Magnesium Technology 2023: Keynote Session
Sponsored by: TMS Light Metals Division, TMS: Magnesium Committee
Program Organizers: Steven Barela, Terves, Inc; Aeriel Murphy-Leonard, Ohio State University; Petra Maier, University of Applied Sciences Stralsund; Neale Neelameggham, IND LLC; Suveen Mathaudhu, Colorado School of Mines; Victoria Miller, University of Florida
Monday 8:30 AM
March 20, 2023
Room: 30C
Location: SDCC
Session Chair: Steven Barela, Terves, Inc.; Petra Maier, Stralsund University of Applied Sciences; Aeriel Leonard, The Ohio State University
8:30 AM Keynote
Sustainable Domestic Manufacturing and Protecting IP in a Post-AIA World: Andrew Sherman1; 1Terves LLC
10 years ago, the American invents act was passed by congress. Despite lofty intentions, the AIA significantly degrades the value of IP and patents. Terves has recently gone through an enforcement action against a large importer of foreign magnesium products. The current system is rigged against small company inventors, with non-technical administrative judges invalidating 84% of all patents in favor of infringers, versus <50% by multiple skilled patent examiners during reexaminations. Enforceable IP is essential for American competitiveness to compete with subsidized, unregulated, and lower cost offshore locations. Terves is a member of US Inventor, representing 60,000 inventors focused on restoring individual patent rights post AIA. Terves' experience enforcing IP rights in today’s climate, as well as US inventors pending bill to restore patent rights will be discussed along with potential strategies and actions that inventors can take to mitigate AIA limitations.
9:15 AM Keynote
Reductant Consideration in Thermal Pathways to Primary Magnesium Metal Production: Aaron Palumbo1; 1Big Blue Technologies
Thermal routes to produce primary magnesium metal are generally demarcated with lower capital costs. However, the range of operational costs are high depending on reduction reactor efficiencies and configuration, labor intensity, and the cost of reductant. Choosing a reductant material can be a challenge in terms of logistics, supply security, cost, and technical performance. Presented is an assessment of possible reductant materials and the interplay between heat of reaction, reactor and condenser design, byproducts, and the behavior and role of impurities. On one end of the reductant spectrum is the reaction of carbon and magnesia, generating exclusively a byproduct gas, along with the product magnesium metal, and virtually no solid residue. Conversely, the reaction between calcined dolomite and ferrosilicon generates virtually no byproduct gas and nearly 6x more mass of calcium silicates than magnesium metal. These chemistries share engineering challenges that center on the method of recovery of products.
10:00 AM Presentation of Magnesium Technology Awards
10:15 AM Break
10:35 AM Keynote
Metastable – stable: Norbert Hort1; 1Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Most metallic materials are often cast. This is a highly dynamic process where composition and solidification conditions can become a challenge due to the appearance of porosity, shrinkholes, segregations and the formation of intermetallic phases. Heat treatments are applied to get rid of segregations, stable and metastable intermetallic phases for homogenization purposes and to obtain a material that is homogeneous with an adjustable property profile. However, often it is observed that the dissolution especially of metastable phases really takes long times (hundreds or even thousands of hours) and high temperature which is accepted in the academic world but not acceptable for real industrial applications due to time and costs. Especially for biodegradable metals metastable phases perhaps could be regarded as “stable” when the time of absorption is in range of a few weeks only and could be used to adjust properties.
11:20 AM Keynote
Engineered Bioabsorption for Implant Applications: Jacob Edick1; Carolyn Woldring1; Joshua Caris2; Nicholas Farkas2; Anuvi Gupta2; Andrew Sherman2; 1Magsorbeo Biomedical; 2Terves Inc.
Bioabsorbable magnesium alloys have often been studied in the context of absorbing too fast, with the goal of obtaining a slower absorption rate for adequate use as a temporary implant material. While this is an important challenge to overcome, it oversimplifies the needs of surgeons and patients while not accounting for the requirements of various applications and the technological complexities of absorption. Through our presented work, we are building the magnesium alloy capabilities to engineer our alloy's bioabsorption profile to optimize implant performance based on requirements such as implant size, time to healing, and anatomical differences.