A growing interest for HEL in the car battery market

The car battery market is definitely of growing interest that HEL group is continuing to tap into. Last year, from 8-9 December in Boston, HEL exhibited our Battery Testing Calorimeter for the first time at the ‘Battery Safety’ conference. This is one of the few conferences devoted to battery safety, especially thermal runaway potential and the role of adiabatic calorimeters such as our Battery Testing Calorimeter in helping to provide safety data. Our managing director, Dr Jasbir Singh, was one of the speakers at this two day conference and focused on the added value of videoing batteries undergoing thermal runaway, so that temperature information can be combined with photographic evidence, to learn about where and how batteries fail during thermal runaway. Our battery safety calorimeter generated a lot of interest.

Recently, in October 25-27, ‘The Battery Show’ conference was held in Detroit, US, is the heart of the US car industry. Exhibitors represented a wide range of products relating to the EV market, with safety being of minor interest. Although our Battery Testing Calorimeter (“ARC Type” system) was not taken to the exhibition, Dr Singh had taken some videos of batteries undergoing thermal runaways to the exhibition. He says about the videos that, ‘it is a rather unique capability; it generated a lot of interest’. From the exhibition, it was clear that the car battery market is seeing a lot of investment and the market is growing fast, as his conclusions were that ‘several car manufacturers are planning to include a budget for the BTC-ARC for their Thermal Safety Testing’.

Great feedback for HEL's Conference on Flow & Batch Process Development

“Very well run conference and event”, “I enjoyed the conference very much “, “The conference was very interesting and I think I'll be back next year”, “New material which I would not have otherwise seen which was especially valuable”, “Good mix of people”, “Well organised, excellent communication”;  just some of the comments that delegates from 10 countries who joined HEL’s 12th Conference on flow and batch chemistry in Cambridge last week !!

Representatives of  different organisations including Astrazeneca, GSK, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Novartis, UCB Pharma, Sanofi-Aventis, Dr Reddy’s, BP, Johnson Matthey and Carbogen  were joined by senior academics from Universities such as Cambridge, Cranfield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Huddersfield, Leiden as well as German Fraunhofer Institute and Spanish Institut Català d'Investigació Química.

The social gathering at St Catharine’s college extended into the local pub and proved a great networking opportunity for all.  Some photos in our Picasa Album… !

Projects Team Hitting Targets....

Some of HEL's Project Team on a night out...

Recently, HEL's  Projects Team met their reward target for shipping projects on-time and even early.   The reward included an outdoor laser mission evening, where members of the team had a chance to shoot each other for several hours.... 

In the picture, left to right, Filip Nevezi, Mark Cannon, Darren Tee, Nathan Batchelor, Ben Wood, Roy Eggleston and Steve Hooper.

Flow and batch process development focus for HEL 12th Conference

Join us at Cambridge University for a series of lectures and presentations from leading scientists.

Speakers and titles confirmed so far include :

• Introduction and Keynote Lecture , by Dr Ian R. Baxendale, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Cambridge University (UK)
• Flow Hydrogenation: Enhanced Diastereoselectivity, Purity Control, and Catalyst Activity relative to Batch operation, by Dr Joel Hawkins, Pfizer (Groton, USA)
• Development of catalytic oxidation flow process (tentative), by John Studley,Vertex Pharmaceuticals (UK)
• Pd/diphosphane-catalyzed reductive carbonylation of nitrobenzenein methanol – some surprises, by Dr T Mooibroek, Prof. E. Bouwman and Prof. E. Drent, Leiden University (Netherlands)
• Development of new oxidation catalysts (tentative), by Dr Mark J Muldoon, Queens University Belfast, (UK)
• Reactive distillation in continuous mode, by Prof Allen Wright, University of Newcastle (UK)
• Hydrogenation and other Continuous Processes in supercritical fluids, by Prof Martyn Poliakoff and Dr Richard Bourne, University of Nottingham (UK)
• Engineering aspects of batch and flow heterogeneous reactors based on performance data, by Dr Jasbir Singh, HEL Group (UK).

The conference will take place on Tuesday September 27th, and participants are invited to join us for a complementary Drinks reception and  a three course dinner at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge on Monday 26th September.  Early Bird Discount available until June 30th.  Contact  marketing@helgroup.com, or visit our website to find out more.

Battery research for Electric Vehicles

By Dr Jasbir Singh

after a thermal "abuse" test in a BTC

There is a proliferation of conference events on Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries worldwide and we attended a conference and exhibition on EV batteries in London on 30-31 March.

This was well attended with visitors from many countries representing car manufacturers, universities, battery producers and service and instrument providers such as HEL. We exhibited our smaller scale battery testing calorimeter which is used for basic research into battery components and chemicals; our system for evaluating larger packs – the Battery Testing Calorimeter (BTC) is rather difficult to transport, and we decided to leave it at the office this time...

I also made a presentation at the conference, presenting results of batteries tested for safety under adiabatic conditions and including data from cyclers integrated into the control software which allows charging and discharging limits to be explored.  Contact marketing@helgroup.com for a copy of the presentation.

HEL is hiring...

Looking for a career opportunity ? Check out HEL's Careers Page...

We are currently looking for:
Technical Applications Specialist - Borehamwood, UK
Project Manager - China
Technical Support & Service Engineer - NJ, USA
Sales Executives/Account Managers - India

Flow Technology Expo at Pfizer Groton

HEL Inc will be displaying the unique FlowCAT reactor system at Pfizer's Flow Expo, Groton, CT, on Tuesday 22nd March.

FlowCAT is flexible and cost effective

Exhibition at this show is the culmination of a collaborative effort between Pfizer and HEL, Inc. on developing and improving the continuous flow high pressure system from HEL. The FlowCAT system is proven to be a cost effective production system in the scale-up from grams towards kilo volume from a flexible, lab-sized unit. The tube reactor can be easily switched, allowing hydrogenation reactions to occur in greater volumes (up to 4 fold increase) with only a minor change in hardware. All parameters and changes are programmable and monitored by the systems WinISO software, making scale-up much easier - and faster -  for chemical engineers.

Read articles and application notes

What does it look like inside the Phi-TEC BTC ?

The new feature available on the Phi-TEC BTC allows you to watch the battery during a thermal / electrical safety testing, whilst charging and discharging.  Watch the video below (no sound):

Read the Application Notes :
BATTERY LIFE-TIME TESTING WITH BTC
RUNAWAY LI-ION BATTERY EXPLOSION DURING CHARGING / DISCHARGING

Crucial help for families in disaster zones

Inside a ShelterBox

Our selected charity this Christmas, for our staff raffle and for the HEL company donations is ShelterBox.  

This is an organisation that responds instantly to natural and manmade disasters by delivering boxes of aid to those who are most in need.  Each box supplies an extended family of up to 10 people with a tent and essential equipment to use while they are displaced or homeless.

You can find out where and when our boxes  are delivered :  
Box 58684
Box 58705