Innovation is alive and well in the UK, although you wouldn’t always know it. All across the country there are unsung engineering and manufacturing companies that are pushing forward boundaries and operating at the very cutting edge of technology. Some have been established by entrepreneurial individuals who are chasing their dream, while others have been spun-out of intelligent research and development from within universities. Over the next four pages PE champions 10 small companies that are vivid proof of UK innovation and which are starting to make a name for themselves on a global stage.
Whitfield Solar
Location: Reading
Employees: 18
Formed in 2004, the spin-out company from Reading University was always aiming high, just like its solar concentrators. The company is commercialising almost 30 years of research by Dr George Whitfield into how to make solar photovoltaics more efficient and cost effective.
Whitfield’s solution is the kind of refreshing blend of simplicity of design and pragmatism that British engineering does best. The solar concentrators use an array of fresnel lenses, like the lenses used in lighthouses, to amplify light on to a silicon solar cell, so reducing the surface area needed to achieve meaningful power outputs. A simple mechanical pivot and tilt mechanism, controlled by a light sensor that uses a shadow cast by a protusion, adjusts to track the sun through the day, maximising the amount of sunlight collected.
The solar concentrator is more efficient than its main competitor, flat-panel solar PV, and, unlike tower solar concentrators, can be installed on rooftops. In August this year Whitfield’s development work began to be paid off with the company’s first successes abroad. The first concentrators were installed in Lisbon, Portugal, and two in New South Wales, Australia. Whitfield’s Australian partner then announced that follow-on interest had generated more than 300kW worth of orders – over 950 solar modules.
Ian Collins, project director for Whitfield Solar, says the next step is to scale up the size of the installations from tens to hundreds of kilowatts and then up to the megawatt range. “I see no reason why we aren’t dealing with installations in the 10 to 100MW range in five years’ time,” he says. “But we are taking it slowly with our partners throughout the world so we can guarantee quality.”
Camfridge
Location: Cambridge
Employees: 5
The domestic fridge represents a huge market and has a correspondingly big environmental impact – refrigeration and cooling account for 15% of all the energy used in the UK. There is a massive regulatory drive for manufacturers to make fridges more efficient.
Existing fridges that use gas compressors to run a vapour compression cycle are almost at the point where they cannot be improved further without becoming prohibitively expensive. But, using materials research spun out of Cambridge University, UK firm Camfridge has developed a completely new type of fridge that is more efficient, quieter and does not use harmful gases.
Camfridge has replaced the fridge’s gas compressor with a component that comprises a metal alloy sitting in a magnetic field. The magnetic field causes a reduction in the alloy’s temperature, and an exchange fluid and regenerative cycle is then used to obtain the desired cooler temperature in the fridge’s compartment.
Camfridge has demonstrated the viability of its technology with prototypes that use a metal alloy called gadolinium. Unfortunately gadolinium is very expensive, and the company’s engineers have been focused on reducing costs by using different materials.
According to Neil Wilson, chief executive of Camfridge, a breakthrough was made last month when a third-generation nanomaterial called lanthanum iron silicate was delivered from a European research project. “In terms of performance and cost we are looking at a boost of a factor of three, reducing the costs significantly,” he says. “This gives us a clear path towards commercial viability.” Wilson is confident that his magnetic fridge will be on sale by 2014. “Every fridge will be magnetic by 2020,” he says.
I2O Water
Location: Southampton
Employees: 33
One of the most pressing issues the world faces is the scarcity of water. The UN predicts that by 2025 two thirds of the world will have insufficient water.
Estimates from the World Bank put the amount of treated water lost from urban water supplies at 32 billion m3 a year, so technology that cuts down on the amount of water that leaks from infrastructure, like i2O’s, is at a premium.
I2O’s system consists of sensors and controllers that are fitted at district metering stations in as little as two hours. The sensors monitor and provide data to a central computer server. The server automatically processes all the data using algorithms which learn the characteristics of the network. This data is then used to create control instructions which are issued to the controllers at the metering stations to adjust the network to an optimal pressure, minimising leakage.
According to i2O’s chief technical officer, Andrew Burrows, the technology has attracted enquiries from utilities in many countries.
“Our ambitions are very large, the market is enormous,” he says “Our vision is to provide a single remote-control monitoring and optimisation solution for water distribution and treatment. There’s a tremendous opportunity here. This sector has suffered a significant lack of investment in technology.”
I2O’s next product will be a control system installed at pumping control stations that will reduce energy use by 20%.
Artemis Intelligent Power
Location: Loanhead, Midlothian
Employees: 25
This award-winning engineering company was spun out of the University of Edinburgh in 1994, and has steadily grown as its technology has matured. Artemis’s hydraulics system, which is based on its Digital Displacement intellectual property, offers the potential of eliminating gearboxes, prop shafts and differentials from any mechanical system designed to transmit power. This includes automotive applications, off-road vehicles, lifting applications and wind turbines.
