BEAUFORT, South Carolina, May 2021 — GlassWRX announced the signing of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC (SRNS) to explore the efficacy of engineered cellular magmatics (ECMs) for use in the filtration of waste and contaminated water from agricultural industries and fossil fuel extraction industries.
Rob Hust, GlassWRX co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, says, “We actively seek out the most rigorous technical and scientific of partners to help us test and validate the applications ECM technology — not just theoretically, but in a very practical, economic, and measurable sense. SRNL is at the very forefront of this. That’s one of the things we value most about this CRADA .”
Philip Galland, GlassWRX CEO, says, “The DoE is our nation’s preeminent agency for driving technological innovation. The Savannah River National Laboratory one of its crown jewels of science. We’re happy to count them as our partners in helping drive ECM technology onwards and upwards.”
As the applied research and development laboratory at the US Department of Energy’s (DoE) Savannah River Site, SRNL protects public health, the environment, and national security. It does that through testing and deploying innovative solutions for DoE and other federal agencies in the US and around the world.
The goal of the CRADA is a mutually beneficial relationship that facilitates the free exchange of ideas relating to the application of engineered cellular magmatics (ECMs) for use in the filtration of waste and contaminated water from agricultural industries and fossil fuel extraction industries.
The official designation of the project is for the investigation of phenomenological mechanisms related to the controlled synthesis of engineered cellular magmatics as functionalized ceramics.
By the recycling and then upcycling of post-consumer glass and other materials recovered from waste streams, ECM technology is based on a circular economy model. Both GlassWRX and SRNL research model for this work is driven by the industrial-scale upcycling of materials mined from waste streams into these valorized and commercialized ECM products.
The CRADA working hypothesis that ECM technology has the potential to impact multiple industries including resilient infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, and decontamination.
The novel emergent materials from this CRADA that satisfy project criterion will then be tested, and moved towards commercialization stage at industrial-scale production by GlassWRX.
Project roles and responsibilities include the full scope of CRL (commercial readiness level) and TRL (technical readiness level) from initial material acquisition through safety, and documentation of production processes to commercial product development, controlled functionalization recipes and/or optimized ECM products for intended and pilot-scale synthesis of optimized product recipes.
Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is a Department of Energy multi-program research and development center that puts science to work to protect the nation by providing practical, cost-effective solutions to the nation’s environmental, nuclear security, nuclear materials management, and energy manufacturing challenges.
SRNS is a Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) entity with parents companies of:
- Fluor Corporation, one of the world’s largest publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance (EPCM), and project management companies
- Newport News Nuclear (NNN), Inc., a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), and
- Honeywell International Inc., a diversified technology and manufacturing company.
Visit SRN at http://srnl.doe.gov
Vist Fluor at www.fluor.com
Visit Honeywell at https://www.honeywell.com/us/en