December 29, 2009 - Happy New Year!

For those readers who celebrate New Year in these days, I would like to wish a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2010! Season's Greetings to all readers. I am expecting to be able to publish some good news on CuproBraze expansion during the coming year.
The bloggers will be back in January.

December 17, 2009 - Environmentally friendly technologies introduced in Poland - Guest Blog by Juho Partanen

December 7th, 2009, was an important day for all of us and especially for the future generations, since it was the opening day for United Nations’ Copenhagen climate change conference. The aim of this two weeks´ conference is to find solutions against global warming by introducing guidelines for global environmental strategy, which would come into effect during post-Kyoto agreements period. EU states have agreed to cut their emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, but had even offered to increase this number to 30 per cent if other countries, including US, China, India and Brazil, made comparative proposals. The original Kyoto agreement was ratified by 176 countries, but the most important agenda for COP15 is to get US and new industrializing giants, such as BRIC –countries to ratify the contract. As we know, partly due to human activities especially from the beginning of industrial era, the amount CO2 and other green house gases in the atmosphere have increased significantly. These gases are absorbing and re-emitting ricocheted infrared radiation and turning it into heat energy, with temperature increase as a result. The overall target is to cut emissions to keep global warming no more than 2 C above pre-industrial level, which UN specialists regard as the upper safety limit. And all this should be done without sacrificing global and fragile economic development.
Strongly integrated to COP15 agenda, a business delegation lead by Dr. Paavo Väyrynen, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development of Finland, visited Poland’s capital city Warsaw. Finland, with 1300 companies working in this field is considered to be one of the global knowledge leaders in the field of environmental technologies. The major theme for this visit was to gather Finnish companies, which are demonstrating clean industrial processes, and/or products and services of which can be considered as Clean Technologies. This means that these companies are providing value for their customers by innovative energy saving solutions, high recyclability of materials etc. Finnradiator, with Mr. Pekka Halmet, Chairman of the Board, and me were members of the delegation, introducing benefits achieved by CuproBraze technology, to over 100 business and political representatives. Poland, with high volume of EU's structural funds focused on development, important destination of foreign direct investments and the only EU -country where GDP has remained positive during the global recession is an interesting opportunity for environmental friendly technologies, such as CuproBraze.

Finally, I would like take an opportunity to thank the whole CuproBraze community for the year 2009. Special thanks to the Managing Director Markku Ainali and the Chairman of the board Karl Görtz who have done excellent work. Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year 2010!

PS. As one single and the biggest Christmas present, let’s hope that Copenhagen will turn into Hopenhagen.

Juho Partanen introducing CuproBraze technology (left)

Minister Paavo Väyrynen speaking to the Polish audience (middle)

Pekka Halmet, Chairman of the Board of Finnradiator (right)

December 5, 2009 - MTZ-Event in Friedrichshafen held

From the beginning of 2010 we will have two separate blogs on this site. The second one will be written by Juho Partanen, who is Export Director of Finnradiator, one of our member companies. In his job Juho is traveling and getting impressions on the CuproBraze markets and heis willing to share them with you. Juho attended the CuproBraze Alliance booth recently at the MTZ-event in Friedrichshafen, Germany, together with our Chairman Karl Görtz of Umicore BrazeTec. Juho will start immediately as guest blogger here on my blog page. Here are Juhos notes from Friedrichshafen:

Organised for the 3rd time, the annual Heavy-duty On and Off Highway Engines Conference 2009 was held in the lovely Friedrichshafen, hometown of Zeppelin and MTU, at the coast of Lake Constance. The conference gathered professionals of climate change from academic community together with CTO's and their collegues from private sector to discuss the environmental policies and consequences of tightening regulations on NOx, CO2 and particle emissions. The target of the conference was to create an overall picture of climate change and find ways to further reduce the human impact, mainly by limiting emissions from fossil fuel combustion by technological solutions, such as more energy efficient vehicles, hybrid engines and fuel cells. As a result we concluded that instead of solving the climate change problem by optimizing one part of the eco-system, focus has to be put to the overall system and to joining of the partial solutions. The same logic is valid when optimizing vehicle performance and it's eco-friendliness. When using CuproBraze heat exchangers, OEM's gain almost three times higher energy efficiency than with aluminium which means less size/space, less fan power, and higher fuel efficiency. Another key aspect is that in the future the focus has to be in the control of overall supply chain - we have to measure the ecological footprint all the way from rawmaterial sourcing to the recycling process. Ecofriendliness is a valuable brand issue and OEM's have to care of the whole production chain if they are willing to brand them selves with eco-friendliness. This is possible with CuproBraze -technology. One metric ton of copper needs less than half of the energy required to produce one metric ton of aluminium. One critical aspect is that copper is virtually 100 percent recyclable. One metric to of copper requires far less energy than it does to recycle aluminium.

