< Previous10 10 10 bmta.co.uk UKAS CONTINUES MEMBERSHIP OF EA UKAS has announced that its membership of the European co-operation for Accreditation, EA, has been assured. UKAS believes that continued membership of EA brings huge benefits to UKAS accredited bodies and to the UK, mainly through the EA Multilateral Agreement, MLA, which delivers recognition across the European region outside the regulated space. It also enables UKAS to continue to be a signatory to the mutual recognition arrangements operated by ILAC and IAF, providing our customers with worldwide coverage. From 2022, UKAS will continue as an EA ‘Category B’ member, with a reduction in certain rights, such as the ability to vote on issues that impact on the EU and its single market. The EA General Assembly vote decided that membership categories will be changed from ‘Full’ and ‘Associate’ members to categories A-D (Category A equating to the former full membership). UKAS will retain its full status until the revised Articles of Association come into effect at the beginning of 2022 at which point it will become a ‘Category B’ member. The main differences between Category A and B members are: Category B members cannot: • Be EA President or Vice President • Sit on the EA Exec Board (this restriction for Cat B members will be reviewed in five years following an EA resolution) • Chair the Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) • Chair the EA Horizontal Harmonisation Committee • Vote on any changes to the Articles of Association or the associated Rules of Procedure • Vote on disbanding the EA • Vote on any issue directly related to the EU e.g. regulation or anything that impacts the EU Category B members can: • Chair Technical Committees (e.g. inspection, certification, testing committees) • Sit on the Technical Management Board • Vote on issues not related to the EU or the single market, with the exception of those highlighted above • Be a member of the Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) • Be a member of all Committees, including the Horizontal Harmonisation Committee Despite the restrictions from UKAS’ changed membership status, the reputation and status of UKAS as one of the world’s leading accreditation bodies means the organisation will remain an important and influential EA member. The existing membership of different committees including UKAS’ chairmanship of the influential Certification Committee means that UKAS will remain in a strong position to represent the interests of our customers and broader stakeholders. GRANT FUNDING – T LEVEL SUPPORT Employers can claim a £1,000 cash boost for every T Level student they host on a high-quality industry placement between 27 May 2021 and July 2022. The incentive fund is designed to offer support to employers impacted by the pandemic, to ensure they can continue to host placements. Employers will be able to claim for a maximum of 20 students for the available T Level subject areas. To find out more, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ cash-boost-for-t-levels TÜV SÜD LAUNCHES ACADEMY TÜV SÜD has launched its Academy to help UK organisations cost-effectively upskill their employees to optimise business performance, improve product compliance efficiency and minimise time to market. Part of a global training programme, TÜV SÜD Academy will offer more than 60 knowledge transfer courses to individuals and entire organisations. A mix of instructor-led workshops and e-learning courses will aim to maximise flexibility for how and where businesses want their people to learn. Training courses will cover eleven core areas: • Automotive • CE & UKCA certification • Chemical & process • Clean energy • Cybersecurity & data protection • Electrical safety • EMC • Healthcare & medical • Machinery safety • Quality management • Real estate David Goodfellow, Head of TÜV SÜD’s UK Business Assurance Division said: “The experts in our global business have such a wealth of experience. UK organisations can now access that knowledge through TÜV SÜD Academy to help them increase business efficiency at multiple levels. We are dedicated to helping people and organisations drive business performance to levels of excellence, without compromising on costs efficiency or time to market. The TÜV SÜD Academy enables us to extend that mission through direct knowledge transfer into UK industry.”11 bmta.co.uk 11 Anyone contemplating modernising or introducing a management system would benefit from attending our flexible, online Management Systems course, presented by Trevor Thompson at Best Measurement. This short course is split into three modules and describes the modern approach and how it can benefit your business. It identifies the features and terminology used and how systems should be integrated into an organisation’s operational and management practices to add value, convenience and compliance. The management system is not an unavoidable overhead, it is a cost-effective tool that should also reduce risk and stress. Each module is served as a 90-minute webcast, viewable at your convenience, followed by a scheduled live Q&A event with your tutor. This will help you to contextualise the learning to your specific requirements. As a Not-for-Profit, BMTA seeks to offer all conferences and training courses at the most cost-effective rates. This course is being offered for the total price of only £225 + VAT. Course completion certificates are provided after each module. For just £225 + VAT you will receive: • three 90 minute on-demand training modules which you can access at any time; • three workbooks designed to support