Kulr Technology (otc: Kutg)

KULR Technology Corporation (OTC: KUTG) is focused on developing and commercializing high-performance thermal management (cooling) technologies for a wide array of electronics and energy storage applications. Heat generated by an electronic system's internal components can impair performance and result in system failure and shortened life. KULR exploits its patented Carbon Fiber Cooling (CFC) technologies by creating superior thermal management products high in thermal conductivity and heat dissipation properties. CFC is ultra-light weight and compliant, which are of key importance for many electronics applications where weight and system design restrictions (i.e. miniaturization of devices) are concerns. CFC solutions are rooted in the aerospace industry with the Company serving the likes of NASA, JPL, Raytheon and Boeing. CFC technology has played an important role in space exploration utilized in the Mercury Messenger and International Space Station's NICER telescope. The Company will also play a part in the upcoming Lunar Flashlight and 2020 Mars Rover missions. KULR provides next level thermal management solutions for next generation space, industrial, military, electric vehicle, consumer electronics, mobile and cloud computing markets. KULR stands uniquely positioned to meet the increasing system and power demands of the world of electronics.

 

KUTG recently announced that the co-founder of BYD, one of the world's largest electric vehicle and battery manufacturers, joined their board.

 

The stock just recently started trading as of 3 days ago. Very little volume at this time so there are certainly liquidity risks, but as investor awareness/interest picks up so too could the volume. The trading symbol is KUTG. You can find a chart on just about any of the financial sites like Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, MarketWatch etc.

 

KULR Carbon Velvet Enables Cooler Digital Gear
by Jim McGregor Contributor, Tirias Research
October 21, 2016

This is an older editorial piece from Tirias Research that provides good insight into KULR Technology's core carbon fiber tech:

Managing heat has been a growing concern in consumer electronics as performance increases, form factors shrink and applications push mobile design requirements. As a result, designing systems to manage heat has become an art of balancing endless trade-offs, as demonstrated by the recent Samsung Galaxy Note 7 issues. However, KULR Technology is introducing a flexible carbon fiber heat sink that may eliminate many of the design trade-offs, while enabling a new generation of electronic form factors.

When first approached about the concept of using carbon fiber in consumer electronics, my first thought was using it as the case, which has already been done. What KULR is doing is completely different. KULR has developed a velvet material made from carbon fibers. Not only does carbon fiber have higher tensile strength than steel when combined with epoxies or resins, it also has incredible heat conducting properties, making it a natural heat sink. When you combine vertical strands of carbon fiber into a velvet-like material, you create a heat sink that has a larger surface area. A larger surface area means that carbon fiber-based materials can dissipate more heat than traditional metal heat sinks.

KULR calls the material carbon velvet. The resulting heat sink or thermal interface material is called FTI. FTI is flexible in both its composition and application. KULR can change the length and density of the fibers in its carbon velvet to change the heat transfer characteristics and cost. In application, the material can mold to a circuit board and its chips like a blanket. In addition to dissipating heat, this blanket also reduces the design requirements associated with traditional heat sinks, and eases the assembly of the final product.

The flexible nature of the carbon velvet allows for creative product form factors, such as devices that mold to body parts. In talking to the KULR technical staff about the technology, it is also easy to see how the carbon velvet could be adapted to an almost endless list of applications ranging from augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets to servers, electric vehicles, and renewable energy applications.

Carbon fiber heat transfer technology is not new. It was originally developed over two decades ago for extremely demanding applications that could absorb the expense, including aerospace and industrial equipment. KULR’s proprietary manufacturing process is the enabling factor for wider adoption of carbon velvet technology. KULR can manufacture carbon velvet at competitive price points for many applications that might not have considered carbon fiber heat transfer solutions.

Carbon velvet is one of those seemly simple solutions that addresses a top design constraint for the electronics industry – managing heat. Its benefits extend to reducing weight and enabling new form factors, which will be key for many markets, such as smartphones, wearables, IoT and even data center products. This broad applicability makes carbon velvet valuable for a wide range of companies ranging from Apple to GE.

-- The author and members of the TIRIAS Research staff do not hold equity positions in any of the companies mentioned. TIRIAS Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud.

 

KULR Technology’s Thermal Architecture Included in Two Upcoming NASA-JPL Space Missions

KULR’s proprietary, light-weight, high-performance carbon fiber heat sinks will safeguard crucial lasers and scanning components on the 2020 Mars Rover’s search for signs of life on Mars as well as a 2018 mission to measure ice deposits near the lunar south poll.