Opening of the ATZ-event (left)

Juho Partanen preparing the CuproBraze booth (right)

November 1, 2009 - Seminar in Dubai held

The Special Technology Seminar "Advanced Heat Exchangers for Locomotives and Heavy Duty Equipment" was held in Dubai on October 8th. Dubai is a fascinating city with man-made landmarks like palm shaped island Palm Jumeirah, hotel Burg Al Arab, sky scraper Burj Dubai, downhill skiing indoors etc. etc. And the construction work continues.

The seminar strengthened earlier intererest and created new interest in the CuproBraze technology. That can be said now after three weeks of follow-up. We will, hopefully, see some practical consequences already 2010. The pictures show the speakers, who covered all important aspects of the technology and applications.

The presentations can be downloaded free of charge on www.cuprobraze.com/dubai.

Nigel Cotton opening

The audience was very international

Dieter Nützel speaking

Piotr Skarbinski

Markku Ainali

The speakers

September 23, 2009 - Interesting events

ICA and CuproBraze Alliance will organise a Special Technology Seminar "Advanced Heat Exchangers for Locomotives and Heavy Duty Equipment" in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on October 8th. There are already about 50 attendees registrated for the event. Most of the speakers are from the member companies of Alliance. On the day before and after the seminar there is possibility to reserve time slot for face-to-face meetings with the speakers.
CuproBraze Alliance will also have a booth at "Heavy Duty-, On- und Off-Highway-Engines 2009 MTZ-Conference" in Friedrichshafen, Germany, on November 17-18th. The booth will be manned by representatives of the member companies Finnradiator and Umicore BrazeTec. More information on the events can be found on the main page and in Upcoming Events of this web site.

July 15, 2009 - Enjoy the summer!

We are in the middle of summer vacation period. I had the opportunity to take a period off in June and relax in the countryside of Finland. The first week was rather chilly and rainy but then the weather suddenly became better. The temperature climbed up to about 27 C. It was enjoyable just to take it easy in the sun with family, read books and meet with old friends.
I wish a nice time to all of you who still have your vacation ahead! Relax and enjoy the time of freedom and even forget CuproBraze for a short while! We will have some interesting things coming up in the Autumn.

June 3, 2009 - China Green Transport Summit 2009

At the 2nd annual China Green Transport Summit (CGTS) held May 20 - 22 in Beijing, CuproBraze Alliance delivered a convincing presentation concerning the advantages that CuproBraze offers in meeting our future green transport needs. As part of the third section titled Innovation and Exploitation of Engine Technology at Home and Abroad, Gert Lundmark presented compelling evidence of CuproBraze’s use as an environmentally friendly solution for the manufacture of heat exchangers.  In particular states Lundmark, “CuproBraze heat exchangers have high durability, strength, and fatigue resistance contributing to longer lifespan.” In addition continues Lundmark, “When using partial exhaust gas recirculation to minimize emissions, exhaust gas recirculation results in a higher heat load to the cooling systems including radiators and charge air coolers. Better temperature resistance is required from the corresponding materials, which clearly favours CuproBraze. ”The CuproBraze Alliance was an Exhibitor and Silver Sponsor at the event.

Our former MD Gert Lundmark (Luvata, Shanghai) delivered the speech and presentation and attended the panel discussion on behalf of CuproBraze Alliance. The coauthor Markku Ainali did not attend the event personally. Alliance also had an exhibition booth which was hosted by Leo Lu (Luvata, Shanghai).