your learning; and • three scheduled Q&A events with your tutor to help you contextualise your learning and take it back into your business. BMTA represents the interests of the calibration, measurement and testing industry in the United Kingdom. We bring together laboratories, test houses, equipment suppliers, certification and accreditation bodies, regulators, standards bodies and national measurement organisations. By bringing together the industry we are uniquely able to support member companies in their development through networking, knowledge sharing and training. BMTA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS COURSE Management Systems or Quality Systems have evolved greatly over the years. All organisations making measurements have a system of sorts, some more advanced than others, and some more compliant with the requirements of modern Standards than others. ABOUT THE COURSE PRESENTER – TREVOR THOMPSON Trevor is a metrology and accreditations expert with over 50 years of experience in the calibration, measurement and testing industry. He has worked with leading organisations such as National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the National Testing Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (NATLAS), the National Measurement Accreditation Service (NAMAS) and managed the Physics and Electrical Laboratory Accreditation teams at the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) for 24 years. Trevor has presented on behalf of UKAS at numerous BMTA training events and conferences over the last 20 years. Trevor was also a member of the drafting committee for the revision of ISO 17025:2017. Trevor is currently a Metrology and Accreditation Consultant and provides and delivers training on behalf of various organisations including UKAS. To read more about Trevor’s experience visit his LinkedIn profile. 12 bmta.co.uk 12 Since the last newsletter, BMTA has also made presentations on the issue to a meeting of the British Retail Consortium and the FS Club (City of London Financial Services Club). The following pages contain copies of letters that have been sent and received on behalf of the BMTA regarding the issues relating to the UKCA mark extension. UKCA MARK - BMTA UPDATE The UKCA marking came into effect on 1 January 2021 with a requirement for all sectors (apart from medical devices which have until 30 June 2023), to display the new UKCA marking from 1 January 2022. However, recognising the impact of the pandemic on businesses, the deadline for implementation has been extended for a further 12 months.13 bmta.co.uk 1314 bmta.co.uk 1415 bmta.co.uk 1516 bmta.co.uk NEW WAVE OF CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT UK’S NET-ZERO TARGET 16 This translates into a cumulative carbon saving over the next ten years of 10MtCO₂e, the equivalent of powering 12% of the UK’s electricity consumption for one year (2019), thus, supporting the UK’s target of achieving Net Zero by 2050. Industry is a major source of carbon emissions, contributing 15% (78MtCO2e) of the UK’s total emissions, the third-largest carbon contributor after energy production and transport. The rapid decarbonisation of industry is, therefore, a critical component of the UK’s Government Net Zero Strategy. Energy efficiency measures in industrial processes, such as those inherent to these funded technologies, bring down energy demand and reduce costs across the system while improving the competitiveness of UK industry. These 16 technologies alone have the potential to reduce UK industrial emissions by 1%, which highlights the enormous emissions reduction opportunity that remains to be tapped by the deployment of many other industrial efficiency technologies in the UK innovation pipeline. However, the pace of industry adoption for promising technologies can be slowed, due to the lack of data and evidence available from operational environments. To de-risk these energy efficiency technologies, and stimulate wider adoption by UK’s industry, the UK Government awarded £8.1 million of grant funding in 2017 via the IEEA, leveraging a further £7.6 million from the private sector, to support partnerships between developers and UK-based industrial sites willing to test energy efficiency innovations in their processes. At the time of this release, nine innovations are ready to commercialise for a full-scale rollout. Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Hands said: “Improving energy efficiency for industry is key to powering the UK’s green industrial revolution and will help us meet our ambitious climate change commitments. “Made possible with £8 million in government funding, these projects demonstrate how innovative green technologies can reduce energy consumption and bring down costs, providing a welcome boost for industry while supporting our transition to net zero.” Tom Delay, Chief Executive, the Carbon Trust added: “Industrial energy efficiency remains vital to achieving the UK’s Net-Zero by 2050 target. As the results from the BEIS IEEA demonstrate there is a clear benefit to be gained from collaborative innovation to de-risk near-commercial technologies and encourage the scale-up in industrial sectors that are traditionally risk-averse. If the technologies supported so far have the potential to reduce UK industrial emissions by 1%, imagine what can be achieved if we maintain a focus on accelerating the commercialisation of the many other industrial efficiency technologies under development.” Of note is the Low-temperature Ambient pressure Technology (LAT) separation technology developed by LAT Water, a thermal treatment