TECH OFFERS

Today, the cost of energy generated by renewable sources is less than conventional energy. However, current energy storage solutions (e.g. Lithium-ion battery etc.) used to harness energy from renewables are expensive, unsafe and unreliable which has severely impeded the adoption and development of such renewable sources. Hence, there is a need for a cost efficient, safe, environmentally friendly and reliable energy storage system (ESS) to address these existing issues. This technology offer is a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) as a promising ESS. Unlike lithium-ion and lead acid batteries, VRFB has the flexibility to design and customise its power and energy density independently. This results in enhanced performance in terms of round-trip efficiency, energy density and thermal window as well as lowered levelised cost of storage when benchmarket against lithium-ion battery based ESS for long discharge duration. The VRFB also uses a unique stack design and an organic additive mixture on the electrolyte that improves the thermal stability and allows for 25% increase in energy efficiency when compared to other VRFB solutions.It also reduces safety risks related to over-charging, discharging and thermal runaways. This VRFB ESS is stable for up to 25 years with no electrolyte degradation and is made with environemtally friendly materials. The technology owner is seeking partner and collaborators especially those in renewable energy, large scale utility and microgrid projects to test bed their technology.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been the preferred portable energy source in recent decades. However, disposal of these spent LIBs causes serious environmental problems because the batteries are made of hazardous components such as heavy metals and electrolytes. Current recycling method for LIBs are energy intensive, costly, generate harmful emissions while having poor recovery rate of the valuable metals. Therefore, there is a need for a low cost, environmentally friendly recovery method that can achieve high yield for the critical battery materials. This technology offer is a highly versatile recycling method for LIBs that directly converts crushed LIBs material (black mass) into ready-to-use battery-grade cathode materials. This direct conversion is based on proprietary hydrometallurgical co-precipitation method and allows for the skipping of the production of mixed precious metal salts and immediately produces reusable battery-grade cathode materials. Furthermore, there is no need for pre-sorting and a mixture of LIBs materials with different chemistries can be processed in a single batch. These includes lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium manganese oxide (LMO), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) and lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide (NCA). The production outputs are battery-grade NMC hydroxides (622/532/111/811), and the by-products may include lithium carbonate and sodium sulphate. Lastly, adoption of this technology allows for up to 4x increment in recycling profits and a cost recovery period of <1 year. The technology owner is seeking industry partners to license and adopt the technology, preferably companies with an interest to invest in or build a LIB recycling plant.

Many botanical extracts, such as polyphenols and keto-carotenoid, are commonly used in cosmetics for their anti-oxidant, growth factor, skin lightening, extracellular matrix support, UV-protective and anti-inflammatory or anti-ageing properties.  An American University has discovered that Equol, an isoflavonoid molecule, has many skin anti-aging properties. Positive effects on the skin include reduced inflammation and ageing genes, a reduction of fine and medium lines and wrinkles, as well as a more youthful appearance of skin. For hair, Equol has shown promise in treating baldness by retaining and growing hair. This botanical active has been registered with the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) for over 9 years and is known for uses in topical cosmetics and oral supplements.  The proprietary Equol technology, consisting of topical and oral, cosmetic and hair formulations, is protected by patents for topical and oral cosmetic applications. 

In this modern age of data, many systems and Internet-of-Things (IoT) information sources are independent and scattered, resulting in the increased complexity of processing heterogeneous data for visualisation purposes. Digital twins can help to mirror their physical, real-world equivalents in three-dimensional (3D) space to improve spatial perception and are ideally suited for high-risk environments that are physically inaccessible by humans. In such cases, IoT sensors are put in place to support real-time remote fault identification, operation, training, maintenance, and synchronise with various types of management dashboards to facilitate decision-making processes. This technology offer is a one-stop platform that empowers enterprises to create digital twins (or a one-to-one reproduction of physical real-world objects/building/machinery) - where next-generation spatial hardware e.g. Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) headsets or smart glasses can be used to interact with contextual, real-time information in a fully rendered 3D environment that blends the digital information (sensor data and digital mapping) and physical (real-world) layers for a range of industrial applications including continuous monitoring and predictive maintenance.  The technology owner is keen to collaborate with companies in the Port, Manufacturing, and Property (facility management, building management, energy management, security management) industries for test-bedding of existing use-cases on a project basis, leading up to product R&D collaboration and eventually licensing.

