Friction is one of the major reasons for failure of vital engineering components and systems used in aerospace, military, and industrial applications. The annual cost of friction and wear-related energy and material losses is estimated to be over $700 billion - 5% to 7% of the United States’ $14 trillion gross national product.
Cameron, the global leader in the valve and flow equipment industry provides advanced mechanical valves which are the control gates of much of the world’s hydrocarbon supply chain for both oil and gas. These valves are under tremendous pressure and extreme environmental conditions and are complex mechanical devices that deliver mission-critical functions where friction and wear challenge their reliability.
NanoMech’s patent-pending macro-molecular nano-manufactured solution, TriboTuff, reduces friction to near zero for the first time in history, driving performance of machines and vehicles up, while significantly decreasing the amount of fossil fuel used.
The nGlide technology platform product, TriboTuff, is a great example of NanoMech’s patented nano-inspired combinatorial material science it has pioneered in TuffTek coatings that is also revolutionizing the cutting tool manufacturing industry.
The international NanoMech engineering team led by Dr. Ajay P. Malshe, has devised a bio-inspired breakthrough solution engineered using newly discovered design rules of architecting multicomponent chemistries at molecular scale, to deliver advanced lubrication under the most extreme operating conditions.
The teams of Cameron and NanoMech engineers have been working together for the past 18 months to move this discovery forward, which has its origin with Dr. Malshe and the University of Arkansas through National Science Foundation funded research, to full commercialization by NanoMech Inc., as an innovation that improves the performance of organic and inorganic lubricants and safely extends the life of the Earth’s hydrocarbon supply chain.
nGlide has been accelerated life tested in commercial valve applications demonstrating that the patent pending architectures provide defense against energy intensive mechanical friction and resultant wear.
This breakthrough nGlide technology platform can be expanded through blending into many lubrication products as a drop-in concentrate solution for hundreds of applications for the crucial oil and gas sector economy.
John Bartos, VP Development and Technology of Cameron, stated that, “Cameron has always strived to provide leading edge innovations to our marketplace and customers that contribute to our goal of delivering the best, most reliable and durable flow related equipment for the global oil and gas industry. It has been a pleasure to work with NanoMech on such an important breakthrough innovation that can provide Cameron increased competitive performance on our industry leading valves and flow products.”
James Phillips, Chairman and CEO of NanoMech Inc., stated, “We appreciate the support of Governor Beebe and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission in providing us continued assistance to advance the nGlide technology platform to commercial status and full scale production in various products such as TriboTuff, resulting in a tremendous technology advance as well as creating more knowledge jobs at our Springdale manufacturing plant and laboratories. The partnership with Cameron has helped fast-forward our nGlide innovation into the largest industry in the world.”
The agreement will result in 10 to 20 new knowledge jobs initially in NanoMech’s Springdale facility, with additional jobs possible in the near future.
Dr. Ajay Malshe added, “The nGlide technology platform provides unmatched lubrication solutions and is customizable for thousands of applications. nGlide’s proprietary and multiple patent-pending technology also addresses the global need to save energy, increasing machine and vehicle performance by enhancing durability, operability, and the life of components. nGlide is architectured to provide immediate lubrication advantages.”
Governor Mike Beebe said, “Cameron and NanoMech’s partnership is a testimony to the State’s outstanding scientific research and commercialization breakthroughs leading to vital knowledge job creation and American innovation and global competitiveness. This is the kind of end result we look for when we invest in research. We hope that this partnership between Cameron and NanoMech will be an example of many more to come as breakthroughs continue in nanotechnology.”
About NanoMech:
NanoMech Inc., (www.NanoMech.biz), was founded in 2002 and offers advanced engineering materials through nano-inspired and nano-manufactured product development. Today the company has given to the world breakthrough nano-engineered innovations in machining and manufacturing, lubrication and energy, and strategic military applications. NanoMech brings ideas from innovation to implementation, introducing nanomanufactured products to market. NanoMech is a member of President Obama’s Materials Genome Initiative, a public/private collaboration with the aim of doubling the speed and reducing the cost of discovering, developing, and deploying new advanced materials. NanoMech is also a member of the U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative (USMCI) and the U.S. Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative, (www.Compete.org) both based in Washington, DC.
About Cameron:
With almost $7 billion in sales, Cameron (www.c-a-m.com) is a leading provider of flow equipment products, systems and services to worldwide oil, gas and process industries. Leveraging its global manufacturing, engineering and sales and service network, Cameron works with drilling contractors, oil & gas producers, pipeline operators, refiners and other process owners to control, direct, adjust, process, measure and compress pressures and flows. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Cameron employs over 23,000 people worldwide, with major locations in Houston and Little Rock, Arkansas.
About nGlide and TriboTuff:
nGlide is a proprietary patent pending technology platform. The TriboTuff formulation is a new product solution drop-in concentrate formulated to fight friction and wear between mating components under boundary lubrication. The nano- inspired multi-component additives enable TriboTuff to enter tight tolerances and into the asperities, which on a microscopic scale appear as hills and valleys. Designed as an open architecture macro-molecular dispersion for hydrocarbon supply chain, nGlide creates flexible commercial solutions like TriboTuff to meet end-user applications. nGlide provides three lines of defense by attaching to the surface owing to the polar organic capping chemistries, forming robust and adherent tribofilms that are sacrificed preferentially to the underlying material, and providing physically-active transfer films due to the shearing of unique macro-molecular architectures. This additive is architectured to provide instant tribological advantages. This characteristic is unlike the traditionally used anti-wear, extreme pressure additives that require a certain temperature and/or pressure for the molecule to decompose and form products that deposit on the metal surface as films. Our macro-molecular lubricant innovation uses a nano-inspired unique and multiple patent pending manufacturing synthesis technique that transforms simple molecules into multicomponent, multifunctional, active macromolecules to fight friction and wear between mating mechanical components.
