Nuke It

Somebody forgot to tell the Kumar brothers you can't put metal in a microwave.

The two scientists, Devendra and Satyendra Kumar, are part of a team at Dana Corp. developing a new technology called AtmoPlas.

AtmoPlas was invented by the Kumars in-house and uses a microwave, much like the box found in most household kitchens, to replace energy-draining furnaces in metal heat treatment.

“Conventional wisdom is don't put metals in the microwave,” Devendra Kumar, director-research and development of emerging microwave technologies, tells Ward's at Dana's Disruptive Technologies Development Laboratory in Rochester Hills, MI. “We're doing just the opposite,” he says.

Dana's tomfoolery is gaining steam and validation in the metal treating industry as the supplier files 20 patent applications for the technology.

So far, one patent has been awarded for the joining of metal components in microwaves, and at least three partners have signed on to leverage Dana's technology for commercial and national security applications.

AtmoPlas gets its name from the technology's ability to sustain plasma at atmospheric pressure, which absorbs microwaves and conducts heat rapidly to metal.

The metal to be heated is encapsulated in an insulated cavity, such as quartz, to keep waves from bouncing off the metal and back at the microwave's megatron tube.

The plasma creation is the tricky part. Dana Senior Materials Scientist Kuruvilla Cherian is mum on the exact proprietary material that serves as a plasma catalyst.

Dana promises lower operating costs via AtmoPlas because microwaves are turned on only when needed, can heat to 2,192° F (1,200° C) within seconds and have no known upper temperature limit. In order to get that degree of heat from a furnace, it would have to run non-stop.

When a furnace is heated, the entire unit, including the shell, heats up and much of the energy is wasted. Dana's plasma technology utilizes 95% of the microwave energy and funnels it to a single component, or even a part of the component, Devendra Kumar says.

Dana's Disruptive Technologies corps — made up of engineers and scientists trying to crack “game-changing techologies” — began fiddling with a standard $100 microwave in 1999 at the Rochester Hills lab, Dominique Tasch, vice president and general manager-microwave technologies, says.

“The target was to harness the technology,” Tasch says, referring to Dana's initial plan to find ways to use microwave technology to treat metal in-house. The plan quickly evolved when the supplier realized the method “opens up a lot of opportunities,” he says.

“Our business model is to license out this technology to partners.” If the plan is successful, it promises to “help Dana maintain its position in this brutal automotive environment.”

The $9 billion automotive supplier recently shed a host of aftermarket subsidiaries in an effort to focus on its core business of supplying auto parts to light- and heavy-vehicle makers.

However, AtmoPlas has the long-term potential to provide significant automotive advances for metal anti-corrosion, durability and decoration.

Other possibilities include exhaust treatment in cars and the generation of onboard hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles, Devendra Kumar says.

Although microwaves have been studied for emissions treatment for the last 20-25 years, Kumar says Dana just now is mastering a useable method through its AtmoPlas work. The trick now is shaking cost out of the application.

Proven applications for AtmoPlas to date include: carburizing steel (uniting with metal); nitriding metals (diffusion of nitrogen on carbon steel for hardness); sintering powdered metals and ceramics; joining/brazing metals; and hardening, softening and tempering.

These applications will keep Dana busy as it looks to market the technology to firms in blue-chip industries.