Hans NäfClick here to enlarge image

Hans Näf joined a low-key celebration typical of the Swiss to commemorate completion of one of the world’s first certified risk-management systems for nanotechnology companies. The certificate, which recognizes development of a proprietary standard for best practices in nano safety, was granted to Bühler PARTEC GmbH during the NanoEurope industry trade fair held in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in September. Näf, 65, is supervisory board chairman at Bühler PARTEC, developer of nanoparticle upgrading and processing technology.

Dubbed CENARIOS (Certifiable Nanospecific Risk Management and Monitoring System), the standard was developed for Bühler PARTEC, the nanotechnology business unit of The Bühler Group. The certification audit took place in late August in Uzwil SG in northeastern Switzerland, location of Bühler PARTEC.

It is clear that the team approach is all-important at Bühler. Not only did unit managers work with two outside international risk management consulting groups to design and install the system, but much of the unit’s business is done in close collaboration with its customers. As Näf explained to Small Times’ contributing editor Jo McIntyre, despite the complexity of creating this new system, the cost was remarkably low.

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Q: You have just received the world’s first risk-management certification known as CENARIOS. Why did you and your company pursue this certification?

We wanted to reduce risks for our employees in production and development, as well as to the environment. And it is critical for us to have the confidence of customers in our work and this new technology.

If you have some problems in the products or production processes, that could damage your image. We wanted to avoid damage to the image of PARTEC as well as to the whole Bühler group. Finally, we also wanted to make sure our investments in our product development and production plants are protected. The main thing is to have confidence from our customers in our products.

Q: What is Bühler PARTEC?

This is a new and small business unit formed in 2005 that has about 30 employees. The name PARTEC is based on the words “particle technology.” We produce and develop plans for production of color pigments for a variety of products. Bühler supplies nanoparticle suspensions or plans for implementing the associated production processes on a turnkey basis, so customers can produce suspensions themselves.

It is a small business unit of The Bühler Group, which is a 6,600-employee company that specializes in plant design and construction and related services for companies around the world that want to turn renewable and synthetic raw materials into a variety of industrial products.

We are leaders in the basic technologies of grinding, blending, and mixing; bulk handling, thermal treatment, and shaping for processing cereal grains and foods; producing and upgrading engineering materials; and die casting.

We work closely with our customers throughout the life cycles of their production plants by developing new values for their products.

Q: How did you get into this line of work?

I started as a mechanical engineer because it was an interesting profession. Later, I moved to the chemical side at The Bühler Group. Because of this experience, I was asked to form the nanotechnology unit.

We help our customers incorporate functionalized nanoparticles into their products to improve those products’ properties. Thus, for example, colored plastics become lightfast, or coats of paint become more scratch-resistant, or particles add color to currency. In fact, most currency colors worldwide were produced by Bühler plants.

Q: How do you make those tailored nano dispersions?

We produce the dispersions in bead mills. We add a solvent and special surfactants to suspend the nanoparticles and to deter their re-agglomeration. The particles come from a wide spectrum of pigments, including organic pigments, carbon nanotubes, and inorganic oxides such as silicium dioxide, zirconium dioxide, zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, and aluminum oxide nanoparticles.

Bühler PARTEC focuses today on converting such materials into useful products incorporating nanotechnology production techniques.

Q: What are some examples of particles Bühler PARTEC has developed?

Titanium and zinc nanoparticles are used for UV light protection products for lacquers and cosmetics. Zirconium nanoparticles are needed to repair teeth. Other materials PARTEC incorporates into products include organic pigments, carbon nanotubes, as well as the inorganic oxides mentioned above.

Q: What did Bühler PARTEC have to do to get the CENARIOS certification?

We selected the Innovation Society and TÜV Süd a year ago to help build up the system. Each of us had important separate responsibilities in developing it. After that, we had to integrate the system as part of our own quality-assurance program. Now every employee in our business unit has access to the risk management system and is required to use it on a regular basis.

The Innovation Society and TÜV Süd, headed by Christoph Meili and Thorsten Weidl, developed CENARIOS in 2006 to meet the safety requirements of companies that produce or handle nanomaterials. The system can be applied in all “nano-related” industry sectors (i.e., textiles, cosmetics, energy, packaging, food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and electronics). The certificate is intended to improve safety standards of processes and products.

Q: What alternatives to the present system did you consider?

We looked at several different organizations: Ernst Basler + Partner Ltd., a Swiss company providing international engineering, planning, and consulting services; Dekra, a German company; and the University of Lausanne.