capable of dealing with complex waste effluents. The technology has been demonstrated at Viridor’s Broadpath landfill site in Devon, where it was able to treat landfill leachate by using on-site residual heat, delivering up to 70% reduction in energy use, compared to conventional treatment. Using LAT, landfill sites will be able to treat most of the leachate in-situ without having to transport the residues off-site, which alone has the potential to deliver around 50% operational treatment costs savings. The IEEA’s support for the demonstration has helped accelerate the commercialisation of the technology, and LAT has to date sold four units, two in the UK, and two for export. Tim Rotheray, Director of Innovation and Regulation at Viridor, said: “Without the IEEA, Viridor wouldn’t have been able to explore LAT Water’s cutting-edge technology. Bringing innovation to market is notoriously difficult, but vital if we are to meet decarbonisation targets. The IEEA has helped to bridge the technology ‘valley of death’ from research and development to industry uptake, by supporting commercial-scale pilots that would not happen otherwise and we have really benefited from our participation.” Investing in energy efficiency can enhance productivity as well. This is the case with Soniplas, a retro-fit solution for the injection moulding sector developed by Matrix Moulding Systems. This new technology uses ultrasonic energy to temporarily reduce the viscosity of the molten polymer during injection, facilitating lower melt temperatures and faster cooling times. This has reduced the energy consumption by around 25% during the demonstration project carried out at Barkley Plastics Ltd; while simultaneously enhancing productivity by reducing moulding cycle time by up to 20%. Soniplas technology has been awarded the Special Commendation Award, by the British Plastics Federation The latest results from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) has demonstrated 16 new energy efficiency technologies that could significantly boost UK industry’s competitive and rapid transition to Net-Zero. If the technologies are adopted, up to 40.5TWh of energy could be saved by 2031.17 bmta.co.uk 17 (BPF), as part of the Horners Awards 2021. Matrix Moulding Systems has also begun to sell Soniplas units in the UK while demonstrating the technology with the IEEA programme. Pete Tedd, Managing Director, Barkley Plastics Ltd, added: “As demonstration partner and first adopter of the Soniplas technology - which has been tested across a variety of tools and machines, we have seen savings produced which would be highly beneficial both to us and the wider injection moulding industry.” Andrew Miles, Chief Executive, Matrix Moulding Systems, said: “We are very grateful for the support from the IEEA programme, which has enabled us to accelerate the development of our Soniplas technology to market entry. As UK industry moves to align business impact with Net Zero goals we are seeing huge interest in our system that offers dual benefits of energy savings and productivity improvements.” Agritec Systems Limited (ASL) has developed and patented a novel solution to process Animal-By Products (ABP). The ASL system is capable of transforming unusable animal products from abattoirs into valued outputs - namely protein solids and tallow/oil - by efficiently separating the different components, while using around 75% less energy than traditional rendering methods. Richard Thornhill, Founder & Technical Director Agritec commented: “The BEIS IEEA not only helped us build a full- scale plant to demonstrate our technology in action but also build confidence in our customers to invest in our solution. Beyond the funding, we have also been able to draw on a pool of expertise from the Carbon Trust and Jacobs, which has been invaluable as has the profile that has been brought to our innovation.” The BEIS IEEA is managed by the Carbon Trust with support from Jacobs and KTN. It represents a unique opportunity for UK technology developers to bring their innovations to market, and to prove their technology works at scale in a fully operational setting. Following the success of the programme, BEIS announced funding for a further phase of the IEEA in October, £8 million has been made available for projects that target resource efficiency and or energy efficiency in industry. Technology developers and industrial companies interested in taking part should visit www.carbontrust.com/ieea. BMTA The Voice of Measurement and Testing BMTA was created in 1990 in response to the need for an independent ‘lobby’ for the private sector to speak with one voice to Government, UKAS, BSI and other official bodies on issues affecting the whole measurement, testing and calibration community. We encourage you to make your views known in the standards making process, though your contribution to newsletters, participation in Association activities and membership of relevant BMTA and Standards Making committees. Something to say? If you have any newsworthy stories, contributory articles or case studies, centred around the measurement, testing or calibration industry that you would like to see featured in the next issue of BMTA Newsletter, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Send your article to the editor at: Laura Vallis at editor@bmta.co.ukbmta.co.uk HELIUM SHORTAGES – HOW ANALYTICAL LABORATORIES CAN PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE Dr Elinor Hughes, Technical Copywriter at Markes International 18 A news article published in 2021 reported that the helium industry faced shortfalls of 