April 27, 2009 - Decisions from Members' Meeting in Poland

CuproBraze Alliance had a Board Meeting and the annual Members Meeting in the beautiful country side of Poland last week. The meeting which was well attended by the members was held outside of Swiebodzin, where the organiser Seco/Warwick is based. The meeting defined the outlines for the operation for 2009 and partly for 2010, as well. It was decided to continue attending smaller specialised events for heavy duty applications and environmental friendly technologies, and naturally, developing this web site, and supporting ICA with speakers in the oncoming CuproBraze Seminar in the Middle East. The next event will be attending the China Green Transport Summit 2009 in Beijing by keynote speech and booth in May. The current Board was authorised to continue with its work a year ahead, in line with the Election Committee's proposal. Many thanks to Seco/Warwick for the professional arrangements and the hospitality! The next year's Members Meeting will be held in Finspong, Sweden, organized by Luvata Brazing Center. Keep yourself updated by reading Upcoming Events page regularly.

The meetings were organized by Board member Piotr Skarbinski (right) and Andrzej Bielewicz (second from right) of Seco/Warwick.

On the left Leif Broomé (Lawyer and General Secretary) and right of him Tero Kangas from Finnradiator. Both of them are members of the Board.

April 18, 2009 - Secrets to success

The latest ICA Executive Report (#61) the Editor Harry Schmitz is listing the most important factors that obviously have contributed to the success of the CuproBraze process. The readers can give their view in a web survey. To me personally, it is difficult to judge which has been the most important factor, as all the technical development and marketing has been so wide international cooperation and everyone involved has contributed to the success. It will be interesting to see the ranking by the readers who, at least most of them, have seen the progress from a distance. Have a look at the interesting report and vote for the factor you find the most important!

April 1, 2009 - Cool and hot

In February I wrote about ice racing and Posa Serenius. Last Saturday I went to see the Swedish Championships and witnessed Posa winning his 20th Championship and at the age of 61 years. What a cool guy!
Then from cool to hot things! Seco/Warwick will have an Open Door Day at their furnace plant in Poland, on 22th of April, in conjunction of Alliance's Members Meeting. The Open Door Day is free to all who are interested to learn more about CuproBraze furnaces and CuproBraze Alliance's member companies. Seco will pick up from the nearest airports. Information on registration and other details is available at Resources - Upcoming Events. Furnace is the heart of the CuproBraze process. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the requirements for them and the latest technical solutions to fulfill the requirements. Take advantage of this excellent opportunity! Hope to see you in Poland!

Posa before race

...and after!

... semi-continuous furnace,

March 24, 2009 - One-shot brazing to volume production

One-shot brazing of automotive CuproBraze charge air coolers is now in volume production scale at Finnradiator. Luvata's Automotive Newsletter #51, published today, includes interview of Tero Kangas, Managing Director of Finnradiator's production company SJO. Tero is summarizing their experiences on the work from transferring from welding of tanks and fittings to brazing them together with the core - all in "one shot". The article is followed by a press release by ICA. The development work was done jointly by the Alliance members Finnradiator, Umicore BrazeTec and Luvata. Finnradiator continues transferring more CAC models to one-shot brazing and thereafter radiators. Read more under "Literature - Luvata Newsletters" and "News - ICA Press Releases.

February 21, 2009 - Ice racing is the CuproBraze sport

Let's continue with the theme "ice" but move to the world of sports. Everybody knows the ice sports like ice hockey or skating, but very few know that there is a sport in which you can compete with motorbikes on an oval track on ice and without brakes! It resembles very much speedway in rules, but ice racing bikes have big spikes to make it possible to drive fast on ice. This sports happens to be the one that is sponsored by several companies within Alliance. The reason is its popularity in Russia and in Nordic and some Central European countries. Shaaz is sponsoring the current World Champion Nikolai Krasnikov, who comes from Shadrinsk, the same city where Shaaz is located. Umicore BrazeTec is sponsoring the best German driver Günther Bauer, one of the top drivers in the world. Luvata is sponsoring the "grand old" Swedish driver Per-Olov "Posa"Serenius, who still competes in this tough sport at world top level in spite of his age of 60 years. He has won personal World Championship twice, World Team Championship 3 times, Nordic Championship 8 times and Swedish Championship 19 times. This winter he already qualified to World Championship competition and he will also try to win his 20th Swedish Championship. Some days ago Swedish Television showed a documentary called Icy Riders on Posa. TV-team had followed Posa for several years on his competition trips in Sweden, Russia, The Netherlands and Germany. Russia is the leading country in ice racing and the program gives a realistic view of the less glamorous life of the passionate drivers traveling long distances by train in Russia from competition to competition. The documentary is 52 min. long and a trailer can be viewed and a DVD with English subtitles purchased at www.icespeedwaymovie.com.