Q: How does CENARIOS work?

Among other features, it includes a standardized catalog of requirements for certification. That means if we would like to develop a new product, for example, then we have to inform the monitoring sides of both TÜV Süd and the Innovation Society. We have set up monitoring capabilities on toxicology and other scientific concerns, the market, and various regulations.

As part of its risk-management system, Bühler PARTEC takes note of statements in scientific publications in nanotechnology and health, environment, and workplace safety.

We also will keep track of social and regulatory developments. We also scan the market to see what is out there, looking for ways to evaluate whether there has been success on the market side.

By looking ahead and monitoring these various aspects of nanotechnology processes, we also avoid taking a bad direction in product development. With foresight in monitoring both scientific and market regulations, we ensure we work in the right direction.

Q: Do you also look at what new regulations are being adopted around the world?

Yes. Currently, there are no uniform worldwide laws or regulations for the production or the application of nanoparticles. Like radar, we try to detect new or changed regulations with our monitoring process. It was very important that we be responsible for our customers, employees, and the whole company-The Bühler Group-to avoid damage to them or to their image.

Q: What part did the Innovation Society play in this effort?

Innovation Society’s Meili developed this standard for best practices in nano safety and helped us implement the first commercial application of it.

Q: How does TÜV Süd fit into this?

They have expertise in risk management in nuclear plants. Their Industry Services Ltd. department built up the system with us, and the TÜV Süd Certification unit, another completely independent department at the firm, does the certification.

It is important to know that one part built the system with PARTEC, and the other separate department is for certification.

Q: What continuing performance measures do you have to meet?

All of the original ones just developed. TÜV Süd will check the system again in about a year. We have internal checks, too, and have made internal exercises for checking the system.

Q: Does that mean more paperwork?

Yes! We have a 230-page book that contains the complete report. We had to work out a smaller report for our employees in management, production, etc., and have put it on the Bühler intranet for easy access for all employees.

Q: How many new people do you expect to hire to do this monitoring?

None. Samuel Schär, the PARTEC business unit manager, is responsible for operating the system. He’s the risk manager, and there is not a special risk manager. That’s important to know. We have no special employees. It was his job!

It is important to train our people, and we have our own training staff. We have to implement all these into our own business unit, but we also have to involve our corporate communication people, legal services, corporate quality-assurance people, and issue management and crisis management people in The Bühler Group.

Q: Are there other costs associated with initial and continuing certification?

Yes, it was necessary to compensate the people who prepared the report. To build up and install this whole system, the cost was $100,000, including our internal costs. For the continuing certification, we need about $30,000 every year.

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The Näf File

Hans Näf began his career with The Bühler Group 35 years ago, following his schooling at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETHZ, where he earned his Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He has been active in a variety of departments at The Bühler Group, including automatic and electronic departments, working with die casting and injection molding machines.

In 2005 he was given responsibility for building Bühler PARTEC, the nanotechnology group, where he is chairman of the supervisory board.

As the Netherlands nurtures its food and nanotechnology pursuits to produce what may be the world’s leading locale for advancing food-related development, it finds a unique support structure

BY GAIL PURVIS

Convergence of micro systems, fluidics, functional molecular cell design, and supra-molecular chemistry now brings all food size structures within reach, says Dr. Frans Kampers, director of BioNT (www.biont.wur.nl), the Wageningen, Netherlands-based research center focused on the fundamental science and technology of micro- and nanosystems and their applications in food and health. Kampers is the center’s strategic research coordinator in bio-nanotechnology. His remit encompasses quality assurance through sensing and diagnostics, food design, safety monitoring and control, innovative processing, encapsulation and delivery, and packaging and logistics.

The center’s location in Wageningen is no accident. This area aims to become to the food industry what San Jose, Calif., area is to the semiconductor industry. It’s even referred to as Food Valley (www.foodvalley.nl/english/default.aspx).

EBI Food Safety (www.ebifoodsafety.com), also in Wageningen, has developed the first commercial bacteriophage product, Listex, which targets Listeria monocytogenes-pathogenics with a 30% mortality rate. Listex was granted the U.S. FDA-GRAS (generally regarded as safe) approval in October 2006; organic EU approval in June 2007, and an extension of GRAS approval from the FDA and USDA for use with all food products susceptible to Listeria.

“This opens the door for meat and fish processing companies to also use Listex,” says Mark Offerhaus, EBI’s CEO. “The reason for using natural phages for nano bio-control is that these are extremely host-specific,” he says. “Phages do not affect desirable flora or starter cultures; are completely biological; do not change the taste, smell, or food color; are easy to apply, etc.”