20% from 2011 to 2013 with the same thing happening again in 2019.1 Helium shortages are having a serious negative impact on scientific research in industries and universities. A 2016 science policy report entitled, “The US Research Community’s Liquid Helium Crisis” issued by the American Physical Society, Materials Research Society and the American Chemical Society stated that as helium was becoming less available and more expensive, US scientists were beginning to abandon areas of research that required liquid helium, resulting in fewer graduate students being hired, and institutions were moving away from hiring new staff in areas of research that required the use of liquid helium.2 Helium is well known as the gas used to fill party balloons, but its properties – low boiling point, low density, low solubility, high thermal conductivity and inertness – have also led to many significant uses. Helium’s liquid state is the coldest of any element, so its largest use is in cryogenic applications, such as cooling the superconducting magnets in medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. Other applications include cooling and cleaning rocket engines, deep-sea diving, weather forecasting, cryogenics, rocket engineering, and manufacturing computer chips and liquid crystal displays. It is also used in physics and chemistry research. Fluctuating global helium levels are causing problems, such as difficulty sourcing helium and increasing costs for the many industries that rely on it. Analytical instruments manufacturers Markes International and SepSolve Analytical have addressed the issue by adapting their instrumentation to enable the use of alternative gases to future-proof laboratories.bmta.co.uk 19 According to the 2016 report, the quantity of liquid helium (produced by cooling the gas form to -269°C so that it condenses to become a liquid) used by the scientific community is so small in the helium market that scientists have little purchasing power. At the time of the report’s publication, some researchers had seen prices increase by more than 250% over five years and were facing a severely limited and uncertain supply. Why are there helium shortages? Despite being the second most abundant element in the universe, helium’s availability on Earth is low. It is formed from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium in granite rocks in the Earth’s continental crust. Most helium atoms produced this way diffuse to the Earth’s surface, into the atmosphere and then into space, and currently, there is no economical way to capture the atoms directly. In fact, 97% of the helium captured for use is obtained as a by-product of the extraction of natural gas from the ground, but the number of gas fields in the world with enough helium to justify the cost of the separation process to obtain it (a helium content of at least 0.3%) is decreasing.1 Also, after it has been used, helium is not re-captured for re-use. The 2016 report proposes four ways to deal with the shortage: the conservation of helium use, a mechanism to pay for the capital investment required for helium recycling, a mechanism to ensure an appropriate price is paid by researchers for helium and a methodology that allows researchers to explore the options available to them.2 How analytical laboratories can help A common use of helium in chemistry research is as a carrier gas in gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC-MS), a combination of two techniques that are used to separate (GC) and identify (MS) chemicals in samples. A gas chromatograph is made up of a narrow tube, known as the column, through which a sample passes in a gas stream (the carrier gas). Different components in the sample pass through at different rates, depending on their chemical and physical properties and their interaction with a lining or filling in the column called the stationary phase. As the chemicals exit the end of the column, they are detected and identified by a mass spectrometer. In a mass spectrometer, molecules in the gas phase are manipulated by electric and magnetic fields, which creates negatively- or positively-charged ions, depending on the experimental requirement. The ions are then sorted according to their mass-to-charge ratios. This data is used to produce a mass spectrum, which is a graph of mass-to-charge ratios plotted against the relative abundance of each ion. GC-MS is used widely in applications such as environmental monitoring, climate research, food and beverage analyses, analysing chemicals given off by materials (such as building materials and toys), improving air quality inside vehicles, forensic investigations and biological monitoring (such as breath analyses for disease diagnoses). Alternative carrier gases can be used with gas chromatographs – nitrogen and hydrogen – which are more readily available. However, there has been a barrier to their use in some analytical processes. Thermal desorption instruments, which can be used to prepare samples (they concentrate samples down to a volume that is suitable for injection into the narrow gas chromatograph column), have only been able to run with helium or nitrogen as the carrier gas, but nitrogen is much less efficient than helium.3 Mass spectrometers have the same issue. To combat these issues, TD instruments manufacturers Markes International have turned towards making their range of TD systems multi-gas-enabled, which allows them to switch between the three gases – helium, nitrogen and hydrogen (Figure 1). Sister company SepSolve Analytical, who manufactures mass spectrometers, have also upgraded to Next >