Traditional hydraulics systems vary the stroke length of individual pistons using swash plates. At low power levels each piston still works at full pressure, resulting in high losses. Artemis’s system overcomes this and other inherent inefficiencies by using computer-controlled and electromagnetic valves to pressurise only the pistons that require fluid flow.
The company claims that Digital Displacement enables it to create hydraulic machines that are 97% efficient, matching the efficiency of mechanical gearboxes, but with the advantages that hydraulic systems bring. This includes increased reliability, cost reduction, a high power density and accurate controllability.
Artemis’s hydraulic system has attracted most attention in the area of wind turbines. The company has won funding from the Carbon Trust twice, most recently to build an 800kW transmission demonstrator unit for wind turbines. The firm has also recently won £1 million from the government’s Environmental Transformation Fund to build a 1.6MW power transmission for a wind turbine.
Gearboxes, particularly in offshore wind turbines where high winds and corrosion are issues, are an area of concern for experts, who question their reliability. Substantial data on the long-term reliability of these components is lacking, and gearbox failures have the potential to be a severe maintenance issue for many turbines in the future. Direct-drive turbines which use systems such as Artemis’s minimise the number of moving components and offer a solution.
Artemis has also partnered with various automotive firms to install the system in passenger vehicles, and has sold the worldwide rights to its Digital Displacement technology to global industrial and automotive supplier Bosch.
Modern Water
Location: Guildford, Surrey
Employees: 30
Another response to the increasing scarcity of water is to use a process called desalination, the removal of salt from sea water. Unfortunately desalination is expensive and consumes vast amounts of energy.
Enter Modern Water, which is commercialising research work done at the University of Surrey to reduce the cost and increase the effciency of desalination.
Conventional desalination uses a process called reverse osmosis (RO) to push seawater through a semi-permeable membrane at high pressure. This removes the salt to produce clean drinking water. It is expensive because the plant required to create the high pressures is costly to buy and run.
Modern Water’s Manipulated Osmosis is a two-stage process. First an “osmotic agent” is used on one side of the membrane to help draw the sea water through the membrane; it enables the process to be run at only 2 or 3bar, instead of 70bar as in normal RO plants. A second membrane process is used to recover fresh water from the osmotic agent.
The osmotic agent is protected intellectual property, but is normally a naturally occurring mineral. The process is similar to how water and nutrients are sucked up by trees, says Neil McDougall, executive chairman of Modern Water.
Modern Water has built its first desalination plant in Gibraltar. Compared to RO plant next door, Modern Water’s plant proved 30% cheaper to run, provides higher quality water and uses fewer chemicals.
The technology can even be retrofitted to existing desalination plants, opening up a massive potential market.
Flybrid Systems
Location: Silverstone, Northamptonshire
Employees: 8; 14 by Christmas
Flybrid Systems deserves a place in our Top 10 because of its high-speed fywheel-based energy storage system. The impressive technology is a fully mechanical hybrid system, which saves energy and fuel and is an alternative to battery-electric systems. While an electric hybrid car turns mechanical energy into electricity and stores it in a battery, this device keeps it in its fully mechanical state, with the fywheel spinning at high speed to store the energy. When the vehicle accelerates the fywheel is slowed down, releasing the energy back to the car, which helps it accelerate and in turn saves fuel.
The most innovative feature of the technology is that it can run at very high speed – 60,000rpm in fact, which means the components can be small and light. The challenge for Flybrid’s engineers though is making sure that these components are lubricated and balanced so that they work properly when the fywheel is spinning at top speed.
Flybrid Systems says that its technology is important because it’s a fully mechanical system that can be made at low cost, using readily available materials. The Flybrid system is around one third cheaper than the battery storage system in an electric hybrid vehicle, which should make it possible to market hybrid cars at a lower price, so that they become more widely accepted. This should help to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. The most recent improvement to the technology is a transmission which should enable the frm to make a low-cost system for small cars.
The company is working with some big carmakers as well as doing development work for bus, truck and off-highway applications.
Altrika
Location: Sheffield
Employees: 8
Altrika, a subsidiary of materials company Ilika, has developed Cryoskin technology, an active treatment for burns and hard-to-heal wounds, which uses viable donor cells to provide support for the healing process.
Cryoskin is currently available in a sheet format and used at most burn centres across the UK, but Altrika is now looking at developing the technology into a spray. This would allow it to be used more widely to treat scalds. The Technology Strategy Board awarded the company £100,000 last month. The money will be used to help further develop this technology.
