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This invention is an air-cooled oblique-tube heat exchanger with plain fins. This invention offers greatly reduced air-side pressure drop by 14.4% for 1-3 m/s and higher heat transfer by 13.3% at the same fan power, as compared to commercial 1-row circular-tube condenser coils with corrugated fins. The advantages were derived from the slender shape of oblique tubes causing minimal resistance to the passage of air and much reduced wake zone resulting higher temperature gradients and greater heat transfer behind the oblique tubes. An integration of a middle rib in the tube strengthens its rigidity up to 50 bar, thus allowing potential wide adoption for water to refrigerant-based applications. Controlled atmospheric brazing can be used to braze oblique tubes, fins, headers, baffles and fluid ports in one process and to improve the joining quality between the fins and the oblique tubes. 

Plasma technology was originally developed for surface treatment to improve surface adhesion of polymers. Recent progress in plasma technology has made it possible to generate plasmas at room-temperature, which is known as non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTP) or cold plasma. NTP has a unique capability to remove and inactivate bacteria with the absence of harmful residues. In addition, due to the low operating temperature (< 40 deg C), NTP can interact with organic materials without causing thermal damage to the cell surface, and can effectively inactivate different kinds of bacteria without adversely affecting the healthy tissues. However, the technical challenges in generating uniform plasma over non-flat surfaces makes its difficult for NTP to be considered as a reliable form of sterilization. The technology described herein is related to the development of a flexible, low-powered and cost-efficient NTP source by adapting screen printing method on a Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) configuration. Using printing techniques, homogeneous non-thermal plasma can be generated over large and complex geometries with low energy cost. The technology provider is seeking for industry partners to commercialise the technology. 

The presented technology creates textured protein fibres for the plant-based meat market without the use of extrusion equipment. Instead a protein concentrate, isolate or flour can be “spun” into plant-based fibres using minimal ingredients and processing. The current textured plant-protein ingredients for plant-based meat analogues involve high or low moisture extrusion processes, which results in high machinery and energy costs. As these processes are expensive, this makes it difficult for plant-based meat alternatives to be cost competitive with meat products. A secondary trend is the drive to create clean label and allergen-free products (non-soy or wheat). The protein fibres created using this technology address these trends as: The process is cost-effective, requiring less machinery and less energy intensive than extrusion. The protein fibres are clean label (only 2 ingredients) The proteins fibres can be created from allergen free options (i.e rice protein, pea protein, faba bean protein etc.)

As traditional walkie talkie radio systems are becoming obsolete and the cost of ownership for private trunked radio network is high, more and more companies are shifting to Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) solutions for their operations. With the introduction of 5G Technology, Quality of Service (QoS) will only make it more advantageous and attractive for walkie-talkie systems to move from a private radio network to a cellular network. As communication is no longer strictly done through a walkie talkie, communication can be integrated with other purposes and applications. Our PoC solution offers an application that is compatible with Android and iOS, hence it can be installed into virtually any device. This also means that any existing business solutions that are in use under Android and iOS can be integrated together with the PoC application as well as any other integrations that they want to be customized. e.g., integrate data from PoC application to their cloud / personalized contacts for S.O.S alarm.

A German University start-up has developed an innovative measuring probe for low pressure plasma processes (e.g. CVD, PVD). The problem with these surface-activating plasma processes is that they have to be carried out in difficult-to-access vacuum chambers/reactors. This makes proper monitoring of these processes challenging. Currently, most of the process parameters are monitored through sensors fitted to the wall of the reactor, which is only in the periphery of the actual plasma process and therefore less accurate. The proposed probe design enables real-time and accurate measurement of most relevant process parameters in-situ. It can be flexibly positioned within the reactor without affecting the process. Their technology has been extensively tested and fine-tuned over the last few years and is now ready to be used in industrial processes. The German startup is seeking industrial partners interested in technological cooperation agreements who want to improve their plasma process outcomes, quality and efficiency by developing and adapting the MRP technique to their specific needs. The company is also interested in financial agreement with investors in order to secure future developments and products.

Battery storage systems have been widely used in various residential, commercial, and industrial applications. Examples include uninterruptible power supply, robots, vehicles, photovoltaic systems, and more. However, unexpected premature battery failures (which are key issues in mission-critical applications) cannot be easily and accurately identified without conducting thorough offline battery characterization - going through charging and discharging processes. Apart from interrupting the normal operation of the batteries, the processes are also lengthy and energy inefficient. In order to ensure the serviceability of the system, batteries are typically replaced after a few years of service based on the site condition, maintenance practice, and experience of the operators. The present technology applies an energy recycling technology and makes use of artificial intelligence to process the sampled battery information for conducting a real-time estimation of the state-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-health (SOH) of batteries. In addition to consuming a very small amount of energy, the estimated SOC and SOH can also assist operators to profile battery utilization to extend the life expectancy of batteries. The technology also allows operators to monitor remotely the battery state and health, and conduct replacement exercise at the optimal time. As the batteries are to be replaced near the end of their life cycle, it will also reduce undesired electronic waste.

Synthetic pesticides used in conventional agriculture and especially greenhouses have significant impact on public health and environmental safety due to their vast amount of uncontrolled and indiscriminate use. They accumulate on food products, causing acute or long-term chronic symptoms in consumers. Therefore, the excessive use of pesticides has been a critical public health issue in the past decades.  These problems show that there is a need to find new ways that can help to reduce the use of pesticides in agricultural applications for better human health and better environment conditions. Considering the fact that insecticides are the most commonly used preparation among the commercial pesticides, this puts forward an ever increasing search to reduce the toxic effects, such as natural insecticides or alternative formulations of conventional insecticides.  Conventional insecticides are applied directly into soil or foils of agricultural products. Therefore, the excess of any pesticide species are accumulated in soil or on products. This technology employs a different approach to agricultural practices in terms of insecticide use, in the form of a greenhouse plastic film with controlled insecticide release functionality.

The technology described herein is an innovation power generation system which uses carbon dioxide (CO2) as the working fluid to replace water in a steam engine. Traditionally in a steam turbine cycle, large amount of energy is used to generate steam due to water's high latent heat of vaporisation. On the other hand, the latent heat of vaporisation of CO2 is one-tenth that of water.  The key benefit of this innovative CO2 based power generation system is that the power generation efficiency can be improved from approximately 30% in steam engine to approximately 50% in this new invention. This enable higher power generation and reduction in carbon emissions. The inventors have designed and developed a gas turbine which can process CO2 as a working fluid. A proof-of-concept prototype has been developed and the Hungarian-based technology provider is seeking partners to commercialise the technology through joint venture, co-development (1-5MW prototype) or technology licensing collaborations. Ideally, the partner would be a technology company who is active and familiar with the power plant sector. 

This technology relates to a novel device construction of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) to break the maximum Shockley-Queisser (SQ) limit of power conversion efficiency (PCE) (≈33%). In conventional PSCs, the photo-generated hot carriers (electron and hole) always lose their energy via a hot carrier cooling process before they are extracted by the widely used carrier extraction layers where cold carrier extraction are preferred. The technology described herein targets to improve the theoretical power conversion efficiency (PCE) tto reach as high as ≈66% by minimizing the hot carrier cooling loss.