RESEARCH, REWARD AND ENCOURAGING ACADEMIC INNOVATION Anglo American Platinum Corporation: encouraging research and academic innovation.

Anglo American Platinum Group Metals has over the last few years explored various avenues in order to tap into innovators pushing the boundaries in terms of developing new products using platinum.

These avenues include sponsorship of the Design Indaba and sponsorship of the Innovation Summit to highlight the PGM Industrial Commercialisation Competition.

Michael Joseph at Anglo American Platinum Group Metals explains that individuals who operate in these fields are potentially able to discover innovative new uses for the precious metal.

He highlights the international example of scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory who received seven R&D 100 Awards presented by R&D Magazine.

These awards, sometimes referred to as the "Academy Awards of Science," honour the 100 most outstanding advances in technology for the year and are chosen by an expert panel of independent judges and the editors of R&D Magazine. (See below for an excerpt on this*).

“In a similar fashion, we are attempting to uncover and promote these sorts of research break throughs and it is for this reason that we have the PGM Industrial Commercialisation Competition,” says Michael.

Anglo American Platinum Corporation is a partner of the 2011 Innovation Summit where more information will be available about the PGM Industrial Commercialisation Competition. The Summit takes place at the IDC Conference Centre between the 30th August and 1st September.

*R&D 100 Awards - Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Nano-Optomechanical Hydrogen Safety Sensor Based on Nanostructured Palladium Layers, jointly submitted and developed by Nickolay Lavrik of the ORNL Centre for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Panos Datskos, Scott Hunter and Barton Smith of the ORNL Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division, and the University of Tennessee's Michael Sepaniak and James Patton.

This technology utilizes nano-sized palladium particles to more efficiently detect hydrogen levels at a lower cost than the competition.

Palladium particles react immediately to the presence of hydrogen gas, making the sensor more sensitive when reading levels of hydrogen within any given environment.

Other sensors utilize electricity to monitor hydrogen, but an electrical short could prove to be a fire hazard when working with the flammable element. This new technology eliminates that threat and can be used to monitor industrial building activities, rechargeable battery manufacturing and many other hydrogen- sensitive operations.

This work was sponsored by DOE's Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and conducted in part at the Centre for NanophaseMaterials Sciences, which is sponsored at ORNL by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

For details see www.innovationsummit.co.za