Serendipity and intuition leads to a new class of Fire Resistant building materials and several new US patents.

Michael Mabey , Canada

Sometimes in the search for one solution to a problem, serendipity plays a role that completely changes the outcome and the coarse of events.

In the late 1990’s the US Department of Energy (DOE) was looking for a safer means to encapsulate low-level nuclear waste materials. They needed a very impervious “cement” to encase these materials, so they could be safely stored, long term, in underground vaults or abandoned mines, miles underground.

I was invited to the Argonne National Labs to discuss how we might supply a lower cost “fertilizer grade” compound for use in one of these cement mixes. We had access to supply an industrial grade product which could replace a more costly “food grade” product that they had been using for their initial experiments.

Serendipity: During the initial product trials, I inadvertently mixed two very reactive materials in a wet slurry. The exothermic reaction was so rapid and intense that it literally boiled the water away in seconds and left me with a large solid that looked like a chunk of Swiss cheese. As my original objective was to create the exact opposite (an impervious mass), I set that piece aside and starting looking for alternative compounds.

Many months passed and it was not until I was cleaning up the workshop and discarding numerous other exhibits that I came across this old sample. I was so fascinated with it - as a novel paperweight or conversation piece - that I decided to keep it.

Four years later, I was working on solving fire resistance problems in curtain wall panels. We had explored using lightweight cellular cement - which took too long to set and cure. We also considered Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) but its $30 - $50M in equipment expense was far too high to justify for a start-up. I then recalled the “Swiss cheese” composite sample and decided that if we could control the reaction and develop a product that offered the same properties as AAC, at a fraction of the capital cost, which would provide equal or better fire resistance, in a fast setting wet slurry, we would have a winner.

It took another five years, with numerous experiments and some additional research into alternative cements, and today we have developed this lighter weight, Fire Resistant structural mineral foam composite. This product offers superior fire resistance, is able to be mixed on a continuous basis and can also use waste materials as fillers (fly ash, tailings, bio-industrial, agri-fibre, etc.) & even salt water and/or desert sand to produce light weight, structural insulated building panels, block or functional shapes.

The picture shows the original AAC (white) and the ATI-Composites Mineral Foam made with mine tailings as the very low cost, eco-friendly filler. Other fillers may include fly ash, desert sand and even ground coconut shells.

In recent months, we have been successful with the ASTM-E119, 2-Hour Fire Resistance Rating with just 1 + ¼” of Mineral Foam Composite material cast over an expanded polystyrene-based structural wall panel.

In June of 2010, the US Patent Office issued a utility patent to cover the early version of the ATI Mineral Foam Technology with No.7,744,693. Others are pending.

In September of this year, the ATI-Composite Mineral Foam was awarded 1st Place in the Canadian Clean-15 Technology Competition for 2010.

Needless to say, we have come a long way since that 1st lab mishap. However, that failure became the genesis of this new, very promising award winning technology. The desktop video demonstration showing the application of one of the early versions of the technology is available on our web site at: www.ati-composites.com.

Mike Mabey, 01-780-231-4793

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