August 02, 2018 11:11 AM Eastern Daylight Time

CAMPBELL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KULR Technology, a subsidiary of KT High-Tech Marketing Inc. (OTC: KUTG), announced today that its carbon fiber thermal management solutions, in particular custom-designed phase change heat sinks, will be used on two upcoming NASA-JPL missions – the 2018 CubeSat “Lunar Flashlight” mission and the 2020 Mars mission as part of the Mars Rover SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environment with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) equipment.

For both missions, the KULR Technology heat sinks will keep critical and sensitive components such as lasers and corresponding sensors at a cool and consistent temperatures throughout their use, avoiding signal distortion or other complications that can arise from overheating.

The 2018 CubeSat “Lunar Flashlight” mission will use a laser to explore water ice hidden in shadows and craters on the moon surface. It will be the first NASA and JPL mission to use the smaller, lighter, less expensive satellites known as CubeSats to orbit the moon.

“The use of these small CubeSats and exceptionally sensitive laser instruments to explore places such as lunar craters is a new and exciting kind of mission,” said KULR Technology’s CTO, Dr. Timothy Knowles, who has worked on NASA projects for decades. “And our technology, our heat sink, will keep the laser – the flashlight – from getting too hot and complicating or even corrupting the entire mission,” he said.

During the 2020 Mars Mission, SHERLOC will be mounted on the rover's robotic arm and use spectrometers, a laser, and a camera to search for organics and minerals that may be signs of past microbial life.

“The SHERLOC rover mission is literally the search for signs of extra-terrestrial life,” Knowles said. “That’s pretty exciting, but it also means that you have to be sure the equipment is performing as it should in ideal temperature ranges. Like the Lunar Flashlight mission, that’s what we can do.”

The innovative KULR design included in the “Lunar Flashlight” and “SHERLOC” projects is a unique and highly effective phase-change system that incorporates KULR’s proprietary, highly conductive vertical carbon fiber architecture with a material similar to wax that can change from solid to liquid while absorbing high amounts of heat energy. The combination of materials designed and assembled by KULR to exact specifications will draw heat safely away from sensors and other components needed to efficiently study lunar ice formations or scan for signs of life on Mars.

“For the Lunar mission, if the Flashlight laser gets above 24 Celsius the data can degrade -- jeopardizing the entire point of the mission,” Dr. Knowles said. “So, keeping it below 24 Celsius while the laser is spewing out heat at more than 100 Celsius is the trick. It’s like frying a hamburger and keeping the outside of the pan cool enough to touch – it’s not easy, but, in this case, very important.”

For the Mars mission, a pair of KULR heat sinks are designed to accept 5400 Joules of heat over an hour operating time while keeping the temperature of the spectrometer detector within design limits. All the components, including the KULR sinks, will be expected to last at least one Mars year – about 687 days on Earth.

For the CubeSat Flashlight and Mars Rover, KULR Technology will help keep mission-sensitive materials cool. But that’s not what KULR does exclusively. For the 2017 NASA NICER mission which explored deep space neutron stars, for example, KULR designed a system to keep the components from freezing during space exposure. Over years of work Knowles and his team at KULR have designed more than 100 different heat management configurations for NASA and other aerospace and commercial customers. According to Dr. Knowles, “Everything from solutions as big as a briefcase to ones as small as a quarter. If you need to manage heat energy during space exploration around sensitive electronics like lasers or optics, we can probably help.”

“The KULR team has been an essential part of many of our projects in the last two decades,” said Mike Pauken, Spacecraft Thermal Systems Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab. “We’re happy to be working with them and incorporating their thermal solutions as part of the SHERLOC Instrument on the upcoming Mars 2020 Rover Mission.”

KULR Technology’s core technology is vertically-aligned carbon fiber material that is lighter, more flexible, and more efficient than traditional thermal management products. KULR’s carbon fiber has virtually unlimited commercial and industrial applications in areas such as increasing the longevity of electronic components, maximizing the efficiency of energy storage, and contributing to the development and efficiency of electric vehicles and drones.

Among the more promising uses for KULR’s carbon fiber is dramatically improving battery safety. KULR, in development and testing with a NASA, has developed a thermal shield that can prevent dangerous lithium-ion battery fires and explosions due to thermal runaway. In March, KULR announced an agreement with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, to be the exclusive manufacturing partner of the Internal Short-Circuit (ISC) device that can cause predictable lithium-ion cell failures in controlled conditions.

The CubeSat “Lunar Flashlight” mission is set for launch in November 2018. The Mars 2020 mission is scheduled to launch in July or August 2020.

