The world’s leading representatives of the nano augmented materials industry met for the third year in a row to take another step forward in transforming the technological future of humanity. OCSiAl in Luxembourg hosted this year’s event on November 15 and 16 at the Fonds Belval, a perfect choice, as it is the former site of Luxembourg’s steel industry now reborn as a centre of technological innovation and cutting-edge materials.
The third industrial conference on nano augmented materials was organised for the first time in Luxembourg. The main events occurred in Esch-Belval and more than 500 experts, executives, researchers, analysts and journalists came together to share their knowledge review achievements that have been realised since last year and joined the debate about the potential of nanotubes to advance our lives. Speakers from around the world discussed such topics as, “The future of materials”, “Best practices from all over the world” and “Global projects”.
The event represents a big success story for Luxembourg in many ways thank to OCSiAl, a company that originated in Russia and now headquarters operations in Leudelange. They are the undisputed technology leader in the field of a single wall carbo nanotube and plan to invest more than 200 million euros in Luxembourg to build a single wall carbo nanotube (SWCNT) factory and research centre in Differdange.
OCSiAl, who recently joined the Materials and Manufacturing cluster, is a very active member. The applications of their SWCNT are broad and open the door to high performance materials development with Luxembourgish companies.
At the end of Day 1, attendees were transported to Luxembourg’s beautiful Abbaye Neumunster to see an open-air Ujet demonstration. Ujet is a technology start-up that is a spin-off of OCSiAl. They recently unveiled a new generation of electric scooters, which will be produced in its own factory in Luxembourg.
“All our operations have been based here in Luxembourg since the establishment of our company in 2015, and we are delighted to start the manufacturing of our electric scooter in our factory in Foetz,” says Konstantin Notman, CEO of Ujet Group and CEO of Ocsial Europe
Of interest to the Luxembourg Materials Cluster, managed by Luxinnovation, were topics dedicated to actual applications of the SWCNT in industry, such as; electronic applications (for example electric vehicle batteries) composites, elastomers, energy and biomedical.
It is important to note that there are many challenges remaining in this industry. Of utmost importance of course is safety (HSE), dispersion and concentration optimisation and of course, cost. However, all in all attendees agreed that the Nano Augmented Materials Industry Summit 2017 closed on an upbeat note. Over 400 pioneers from around the world helped contribute to one more significant step forward in bringing nano augmented materials revolution to the industry.
The next Nano Summit in 2018 will be held in Shanghai.