Posa in the lead

Posa, Leif Peltonen
and myself in pit

Günther Bauer warming up in Shadrinsk

February 17, 2009 - Nostalgic thoughts

I have been in contact with most of our members recently and it made me thinking about the wide geographic spread of us. The most Eastern members are in Japan and most Western in the USA. There are many time zones between those. Our members speak many languages, at least Japanese, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Polish, German and English. There are many kind of cultural differences, including food - from sushi to meat balls, bratwurst and hamburgers. It is amazing that all these people can and want to keep contact with each other and work together. Modern communication technology and dominant business language like English make it possible. In our case the main common nominator, and motivator is, of course, the CuproBraze technology. We are approaching again the time in the Spring when the members get together to discuss the items of common interest in the Members' Meeting. This time we will meet in Poland - for the first time. But before Spring we still should enjoy the winter. I'm living in Sweden and we have now a period of real winter, with snow on the ground and the lakes frozen. On Saturday I took a long walk in sunshine on the ice of the lake Mälaren (Left and middle pictures) - probably as exotic for many as sitting under a palm tree for us Scandinavians!

Enjoy the winter!

These kind of views motivate to promote environmentally friendly technologies.

January 31, 2009 - Exhaust gas systems

I just returned from CTI's Forum "Exhaust Gas Systems" which was held in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was confirmed once again that the environmental regulations allover the world will become tougher and tougher and will be spreading strongly from on-road vehicles to off-road vehicles in the coming decade. Suppliers are developing technologies for treating the exhaust gases (SCR and LNT) so that the new standards can be fulfilled. I got the impression that the focus today is more in after treatment than in minimizing the formation of the gases at the source. Both options are really needed and have to be utilized. Minimizing at the source means exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and more efficient and even burning of the fuel (HCCI). EGR will put an extra thermal load to the cooling systems. That is where CuproBraze has the opportunity and potential due to it's excellent durability at high temperatures. CuproBraze Alliance, therefore, had a booth at the Forum and introduced the technology to the attendees of the Forum. I was even allowed to give a short introduction of CuproBraze at the Forum. The Alliance representatives at the booth were, in addition to myself, Dr. Dieter Nützel of VAC and Mr. Martin Stroiczek of Umicore BrazeTec. Charge Air Coolers from Finnradiator were displayed as practical examples of successful OEM application of CuproBraze technology.

Booth staff M. Stroiczek,
D. Nützel and M. Ainali

January 19, 2009 - Perfect time to promote new capabilities

"It is difficult to imagine a time when the demand for new technical solutions and engineering innovation was more apparent than it is today. The global auto industry is responding to the major shift in demand to more fuel efficient, environmentally cleaner vehicles by asking the engineering community to collaborate on a new generation of lighter, safer and alternatively powered vehicles. These engineers are now in crash-course mode to learn about new materials and advanced technologies. For suppliers, the time to promote may never be better". Edward McCallum wrote these words in the recent issue of Automotive Engineering International. He did not mention any specific technology but, to my view, his words match perfectly with CuproBraze.

January 13, 2009 - Shocking stories?

Sometimes tests are carried out, literally, by accident. More than ten years ago there was a field test program in the USA, where CuproBraze radiators were installed in vehicles to record long term performance in areas with different environmental (corrosive) conditions. Most of the radiators were installed in pick-up trucks used for deliveries of goods. The test parameters were recorded on a monthly basis. One of such pick-up trucks was involved in a traffic accident. The pictures below show the damages on the truck front. The radiator was removed and studied. The core was bent in the collision and the fins and tubes were strongly deformed. However, to everybody's surprise, the core did not leak. This was just a single case so no general conclusions could be drawn. Afterwards, when this case was discussed on a coffee break at Luvata's Brazing Center, it was decided to make another simple "unscientific" shock test, this time on purpose. A steel block of 1 000 kg weight was lifted up by a crane and dropped from 1 meter's height on a CuproBraze radiator core, which was laying on concrete floor. After removal of the block, a the hit pattern was visible on the core, but the damages were much less than expected. Again, no big conclusions were drawn from this single simple test. Maybe the observations from these two cases are interesting to somebody who is familiar with crash management in vehicles.