About KULR

Founded by some of the foremost experts in aerospace thermal management, KULR Technology is joined by industry veterans in semiconductor and industrial manufacturing. The company’s investors and advisors include industry leaders from US, Japan, and China in the field of electrical vehicles, energy storage, communications, and semiconductors. KULR’s proprietary carbon fiber-based solutions are lighter, higher performance and more compliant than traditional solutions. Some applications of KULR’s carbon fiber material include space exploration, electric vehicles, cameras and laser displays, robotics, servers and data systems, power storage and consumer electronics.


Source: BusinessWire

 

There does seem to be a surprising amount of activity with the company:-

http://www.kulrtechnology.com/announcements

 

Yes, the Company has a lot of irons in the fire. Still developing many of their customer relationships (see Company presentation @ What Is KULR page of the web site). Will be interesting to see how things pan out moving forward.

 

NASA’s Work to Head Off Battery Blazes in Space Finds Uses on Earth (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

July 21, 2017 By Andy Pasztor

NASA’s Work to Head Off Battery Blazes in Space Finds Uses on Earth Technology to prevent lithium-ion battery fires will be used in home robots, audio gear and other electronics

NASA research to prevent catastrophic fires in vehicles or space suits in orbit soon is expected to make personal robots, audio gear and other electronics safer on the ground.

Researchers, regulators and some electronics makers say the space agency is developing some of the most promising solutions to keep lithium-ion power packs from overheating and sparking fires. Working with closely held Kulr Technology Corp., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is developing systems that wedge heat-absorbing carbon-fiber materials and even tiny water reservoirs between the cells to head off blazes.

NASA’s initial goal was to prevent fiery accidents in orbit from lithium-battery malfunctions in space suits. The first modified suits are scheduled to be sent to the international space station in coming months. Future electric planes and unmanned Mars rovers likely will get later versions of the technology. The fire-prevention designs under development by NASA and Kulr aren’t meant for laptops or smartphones, but they are set to be used in consumer products such as centralized home audio controls and Ubtech Robotics Corp.’s Lynx, a new humanoid robot. Lynx features Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa digital assistant and is slated to go on sale this summer.

Ubtech, a fast-growing Chinese robot maker, is in the final stages of testing the Lynx robots, which will offer facial recognition abilities and personalized greetings, along with other features available on Amazon’s wi-fi connected Echo speakers. Goti Deng, closely held Ubtech’s chief strategy officer, said the “demands for battery performance are really high,” but “right now Kulr is a star” in finding ways to reduce chances of dangerous overheating.

Ubtech already relies on Kulr to safeguard robots sold by major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp. By early 2018, Mr. Goti said, his company also plans to incorporate more-capable cooling technology in its next-generation robots intended for airports and museums.

Kulr Chief Executive Michael Mo said the company is far enough along to start assessing commercial applications for products ranging from medical devices to drones to electrical systems on airliners. The company also has signed a wide-ranging marketing deal with Jabil Circuits Inc., a manufacturer of electronic products for customers such as International Business Machines Corp. , HP Inc. and Xerox Corp.

“Battery technology has outpaced thermal-protection technology,” said Keith Cochran, Jabil vice president of global business units, who added Kulr’s technology “is very credible and the products work.” He said he expected Jabil to showcase Kulr’s technology in a line of home audio-control equipment within a few months.

Lithium power packs installed in robots, lights and some appliances are growing more powerful. They pose increasing challenges for fire-suppression systems, particularly for shipments that burst into flames in cargo holds of airplanes. Fires hot enough to melt aluminum fuselages—and sparked or fed by large shipments of lithium batteries—destroyed three large jets over the past decade. Each year dozens of emergencies and diversions prompted by smoldering or flaming laptops in airliner cabins are reported world-wide.

Against this backdrop, NASA’s research is attracting attention from other federal agencies. Battery experts from the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration have requested details of certain laboratory techniques, said Eric Darcy, a top NASA battery expert.

For NASA, which describes Kulr’s approach as “very promising,” having a variety of cooling options is important to ensure safe power in different types of hardware, including portions of the aging space station and solar-arrays under development.

“I don’t think there is anyone else doing the testing that we’re doing,” Mr. Darcy said. Prompted by a pair of high-profile lithium-battery fires on Boeing Co. 787 jetliners in 2013, NASA decided to see if it could reduce the hazards of such malfunctions so “they wouldn’t be catastrophic events” in orbit, Mr. Darcy said.

Kulr’s Mr. Mo and his management team predict they will get a jump on competitors because their technology aims to make batteries only 5% heavier, compared with current technology that adds 15% to 20% in weight.

By encapsulating water in specially treated carbon-fiber based pockets, the company has been able to keep cell temperatures below 158 degrees Fahrenheit even when an adjoining test cell’s temperature climbed to about 1,000 degrees in one 2016 test cited by NASA. Recent lab results have been even more favorable, according to company test summaries.

