“Graphene is truly a wonder nanomaterial that’s made of a single layer of carbon atoms.”
Michael Bozlar
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
UT Arlington
.…on his UTA team being awarded $300K from the National Science Foundation to help tap new sources of rare earth metals.
In a story last week, we wrote about Bozlar and his team of fellow scientists at UT Arlington who received a $300K National Science Foundation grant to help tap new sources of rare earth metals for the U.S. supply chain.
Rare earth metals power our tech-driven world, from smartphones to satellites. But with just a handful of countries controlling the global spigot, supplies of these critical elements are vulnerable to disruption. The UTA team of chemists, engineers, and materials scientists aim to conduct research that will “improve U.S. competitiveness in the production of rare earth metals.”
Bozlar is particularly keen on graphine. He says his team is the first to explore graphene’s potential for rare earth metal separation “at a fundamental level,” noting the nanomaterial has many promising applications.
You can read more about the project in our story here.
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R E A D N E X T
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China dominates rare earth metals, controlling 60% of global production. A new $300K National Science Foundation grant enables a team of chemists, engineers, and materials scientists at UT Arlington to diversify and strengthen the U.S. supply chain.
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"One word: plastics." That's the famous career advice from the movie The Graduate. A professor at UT Arlington must have gotten the same message, because 56 years later he's making history by using plastics to repair and stabilize roadways in the DFW area. Dr. Sahadat Hossain—a UTA civil engineering professor and director of the school's Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability—got a grant of around $950,000 from the Dallas district of the Texas Department of Transportation to achieve the first use of “plastic road” material in Texas. The project will begin with work on roads near Kaufman, southeast of Dallas.
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Through a long-term agreement with General Motors, MP Materials is bringing its MP Magnets division to AllianceTexas in Fort Worth. The company is building a new, 200,000-square-foot rare earth magnetics and materials manufacturing facility which will "re-shore" critical components for America's EV batteries, robots, drones, defense systems, and other tech.
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Some things you just gotta keep cool: your temper on the Tollway at 8:45 a.m., your drink after work, and—maybe we should've put this first—data centers. All those endless rows of servers generate heat, which is why cooling accounts for nearly half of a data center's electricity usage. Now a team led by UT Arlington's Dereje Agonafer is developing hybrid cooling technology that could save "a massive amount of money in energy costs" for both current and future servers.
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Irving-based Commercial Metals Company has completed its acquisition of a Galveston-area metals recycling facility and related assets from Kodiak Resources and Kodiak Properties. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The facility processes approximately 55,000 tons of ferrous and non-ferrous materials annually, "with the majority of volumes related to obsolete ferrous scrap grades consumed by CMC's long product mills," the company said. The deal is expected to enhance the security and supply of competitively priced inputs to CMC's steelmaking operations. Earlier this week, Barbara Smith, chairman, president, and CEO of Irving-based Commercial Metals Company, was named an EY Entrepreneur Of…
