Research and Development
LIFE has had an active Scientific Research program that has systematically addressed problems that have occasionally arisen through the course of its activities. The company has conducted scientific research and experimental development in the fields of metal production, engine and propulsion systems, shipbuilding and ship repair technology.
Environmental Consciousness
Being located on the waterfront of a UNESCO world heritage community, has created an awareness of environmental issues has shaped strategic planning at LIFE. A number of corporate and management decisions made by the company over the past decades have taken into consideration its environmental footprint. With a concern for its community and a goal of sustainability, LIFE has adjusted its product line and modified its activities to reduce and in some cases eliminate the production of harmful emissions.
In the winter of 2003 engineers from LIFE collaborated with a research team from Saint Mary’s University to develop a Hydrogen powered marine propulsion system. A number of technologies having to do with the production, storage and use of Hydrogen were identified and evaluated. While the project team met their objective of designing a hydrogen propulsion system, it was deemed too expensive to bring to the prototype stage. One promising technology uncovered by this research, however, was the use of concentrated solar power to energize the production of Hydrogen.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 spawned a rapid increase in fuel costs that prompted management to rethink its research objectives. It was reasoned that if the high temperatures were available to produce hydrogen through a solar catalytic process, then why not use the same sort of heating process to directly melt metals?
Revolution of Solar Power
As a result of research into reducing metal melting costs and eliminating the company’s carbon footprint the R&D team has recently developed a solar furnace system that allows the company to melt metal with solar power alone.
Engineers at Lunenburg Foundry have discovered a cost effective method for building solar furnaces with the ability to melt metal completely from solar radiation. The Research & Development team have melted the first sand castings in North America using solar power alone. The simple geometry allows inexpensive and effective concentrators to be built at any scale.
Since their first solar melt in June 2006 the LIFE R&D team has designed, built and tested 5 separate working prototypes. Temperatures of over 760 Celsius have been recorded and a variety of metals have been melted and poured babbitt, pewter, Lead and Zinc. The largest furnace unit to date is rated at 23 KW. Research conducted at Dalhousie University, Department of Mechanical Engineering has verified the prototypes are currently operating around 70%. Accordingly, the two-stage concentrator offers a much greater power intensity than conventional "flat plate" solar technologies, so that method may represent one of the most efficient solar collectors in the world.
The Patented method allows for cost efficient construction of solar concentrating systems of any scale and can be retrofitted to many current industrial processes. The benefit is that practically any energy intensive process can be driven by this clean and sustainable energy source without production of greenhouse gasses. The novel technology is unprecedented in its value and continues to be aggressively protected by patent lawyers on a worldwide basis.
Ongoing research confirms that this concentrating system is a breakthrough technology and offers a potential solution to the world’s energy needs.
For more information on the solar furnace and other solar activities please check out the Prometheus Section of this website.