KULR Technology (OTC: KUTG)

 

KULR Technology: Delivering Top-notch Thermal Management Solutions


Just like the vehicles themselves, the electric vehicle (EV) market will only go as far as batteries take it.

That means that electric vehicle technology and battery technology are not just linked, they are one in the same – few advances in EVs will be possible without advances in batteries. Adding range, power, advanced cabin features, faster charging and enhanced safety all require better batteries.

That’s why the breakthrough work that KULR Technology Group, Inc. (OTCQB: KUTG) is doing is so vital to EVs and the market. In ongoing testing, KULR’s newly engineered carbon fiber cooling systems and materials co-designed with NASA for space flight are proving to make batteries not just more efficient but safer.

KULR’s core technology is a flexible and exceptionally lightweight fabric material that looks and feels like velvet but is made from pure carbon fiber – the most efficient conductor of heat energy on earth. For engineers and system designers the fiber’s flexibility, low contact pressure requirements, weight, and optimum cooling efficiency are game changers that allow them to manage or mitigate heat in ways that simply were not possible just a year ago.

For EVs, better heat management solutions are crucial because old legacy heat solutions such as fans, water pumps, reservoirs, and metal heat plates are heavy and bulky. When you’re burning gas perhaps hauling around 150 pounds of cooling pumps and fans doesn’t matter. But for EVs where less weight translates into more power and farther range, it really matters. And it’s not just for motors and drive components – KULR’s fiber solutions can manage the heat of the EV batteries themselves.

That’s a big deal because of the power demands that can consume an EV battery. Imagine, for example, starting your EV, in 110-degree desert heat, running the air conditioning, running satellite GPS and navigation systems and the drive train – all from a battery that, if it gets too hot, will just shut down, or worse. In conditions like that, keeping that battery cool isn’t just important, it’s essential.

As more demanding systems such as self-driving or collision avoidance technologies are added to cars, heat management will become even more critical. Not only will these new systems demand more power from batteries but their sensitive electronics and lasers, the lynchpin of self-driving technology LIDAR, will degrade as they overheat.

“Innovation isn’t always about doing the impossible,” said Dr.Timothy Knowles, CTO of KULR Technology and a veteran of space thermal management technology. “Many times, the most significant innovations and advances come from solving the most obvious and most common problems. For many technologies, and especially for EVs, heat and power efficiency are constant and serious problems and our technology provides the most serious answer.”

But it turns out using carbon fiber to efficiently cool batteries and high-technology EV components can have even more important benefits when done correctly. In testing with NASA for crewed space flight, KULR’s carbon fiber can be configured to stop dangerous battery fires and explosions.

The safety assembly, known as the KULR Thermal Runaway Shield (TRS), has been proven to contain the potentially catastrophic impacts of thermal runaway where the failure of a single lithium-ion battery cell can trigger a neighboring one and so on in a chain reaction explosion.

It’s not necessary to be an EV scientist to know that limiting or preventing battery fires is a major concern for EV makers – and drivers. Eventually, fire safety systems like KULR’s TRS may be standard in all EVs – not just cars but boats, trains, construction equipment, space and aerospace vehicles and drones. Really, anything with a battery that moves.

If anything is more sensitive than cars in balancing the needs of space and weight with battery power, it’s drones. Drones have to be lighter, deploy more power, go faster, and being airborne, have even less risk for failure.

That’s why, to test and prove their space-designed carbon cooling fiber, KULR has partnered with drone designers, engineers and racers at DR1 – the fastest, most technologically demanding drone racing circuit. Starting this year, KULR will be the DR1 Technology Partner. And what KULR proves in the air will find its way to the road.

“It’s a kind of natural evolution,” CTO, Dr.Timothy Knowles, said. “Our carbon fiber was designed for space and has been used in more than 100 applications for places like Mars and the international space station. Now, we’re making drones lighter, faster and safer and we’re already testing our products for more earth-bound vehicles such as cars and trucks – working our way down so to speak.”

If KULR can crack the EV heat problem — adding to battery efficiency all while making those batteries safer, it would be difficult to over-state the potential contribution to EVs. Consumers are unlikely to turn in the keys to their gas-powered cars and pick up ones for EVs until those alternatives go as far, as fast, as reliably as easily. Doing that will require batteries that are safer and more efficient and KULR may just hold the keys to that.

Source: Insights Success Magazine
About Insights Success: Insights Success is a business magazine that reaches out to C level professionals, VPs, Consultants, VCs, Managers, and HRs of various industries worldwide.