Phages are very useful nano-structure tools. For instance, peptides with binding specificity use the phage display (a test to screen for protein interactions) to indicate silicon dislocations and defects in semiconductor processing, as well as in the assembly of alloys for thin-film battery anodes and nanowire creation. And San Diego’s Kent Sea Technology Corp. (www.kent seatech.com) is working on a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP) award of nearly $2 million in a three-year project to replace conventional antibiotics treatment with bacteriophage therapeutics for prevention of bacterial diseases in commercial aquaculture.

Bacteriophages (or phages-virus-like agents that infect bacteria) are useful nano-structure tools. (Image courtesy of Purdue University)Click here to enlarge image

Using a different nano-based tool, DSM Nutritional Products (www.dsm.com), partnering with Check-Points BV (www.check-points.com), has introduced Premi Test Salmonella, a DNA-based method for detecting and identifying 62 of the most prevalent salmonella serotypes (and, given eight hours, many more). Results are generated using a custom reader and supporting software. The test now has official certification in France through AFNOR (Association Française de Normalisation-the French national organization for standardization) and the U.S. through AOAC International (dedicated to worldwide confidence in analytical results). Validated internally, it claims to provide the fastest method with the greatest level of precision compared to traditional Kaufmann-White serotyping.

A physicist with an instrumentation and measurement background, Kampers sees nano as invaluable for moving sampling from offline, laboratory procedures to production lines-via handheld devices enabling inline sampling and quick diagnosis.

TNO (www.tno.nl/en) is producing a device, the I-chip (“I” for “intestinal”), that will measure shifts in intestinal complex flora to facilitate fast and cost-effective health insurance claims and product development, provide quality assurance, and offer a selection of starter cultures and pre/probiotics. Custom chips can be developed in six weeks and can analyze multiple samples within a day (conventional methods require up to a week for a few samples). Currently the I-chip has biomarkers for more than 400 intestinal bacteria.

Another chip is being developed to measure flora composition in relation to such parameters as age, food patterns, allergies, and illnesses such as Crohn’s disease. An S-chip (“S” for “skin”) in development is designed to support skin-friendly product development. Besides working in microbial production processes and genomics, TNO focuses on food ingredients, industrial biopolymers, food processing, structures, and applications.

Nanomi (www.nanomi.com)-based on the disparate technologies of Medspray, Aquamarijn Micro Filtration, and Demcon Advanced Mechatronics-has used nanotechnology to develop intriguing approaches for separation, fractionation (for production of high-quality milk), and membrane emulsification. Its method of double emulsion for liquids enables precision “tailoring” so that, for instance, a core of water encased in an oil droplet lowers fat content but leaves the original taste.

Down the production line, nanocomposites are promising to enable intelligent packaging, control of the atmosphere and of microbial activity, toxins detection, and metabolic products. “Imagine what happens when cheap, printable electronics and RFID systems for track-and-trace are combined with sensors,” says Kampers.

He urges that better definition is needed. “Some nanotechnologies result in nanoparticles, but most do not. Some nanoparticles are nanotechnology, but most are not. All food contains nanostructures as fibers and gels. But how much modification makes natural nanostructures into nanotechnology?” asks Kampers. “Some food products could be considered to contain nanotechnology but do not mention it. Should there be a nano-label, or perhaps a ‘man-made’ nano-label?”

As the industry struggles to answer these questions and also grapple with those sensitive topics of biotech, life sciences, and consumer goods, with its ambition to create a food equivalent of silicon valley, the Netherlands seems to have its own growth template firmly in place.

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Unusual synergies facilitate food development

Unlike the U.S., where great chunks of nanotechnology work are funded by the government’s DARPA program, or in the U.K., where direction comes from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and, to a certain extent, the Ministry of Defense, the Netherlands’ prime motivator and funding source is the agriculture and food industry. In moving toward nano, the semiconductor industry has found a happy ally here. There’s real synergy among these areas in the Netherlands, and while it won’t produce the best technology-equipped warrior, it may well pay off in the areas of food, medicines, and cosmetics.

Employing 15,000 people in food/agro science, the Netherlands’ “Food Valley” hosts more than 1,440 food-related companies, 70 food-sciences companies, and 21 food/agro research institutes. Major food companies include Heinz, Campina, Smithfield, Unilever, CP Kelco, Nestle, Sobel, Mead Johnson, Masterfoods, Heineken, Givaudan, Grolsch, Monsanto, Abbott Laboratories, Nippon Suisan, Numico Research, and Royal Friesland Food.