Real-time manufacturing data can help to predict the condition of production machines and peripheral equipment. However, not every machine has the system to collect and analyse the condition of a machine. Furthermore, it is hard to gain data from non-networked devices, especially from old ones, as well as to integrate different types of manufacturing equipment. This technology offer is a SaaS and hardware solution for real-time data collection and analysis. The modular hardware provides an interface for communication channels and protocols of all industrial equipment. Hence, it makes every type of new or old production and peripheral equipment integrable. Upon the data collection from the universal hardware, the platform will analyse the data using deep-learning algorithm, generating detailed production information. The technology owner is keen to out-license its solution and looking for collaboration with partners in plastics manufacturing (especially for injection moulding), textile industry, and IHLs for further applications. 

Machine Learning (ML) is a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) where a machine is able to learn without being explicitly programmed. However, before a machine can effectively perform even the simplest AI tasks, e.g. differentiating between images containing an elephant or a tiger, it has to be trained on images containing both animals. To be useful in supervised learning, training data needs to be properly labelled or annotated by a human for the machine to extract the relevant features and produce an ML model that serves its intended purpose. This highlights the important role that data annotation plays in producing robust, accurate ML algorithms in video analytics, natural language processing, and audio processing. However, many organisations that want to embark on their supervised learning journey often face difficulties gaining access to high-quality labelled datasets, known as ground truth data, due to the abundance of low-quality, expensive and unstructured data. This technology offer is a mobile application-based data platform that enables companies to obtain high-quality annotated data. It de-centralises data collection and data annotation tasks into manageable bite-sized chunks for optimal annotation performance and crowd/out-sources the annotation task to a pool of data taggers via a mobile application. Labelling quality is established through a gamification system and a series of built-in verification procedures, including AI-assisted pre-filtering and collective human quality control.

With the breakthrough in 3D vision-based localisation technologies under GPS-incapable environment and expertise in sensor fusion, this technology offer presents promising sensing solution for advanced robotics and automation in Industry 4.0. This solution is built upon the proprietary vision-based sensor with edge computing capabilities, providing best calibration algorithm and controls with the deployment of the multiple sensor technology. The sensing technology enables robots to: Navigate under GPS-incapable environment, across indoors and outdoors spaces Vision-based self-localisation and moving object tracking Object identification and volumetric measurements in 3D For Industry 4.0, these are the areas can be supported: 3D visual data acquisition and simple onboard processing, translating only required information to the main processing board Smart CCTV monitoring & image / object identification Depth perception and measurements for logistics The technology owner is currently looking for operators that would like to transform their business operations, through the use of autonomous robots, and also to achieve the best effects of encapsulating a whole visual monitoring system to optimise their business operations on the ground. Besides, the technology owner is also looking to work with system integrators (eg. Robot makers) to adopt and integrate the technology. The system is fully customizable and configurable based on user’s requirements.

This technology offer is a patented radio frequency (RF) inductive coupling technology that measures the quality of electrical contact between moving parts. By integrating this technology with a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) train, the moving train doubles up as an inspection vehicle that monitors the condition of the power rail of the MRT network in real-time. It detects early signs of power rail defects for preventive measures before the defects deteriorate further and lead to unexpected MRT service interruptions. The potential users are MRT line operators and train manufacturers. The hardware system has been developed and tested on MRT lines, and the technology is available for co-development with technology partners who are strong in data analytics to develop an efficient defect classification algorithm.

There has been an increasing interest in LED communications, or Light Fidelity (Li-Fi), for secure, wireless communications. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are ubiquitous in our environment and can be used for communications, besides illumination. Data is transmitted by switching the LEDs on and off so rapidly that the eye cannot detect the switching. This opens up a wide range of unused, unregulated spectrum in the visible to infrared wavelengths, which can help address the communications bandwidth crunch. Li-Fi can be used in areas where RF signals cannot be received due to interference or restriction. The highly secure beam can protect sensitive data from cyberattacks. This technology offer is a system for Li-Fi communications, including optical transceivers and dual purpose LEDs for detection and emission. By alternating between positive and reverse bias, a single LED chip can function as emitter and detector. This can reduce the footprint of the optical transceiver for miniature integration in laptop and handphone. The development team has also developed LED communication prototypes for real-time monitoring of sensor readings over a long range of more than 70m and for real-time streaming of high-definition video streaming with low latency. Some application areas include underwater communications, hospitals, military and underground tunnels. The development team is looking for potential end-users of technology and collaboration in technology development.