Radiator core did not leak after traffic accident (left).

A steel block of 1 000 kg was dropped on a radiator core laying on concrete floor. Not much damage (right).

January 11, 2009 - Spring-back

Another simple early test that was made was torsion test for core pieces. To break a CuproBraze core this way required 2.6 times the power by which a soft soldered core could be broken. Twisting was made later with full size cores by man power at exhibitions to demonstrate the flexibility. CuproBraze cores could not be broken by anybody who tried. After twisting the core returns automatically to its original position. The spring-back effect is a beneficial feature in off-road driving conditions. This demonstration is not used anymore at booths due to safety reasons. Shaaz demonstrated the flexibility later on by letting a "snake woman" do her exercises on a radiator covered with a transparent plastic sheet. Those shows attracted on-road drivers, as well :- )

A CuproBraze core piece required 2.6 times higher power to break it by twisting than a soft soldered core piece with identical dimensions did.

January 9, 2009 - Strong joints, strong core

In my previous blog I told about the scientific side of the development phase of the CuproBraze process. In the next few blogs I will try to enlighten the more popularized side. To get an idea of the hands-on properties of the products, simple tearing-apart tests and compression tests were made at the early stage of development for CuproBraze core pieces versus soft soldered ones with identical dimensions. The results were clearly for the benefit of CuproBraze, as illustrated on the left figure. In addition, the CuproBraze core broke at the fins whereas the soldered core broke at the joints. Thus the strength of the CuproBraze core was controlled by the strength (thickness) of the fins rather than by the strength of the joints. The core strength was, by one company, demonstrated by lifting people standing on a thin core. In spite of the impressiveness of the method, I do not recommend using it, as accidents can happen and the edges of the fins are sharp ...

Pulling apart of the CuproBraze core required 2.9 times higher power than of a soldered one. The compression strength was 1.4 times higher, respectively. Theoretically, the compression strengths should be equal but obviously CuproBraze joints support fins better...

January 5, 2009 - Developing CuproBraze

When developing a new manufacturing technology, there are numerous matters to take into consideration. The CuproBraze development started from materials. Earlier, there were no suitable alloys for the fins and tubes which could withstand the brazing temperature without softening. A copper alloy for fins had to be developed, as well another one for tubes. For headers, side supports and tanks there existed, luckily, an old which that was heat resistant and had excellent formability. That alloy was originally developed for lamp sockets and found a new use in CuproBraze technology. Then you had to develop a new brazing alloy as the earlier ones were melting at unnecessarily high temperatures. And then the brazing paste and foil technologies, so that the brazing alloy would be practical and convenient to apply on the surfaces of the parts. After that the actual brazing process, including furnace cycle, had to be developed. Finally, up scaling of the process. New types of machines were needed for paste application, dedicated for this process. When everything was ready, you had to be able to demonstrate the process and make prototype heat exchangers and test them thermally, mechanically and against corrosion in laboratory tests, and in relevant outdoor environments. In addition, you had to be able to hand out prototypes to interested heat exchanger manufacturers for their own and their customers' evaluation. Even though many of the developments were made parallelledly, it all took a lot of time and other resources, and you had to work in a serious and structurized manner. To make the development public, ICA arranged technical seminars around the world and speeches and papers were given also at international conferences. All that was done. A lot of the work has been summarized in the CuproBraze Brazing Handbook and in SAE-papers. All in all, many radiator manufacturers perceived the technology very interesting, even fascinating, as it was the major new development in the automotive heat exchanger manufacturing since 30 years back.

January 2, 2009 - Happy New Year!

At first I would like to wish you all A Happy New Year 2009! Let's hope that we gradually start seeing some positive signs in the world economy. I recently read a blog by Glenn Brodis of Automotive World. He wrote: "Firms that spend wisely in the depths of recessions are always the ones that tend to power out of them as markets eventually turn back up". The global automotive industry is now in a position where it must re-evaluate all issues related to economy, technology and environment. This situation should be favorable for new technologies, including CuproBraze.