Cryoskin consists of a frozen mono-layer of undifferentiated allogenic keratinocytes. These are basically skin cells that form the epidermis, the outer layer of skin. Specialised coating techniques are used to attach the cells to a medical-grade silicone backing. This is perforated to allow movement of exudates, a fluid that oozes out of blood vessels due to inflammation, which helps the healing process.
The most innovative part of the technology is the patented surface that the cells are put on, which keeps them more active. This is also the most recently developed part of the technology.
Cryoskin saves significant amounts of money for the NHS by reducing healing times and the average length of a stay in hospital for a burns victim. It also reduces the need for costly secondary interventions, which arise from burn scar problems, particularly with children. A child’s skin may contract as they grow, which can result in them having to return to hospital yearly to have surgery, such as having their skin cut so it can grow again. Cryoskin gives a better quality of skin that can stretch and grow.
Arago Technology
Location: Manchester
Employees: 8
Arago Technology, a spin-out company from Manchester University and EPL Composite Solutions Ltd, was only incorporated earlier this year but is already stealing the limelight after winning twice at this year’s Energy Innovation Awards for its Composite Cross-Arm.
The Composite Cross-Arm aims to give greater power transmission through existing overhead line infrastructure, by increasing the voltage in pylon towers without having to replace them. It can uprate the operating voltage significantly, for instance, from 275kV to 400kV, in existing infrastructure. This avoids the need to replace the towers, the usual method of increasing voltage. The technology is not limited to a specific tower size and can be adapted to suit any tower, which means it is suitable to be applied globally for retrofit, as well as on newbuild transmission lines.
For the uprating of existing lines, the Composite Cross-Arm also allows tower voltages to be increased without changing the tower structure or height. Instead the increase in voltage will usually require a change in the conductor – the wire carried by the pylon towers.
Significant improvements in power transfer capability can be achieved through the combination of the technology with the use of a low-sag novel conductor to increase current. Using this technology for new line builds can significantly reduce the tower footprint. In addition, it has other benefits such as reduced electromagnetic field.
The Composite Cross-Arm is already attracting the eye of some major energy companies, with the firm securing Innovation Funding Incentive cash to start multiple trials of the technology in partnership with Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution and National Grid.
Pelamis
Location: Edinburgh
Employees: 70
Pelamis Wave Power’s Wave Energy Converter has struck a chord with engineers and renewable-energy advocates around the world.
The machine is a semi-submerged, articulated structure composed of cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints. The wave-induced motion of these joints is resisted by hydraulic motors via smooth accumulators, which drive electrical generators to produce electricity. Power from all the joints is fed down a single umbilical cable to a junction on the seabed.
When the full-scale prototype of the Wave Energy Converter was launched in early 2004, it became the world’s frst commercial-scale wave energy converter to generate electricity to a national grid.
Current production machines, called P2, are 180m long and 4m in diameter. They have four power conversion modules per machine, with each machine rated at 750kW. Several machines can be connected together and linked to shore through a single seabed cable.
Pelamis says its machine offers a series of technological, economic and environmental advantages. These include that it can be easily brought back to shore to be maintained, and that it has the lowest kWh costs on the market.
Pelamis expects costs to fall significantly with continued deployment into the market. In the longer term it is believed that wave-power projects have the potential to become one of the least-cost forms of generation.
In the meantime, the company has a series of projects under development, including installing more than 50 machines off the Scottish coast – 26 off Shetland, and 26 off Bernera.
Blatchford
Location: Basingstoke, Hampshire
Employees: Just under 100
Blatchford has been responsible for impressive developments in prosthetics technology. Its award-winning application for foot amputees, the Echelon foot, is the most recent example of the company’s engineering expertise in this area.
Blatchford, which is the largest prosthetic and orthotic company in the UK, says the Echelon foot, with its variable ankle control, not only benefts amputees, but is enabling the prosthetic industry to rethink its design philosophy for artificial limbs. This is delivering a level of power and control that sets a new pace in prosthetic foot technology. Amputees who have tried the foot say that the company has come up with a “truly life-changing product”. It is also helping seriously injured British soldiers, who have lost their lower limbs, to continue their duties on the frontline.
The technology consists of integrated hydraulics and a carbon-fibre foot spring system, which provides a bio-mimetic and natural fluidity to amputees during walking and standing. The really clever part of the technology is an artifcial foot/ankle joint that uses an adjustable hydraulic damping device to restore much of the lower limb’s natural movements.
The company says this is based on analysis of the combined leg-ankle-foot system, rather than the usual design solution in prosthetics, which is to combine individual components and build up a semblance of natural movement.
The resulting product ensures stability for the amputee and confidence on uneven surfaces. It is also suitable for high-level amputees who need security when rising from sitting to standing and particularly on slopes. The device also ensures symmetrical posture on stairs, which reduces effort and increases muscle efficiency, and makes activities such as cycling and skiing much easier to do.