Some of the funding for NanoNed (www.nanoned.nl) has facilitated development in Food Valley. NanoNed is a Dutch national nanotechnology R&D initiative-and partnership with Philips-that brings together nano efforts with relevant scientific, economic, and social research and infrastructure projects. It is a combination of disparate groups (advisory board members source from FEI, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, DSM Research BV, Shell Global Solutions, IMEC, Bronkhorst High Tech BV, Akzo Nobel Central Research BV C2v, ASML Netherlands BV, Philips Research, Friesland Foods, and Unilever), and it is organized into 11 discipline groups: Advanced Nanoprobing, Bottom-up Nano Electronics, Chemistry and Physics of Individual Molecules, BioNanoSystems, Nano Electronic Materials, Nano Fabrication, Nano Fluidics, Nano Instrumentation, Nano Photonics, Nano Spintronics, and Quantum Computation. Altogether approximately 200 research projects have been defined.

NanoNed launched NanoLab NL as a national nanotechnology facility. NanoLab NL combines the existing facilities of Twente, Delft, and Groningen, carrying out a targeted, five-year, €80 million reinvestment as part of the NanoNed initiative. The first €18 million phase of this program had begun under the Nanoimpulse initiative, a Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs technology program that provides funding for nano R&D. NanoLab NL coordinates the use of the facilities, tariffs, investments, and the cooperation with industry, and places a special emphasis on small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises.

The Netherlands’ nano-food pursuit is backed by a very strong technology foundation, and the result is a most unusual synergy that influences developments in food. For instance, Belgium-based IMEC established the Holst Centre (www.holstcen tre.com) in Eindhoven and runs “wireless autonomous transducer solutions” activities through Stichting IMEC Nederland (www.imec-nl.nl) there that impact the food industry (e.g., RFID tagging of cattle for milk production). Also in the center, the Netherlands’ independent R&D organization TNO runs the “system-in-foil products and production” (printing electronics on thin substrates) activities that has application to food packaging.

Finally, the country’s Food & Nutrition Delta program (www.foodnutritiondelta.nl) aims to make the Netherlands a leading innovation region in food and nutrition. It does so by promoting market-driven innovations and investing in competence development. Themes are food and health; sensory and structure; bioingredients and functionality; consumer behavior; safety and preservation; and adjacent technology for food and nutrition.

October 22, 2007 — Cientifica, a London-based nanotech research firm, says nanotech-enabled improvements to existing pharmaceuticals have created a “new value paradigm” in the drug delivery market.

In a white paper, “The Nanotech Revolution in Drug Delivery,” lead author Hailing Yu wrote that “several hundred billion dollars worth” of pharmaceutical compounds are sitting in “IP vaults unused” because technology has not yet been developed to deliver the compounds directly to where they are needed in the body.

“The industry is keen to unlock and exploit this valuable intellectual property, and using nanotechnology to create new chemical entities via reformulation gives them the key,” wrote Yu, research director for Cientifica.

The impact on the dental surgical market is already significant, with Cientifica estimating that nano-enabled dental drugs already represent a $3.39 billion market and prompting a scramble by both large pharmaceutical companies and drug delivery start ups to grab a piece of a market predicted to grow to $26 billion by 2012.

“After that, the market is poised to explode,” said Cientifica CEO Tim Harper, “with the fruits of today’s research and development in both drug delivery systems and nanomaterials feeding through to create a market worth $220 billion by 2015.”

The White Paper is a companion to Cientifica’s recently released report “The Nanoparticle Drug Delivery Market,” which identifies and analyses the companies and players that are likely to benefit as nanotechnology reshapes the drug delivery market.

October 19, 2007 — Nano-C Inc., a Westwood, Mass.-based company that develops nanostructured carbon materials, will receive about $2.9 million over three years from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the company announced.

The grant covers development of nanostructured carbon materials, including fullerenes and single-walled carbon nanotubes, to dramatically increase yields and reduce costs, enabling wider application. The company was selected under the agency’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The company is cost sharing approximately 30 percent of project.

“ATP projects are selected based on scientific and technical merit, as well as potential for broad-based economic benefits,” said Viktor Vejins, president and CEO at Nano-C. “Substantial due diligence was done by ATP to validate high-market potential of nanostructured carbon materials and the high-risk, high-reward nature of the work. We are delighted to have been selected to develop a manufacturing process that will further advance nanostructured carbon materials for wider use.”