumerate, and assess microorganisms. The measurement tool, measurement process, and method of analysis will enable previously unattainable research into bacterial activity. The method is novel and valuable because it makes use of sensitive optical metrology to resolve growth of microorganisms much sooner than can be done with traditional methods. In short, white-light interferometry (WLI) is used to obtain high resolution 3-D profiles of microorganisms that have been placed on nutrient enriched agar plates. The resulting profiles have very fine sub-micron depth resolution and the ability to see single cells and microorganisms. Images may be captured at high magnification to observe a single microbe as it grows into a microcolony or images may be captured at low magnification to observe many microorganisms at once. Images are captured non-destructively which enables monitoring over time without apparent disruption microbial growth, activity, and processes. Traditional colony counting methods take 24 hrs for fast growing bacteria and up to 3 weeks for some species. This invention will allow researchers and clinicians to count colony forming units in a bacterial culture sample as early as 1-4 hrs after being applied to an agar plate. This invention would also require less material (smaller and fewer plates) and fewer resources (less incubation space and less time for incubation). A company that makes and sells WLI optical profilers would be able to modify their product hardware and software to accommodate this method. It could be sold as an add-on to their existing instrument. Traditionally, WLI instruments have been used to examine non-living hard surfaces (e.g., printed circuit boards, hard disks, machined parts, etc.). Licensing this technology would allow a maker of white-light interferometry instruments to expand into new markets, especially biomedical research and clinical testing. Users of this invention would benefit by performing colony counting much faster while using few resources and providing other relevant and significant morphological details that are not measurable by other means. This invention can be summarized as three major parts: A method to prepare, image, and analyze microbial cultures with WLI such that CFUs and other morphological traits can be rapidly assessed Culture plates with surface properties and optical characteristics that enhance and enable WLI imaging An integrated WLI imaging system for bacterial culture analysis that may include: modifications to existing WLI instruments or components such as sample holders or imaging stages, automated or semi-automated analysis routines implemented in software, and customized culture plates designed for WLI imaging. Full details of experiments done to demonstrate this invention are included in the appended manuscript.
Methods and Apparatuses for Cross-Ontologial Analytics
This invention disclosure presents a method and system that exploits the impact that Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) exert on gene products through receptor binding to refine the predictive power of Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) modeling in identifying EDCs and to discover biomarkers associated with identified EDCs. The approach focuses on two main tasks: . Develop a framework to assess the toxicity of chemicals in terms of their impact at the gene/protein level . Use the impact of chemicals at the gene/protein level to identify biomarkers.
Dummy Record for tracking Patents licensed in from BYU in TMA 529150
Dummy invention report to obtain IPID for licensed in patents.
SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MONITORING ORGANISMS WITHIN AN AQUATIC ENVIRONMENT
Systems and methods for monitoring organisms within an aquatic environment are described. According to one aspect, an injectable acoustic transmission device includes a body configured to be injected inside of an organism, a transducer within the body and configured to convert a plurality of electrical signals into a plurality of data transmissions which are transmitted externally of the body and the organism, a plurality of circuit components within the body and configured to use electrical energy from a power source to generate the electrical signals which are provided to the transducer, and wherein the transducer defines an internal volume and at least one of the circuit components is provided within the internal volume of the transducer.
Assemblies, Riveted Assemblies, Methods for Affixing Substrates, and Methods for Mixing Materials to Form a Metallurgical Bond (iEdison No. 0685901-22-0263)
This invention is a process and tool for performing mechanical fastening of materials using magnesium rivets.