dinner held on November 16,
2011 at the Marriott City Center
in Charlotte, N.C., United States.
Paul Evans, PPG zone manager, refinish training, presented the award, which
is given annually to the PPG collision center technician receiving the highest score on
the ASE painting and refinish test.
Bender has been an automotive refinish technician for 18 years. He works at
Bender Auto Repair, a family-owned business, in Saltsburg, Pa. He earned an associate’s degree in automotive techniques
and management from Vale Technical Institute in Blairsville, Pa. Bender has also
accumulated several other impressive credentials: he is a certified PPG Master
Technician, an ASE Master Collision Repair Refinish Technician, an ASE Automobile Technician, and is I-CAR Certified.
RahuCat’s environmentally
friendly coatings, composites
and inks technology sold to US
specialty chemicals solutions
firm
Clearwater Corporate Finance has advised Unilever Ventures (UV) and RahuCat Management on the sale of UV
portfolio company Rahu Catalytics Ltd
(RahuCat).
Nottingham-based RahuCat is a developer of unique iron-ligand-based chemistry
for use in environmentally friendly coatings, composites and inks. The company
has been acquired by OM Group Inc.
RahuCat is at the forefront of developing clean, robust and cost-effective
coatings, composites and ink driers to
meet an ever-increasing need for environmentally friendly coatings, composites
and inks throughout the world.
RahuCat was established in 2006 after
completing a spin-out from Unilever
Group plc, with backing from the group’s
venture capital unit, Unilever Ventures.
The transaction includes all related intellectual property rights and master
patents, as well as all manufacturing and
supply agreements. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The deal was led by Clearwater Corporate Finance’s chemicals team, comprising Philip Nuttall, Constantine Biller and
Nick Horrocks.
“With EU legislation looming over the
use of heavy metals in chemicals, RahuCat has developed much sought after
technology that will have a significant impact on the paints industry,” said Philip
Nuttall, partner and head of chemicals at
Clearwater Corporate Finance.
“The deal is great news for Unilever
Ventures and RahuCat management, who
together have successfully nurtured Rahu
as the company and commercialized its
unique iron-ligand technology,” said Con-
stantine Biller, chemicals partner at Clear-
water Corporate Finance. “For OM Group
the acquisition is significant as it will allow
it to reinforce its Borchi OXY-Coat prod-
uct line for the global coatings industry.”
“This technology will play an integral
role in the future development of the
paint and coatings industry and support
its transition to developing environmen-
tally friendly paints that comply with
current and upcoming EU legislation re-
lating to VOCs and other related issues,”
said Paul Smith, CEO of RahuCat. “This
deal is the culmination of an excellent
collaboration with OM Group and pro-
vides real evidence of the value of the
emerging technologies.”
“Rahu is a company with great poten-
tial but limited current traction, not an easy
sell in the current M&A market,” said John
Coombs, head of Unilever Ventures.
“Clearwater demonstrated great under-
standing of the acquirer community and a
deep set of relationships. We were delighted
both with the thoughtful way they engaged
with the task and the end result.”
Research reveals graphene
can be used to develop
conductive, yet impermeable
surface coatings
Graphene is largely transparent to the
eye and, as it turns out, largely transparent to water according to new research.
A new study by scientists at Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has determined that gold,
copper and silicon get just as wet when
clad by a single continuous layer of
graphene as they would without.
The research, reported in the online
edition of Nature Materials, is significant
for scientists learning to fine-tune surface
coatings for a variety of applications.
“The extreme thinness of graphene
makes it a totally non-invasive coating,”
said Pulickel Ajayan, Rice’s Benjamin M.
and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry. “A drop
of water sitting on a surface ‘sees
through’ the graphene layers and conforms to the wetting forces dictated by
the surface beneath. It’s quite an interesting phenomenon unseen in any other
coatings and once again proves that
graphene is really unique in many different ways.” Ajayan is co-principal investigator of the study with Nikhil Koratkar,
a Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace
and Nuclear Engineering at RPI.
A typical surface of graphite, the form
of carbon most commonly known as pencil lead, should be hydrophobic, Ajayan
said. But in the present study, the researchers found to their surprise that a sin-gle-atom-thick layer of the carbon lattice
presents a negligible barrier between water
and a hydrophilic—water-loving—
surface. Piling on more layers reduces wetting; at about six layers, graphene
essentially becomes graphite.
An interesting aspect of the study, Ajayan
said, may be the ability to change such surface properties as conductivity while retaining wetting characteristics. Because pure
graphene is highly conductive, the discovery
could lead to a new class of conductive, yet
impermeable, surface coatings, he said.
The caveat is that wetting transparency was observed only on surfaces
(most metals and silicon) where interaction with water is dominated by weak
van der Waals forces, and not for materials like glass, where wettability is dominated by strong chemical bonding, the
team reported.
But such applications as condensation
heat transfer—integral to heating, cooling, dehumidifying, water harvesting and
many industrial processes—may benefit
greatly from the discovery, according to
the paper. Copper is commonly used for
its high thermal conductivity, but it corrodes easily. The team coated a copper
sample with a single layer of graphene
and found the subnanometer barrier protected the copper from oxidation with no
