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Mechanical Technology — October 2015
37
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Innovative engineering
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Trelleborg’s Eccospheres
®
are thin-walled, hollow glass
microspheres (HGMS) developed to meet the demanding
strength, weight and electrical specifications of companies
in the aerospace, defence and industrial markets.
with voids and what happens with these
materials.”
One application that Chawla and
his colleagues have developed shows
promise as a means to clean water that’s
been polluted by industrial textile dyes,
oil spills, antibiotics or other pharma-
ceuticals. “We take tiny microspheres of
glass and coat them with titanium diox-
ide,” says Chawla. Under the action of
ultraviolet rays, titanium dioxide breaks
up pollutants into harmless by-products.
Putting the titanium dioxide around the
outside hollow spheres is novel. When
introduced into water it becomes foam
that floats on the water surface. It’s very
benign.”
Another significant application of the
work is its potential to curb global warm-
ing caused by methane gas. “Methane
is starting to enter the atmosphere at
higher rates because of melting of natural
deposits of methane hydrate from global
warming, agriculture and landfills,”
Gladysz says. “It all just goes into the
atmosphere. The one path we can take
is to capture methane in a stable solid
cage and then use it as a fuel to serve as
a bridge to renewable energy. This meth-
ane hydrate structure consists of a
single molecule of methane inside
an ice cage, so there is a void at
that scale in the cage. By studying
the structure and void spaces in
methane hydrate; we can create
organic molecules with larger void
spaces that can hold more meth-
ane. Potentially we can capture
this methane and put it in a more
thermally stable solid.”
Gladysz says the implications
are impressive. “As in the methane
hydrate example, we look to nature
for solutions and we then try to
improve on them.”
Microspheres from Trelleborg
Trelleborg’s Eccospheres
®
are thin-walled,
hollow glass microspheres (HGMS) devel-
oped to meet the demanding strength,
weight and electrical specifications of
companies in the aerospace, defence
and industrial markets. Magnification
reveals the near perfect spherical shape of
HGMS, which to the naked eye resemble
a fine, white, free-flowing powder. The
unique properties of Eccospheres can
help reduce costs, enhance products
and improve material processing. Ec-
cospheres can be incorporated into a
wide range of polymer and resin systems
and can replace or combine with other
materials to create composites. Areas
of applications are extreme processing
conditions (extrusion, roller milling, and
injection moulding), chemically sensitive
systems (silicones, vinyl esters, long pot-
life epoxies), high viscosity systems, high
temperature systems and low dielectric/
loss tangent materials.
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