TECH OFFERS

Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) is widely used for blast protection and structural reinforcement of concrete elements in buildings and infrastructure. However, conventional FRP solutions have limitations due to labour-intensive applications such as on-site preparation and resin mixing, inconsistent quality, long curing time, and low productivity. The technology is a glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) roll pre-saturated with a tacky resin system that can be easily applied to structural elements like “double-sided tape”. The resin-infused GFRP can fully cure in natural light within a few hours, strengthening the structure with only a marginal increase in wall thickness. A fire-retarding version of GFRP is also available. The GFRP solution is fast and efficient with minimal on-site tools and less dependent on workmanship skills. The technology is available for IP licensing and collaboration with industrial partners who are interested in adopting the fast-curing GFRP technology in their products and applications.

Water-repellent materials have attracted a lot of attention due to their importance in various applications, such as oil-water separation for oil waste treatment, self-cleaning for corrosion prevention, and microfluidics for electronics and medical devices. Surface modification can be applied to existing materials to introduce water repellency. However, industrial applications of conventional methods are very limited due to low reaction efficiency, high costs of chemical reagents, and instability for recovery/reuse.  To overcome the limitations, the technology owner has developed a new photochemical coating technology using visible light as an excitation source and low-cost chemicals as raw material. The invented coating technology can transform a wide variety of materials into versatile functional materials with excellent water repellency and oil attraction, providing a cost-effective solution to fabricate water-repellent materials. The technology is available for IP licensing and R&D collaboration with industrial partners who are looking for a cost-effective solution for the development of water-repellent and oil-absorbing materials.

As the earth gets warmer, the cooling of living and working spaces requires more energy. Governments are enacting standards for eco-friendly buildings in response to increasing concerns about rising energy use and carbon emissions. A novel “self-cooling” solution can help buildings and automobiles to cool down without heavily relying on air conditioning, leading to greater energy savings. The technology offer is a high-performance passive radiative cooling paint (PRCP) using emerging nanomaterial technology. Different from conventional paint, this cooling paint combines high solar reflectivity with high thermal emissivity. Hence, the paint can reflect incoming solar radiation and emit thermal radiation simultaneously, achieving effective cooling even under direct sunlight.  The technology owner is interested in R&D collaboration and test-bedding with commercial and residential building owners, property developers and construction companies. The technology is also available for out-licensing to paint developers and manufacturers.

The technology provider uses precision fermentation processes i.e. the use of fungi to produce different ingredients. Starting with colorants; more specifically a high-performing red colorant (the most used color in the food and cosmetic industry), to production of orange and yellow, and to then follow with other colors like blue and green. The fungi-derived colorant has stronger coloring power than natural colorant, resulting in lower dose needs and hence, more cost effective. The technology also uses upcycled agro-industrial by-products as part of the ingredients and waste residues are managed in a sustainable approach. The technology owner is seeking collaboration with partners for further co-development and test bedding of the solution. The technology owner is also keen to license this technology as well.  

One-third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted. At the same time, millions of people are hungry and unable to afford a healthy diet. Having said that, food loss and waste could potentially impose food security and impact the world with nutrition, socioeconomic, and environmental issues.  This technology offer is a process technology that provides an efficient and environmentally friendly approach to utilise agri-food side stream and convert it to a valuable, high protein biomass. The technology develops precision approaches, i.e., the proper treatment methods for food sidestreams, specific separation means for target ingredients, suitable strains for protein production, and optimized operational conditions for the fermentation process. The process also utilises the inexpensive agri-food side stream as the novel feedstock for protein fermentation. The technology is available for R&D collaboration and test bedding, with partners that are interested in valorisation of food sidestreams to value-added edible protein. The technology owner is also keen to license and commercialize this technology.

Keratins are naturally occurring proteins found in hair, feathers, wool and other external protective tissues of animals. They are highly abundant, naturally produced and generally underutilized. At the same time, keratins offer versatile chemical properties that allow interactions with themselves or with other materials to improve behaviour. The technology provider has developed sustainable, biodegradable plastic materials by upcycling keratins derived from hair and feathers. In the preliminary studies, the technology provider has found ways to produce films that have the potential to be used as packaging materials. These films do not disintegrate readily in water, yet they fully degrade in soil within a week. They can be made in combination with other waste-derived biopolymers to improve strength to meet the needs of specific use cases. This technology is available for R&D collaboration, IP licensing, or IP acquisition, with industrial partners who are looking for a green packaging solution and to explore specific-use-case products. The technology provider is also interested to collaborate with the OEM partners having the keratin extraction facility from feathers and hair for the deployment of this technology.

Face anti-spoofing (FAS) has recently drawn increasing demand as one of the critical technologies for reliable and safe authentication systems to prevent fraudulent operations. Traditional FAS approaches become unreliable when more and more realistic presentation techniques emerge.  An artificial object like a photo, video, mask, or other substitute that imitates the unique biological properties of a person is presented to the biometric scanner.  Biological determination technology identifies physical traits as well as social and psychological conditions to determine the authenticity of a unique living person. Liveness detection is defined as biometric detection that can discriminate between the features of live skin and copies of those features in a fraction of a second. However, as every man-made solution can be defeated, efforts to enhance and improve liveness detection always remain a work in progress. This technology offer is an identification method which can prevent spoofing more robustly by providing multiple biological determination processes in an arbitrary order determined by the system. Thus, the probability of correctly guessing a unique pattern for performing biometric determination actions decreases exponentially, preventing the preparation of authentication presentation actions beforehand.   

To achieve a net-zero carbon emission goal, energy derived from fossil fuels are replaced with green renewables such as solar, wind, etc. However, these renewable energies are intermittent in nature and therefore requires a reliable energy storage system to store these energies. Today, batteries based on lithium-ion and lead-acid are widely used as the go-to energy storage system. However, there are fire safety concerns for the conventional lithium-ion batteries due to its highly volatile and flammable electrolyte while the acidic electrolyte and carcinogenic lead used in lead-acid posed threat to both human and environmental health. Therefore, there is a need for a new safe and environmentally friendly battery system. This technology offer is a safe and rechargeable water-based battery using a unique green electrolyte formulation (close to neutral pH). Owing to the widened electrochemical stability window and high ionic conductivity of the proposed electrolyte formulation, it enables superior electrochemical performance of the electrode materials used in the batteries, suited towards large-scale energy storage applications.

Mixed plastic waste is an abundant resource containing approximately 7-12 wt.% hydrogen (H2). Traditionally, hydrogen is produced from non-sustainable fossil feedstock, such as natural gas, coal and petroleum oil. This technology offer is a thermo-catalytic process that sustainably recovers hydrogen from plastic waste instead. During hydrogen recovery process, instead of releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) that causes greenhouse gas effect, the technology converts emissions into a form of solid carbon, called carbon nanotubes (CNT). Solid carbon is easier to store and handle compared to the gaseous carbon dioxide. Furthermore, carbon can be sold as an industrial feedstock for manufacturing of polymer composites, batteries, concrete, paints, and coatings. With over 150-190 million tonnes of mixed plastic waste ending up in landfills and our environment annually, the technology offers a sustainable solution for the elimination of plastic waste and decarbonization while providing a clean hydrogen supply.