Who is Dry Tech Aerogels (Pty) Ltd
Dry-Tech Aerogels (DTA) is a leading specialty chemical and performance Materials Company headquartered in the Vaal Triangle, Gauteng province, South Africa with a branch in the UK, Dry Tech Aerogels UK. The company was founded by Willie Coetzee and was in a R&D process since 2014 where he studied aerogels and related engineering of aerogels up to mid-2017. After the successful designing and manufacturing of aerogel binders, they were put into production on a smaller scale. He then established with the help of Paul Cole from Scotland a company in the UK namely Dry Tech Aerogels UK. Apart from marketing the aerogel products internationally one of the UK, s main objectives is to find a large investor that can see the potential of the technology offering a unique opportunity to an investor.
The company has no bad debt and is in a good sound financial condition. However, one of the constrains to grow to its potential is capital to increase our production and product exposure, entering the international market.
Apart from South Africa which has open doors in the roof tile technology, steam pipe insulation and so on, the UK team has managed to open up opportunities of unbelievable proportions.
Why would you invest into the technology of DTA?
Obviously the team representing the offer must be of high integrity and loyalty and that is what we bring to the table, everybody on our side has being selected on the base of their loyalty and integrity. You might have qualifying similar application projects that will enhance investing in the technology, the technology offer big profits with very good margins. Dry Tech Aerogels offers the investor to design or use its current company policies where DTA can fit in.
By investing early into our technology is fairly cheap only one of our prospects will outperform the intended investment by far. This technology will ensure that you as an investor will at least be on par with your competitors, trying to develop it by yourself is also a costly process and the essence of time will be the deciding factor. Our technology is available and can be put into production immediately.
Understand the Future of Silica Aerogels
We all know that silica aerogels was founded and invented by NASA and the impact it had in the successes of their aerospace programs. Silica aerogels have found a wide array of uses, mostly in high-tech science, engineering, and insulation but is now beginning to enter the commercial mainstream and is taking the market by storm, not to mention the positive impact it will have on global warming.
One of the most enticing applications for silica aerogel is for use as ordinary, non-transparent insulation. Dry Tech Aerogels produces a family of products based on silica aerogel.
A major advantage to silica aerogel as a thermal insulation is enhanced energy efficiency and, in turn, reduced harmful emissions resulting from energy consumption. Energy-intensive refineries, for example, predominantly use mineral wool as an insulating medium. Silica aerogel materials are poised to displace mineral wool in the decade, translating into greater efficiency and reduced emissions in what amounts to 15% of all industrial CO2 emissions in the United States. Furthermore, unlike polyurethane and polystyrene insulations, no chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) blowing agents are required. In fact, Dry Tech Aerogels maintain closed-looped supercritical drying systems in producing silica aerogel, meaning no carbon dioxide from supercritical drying is released as a result of its manufacture process.
Dry Tech Aerogels competitive advantage in the production of aerogels
- The most common technique used for producing silica aerogels today involves the sol gel method an extreme expensive process. Making the use of aerogels not economical viable. Buying sol gel aerogels will cost in the region of $200/kilo gram. Only a very few companies in the world hold the license to this technology, mainly in the US. Prices of products made with the sol gel method are high and low margins are to be made as price constrains are just to big.
- The latest technique to produce silicon aerogels the Water Glass Gelation Process with water in a solvent such as ethanol or acetone, usually in the presence of basic, acidic, and/or fluoride-containing catalyst. In this technique, a silicon alkoxide serves as the source for the silica, water acts as a reactant to help join the alkoxide molecules together, and a catalyst helps the underlying chemical reactions go fast enough to be practically useful.
In general, this type of chemistry can be done at ambient temperature and pressure simply by mixing the correct proportions of chemicals together—liquid goes in, gel comes out! Of course, different processes exist which are more complex this, each having their own advantages. Below is a walk-through of what happens at the molecular level when a silicon alkoxide reacts with water to form a silica gel. Buying Water Glass technique aerogels can cost up to $20/kilo gram making it as an economical viable product toad into products. There is one company in Europe that holds the license to make aerogels in this method but they are busy selling the license to other countries. Fairly high margins can be set as they compete in a sol gel market and is currently taking advantage of that fact.
- Dry Tech Aerogels has developed an even cheaper process (DTA aerogels)
Silica aerogels can also be produced through a less expensive method involving an aqueous solution of sodium silicate. Sodium silicate is an inexpensive white solid (nano sized) with a range of possible stoichiometry’s (which each have different names)—Na2SiO3 or sodium met silicate, sodium polysilicate or (Na2SiO3)n, sodium orthosilicate Na4SiO4, and others. Sodium silicates are soluble in water.
Unlike silicon alkoxide, sodium silicate molecules do not hydrolyze and condense together when placed in water. However, sodium silicates are slightly basic, and when neutralized with acid (such as hydrochloric or sulfuric acid), hydrolysis will occur and silanol (Si-OH) groups will form. Once silanol groups form, the silicate molecules form siloxane bonds with other silicate molecules and bridge together to form nanoparticles, resulting in a sol. This sol can then be used to make a gel, just as in silicon alkoxide techniques. In the water glass technique, however, the sol sometimes needs to be heated to 50°C or so to get gelation to occur in short period of time. Dry Tech Aerogels currently have the IP to manufacture this aerogel at a large scale and proto types were made and tested for quality. Fact is that it can be made for as much as $6/kilo gram and still have a 100% margin. Very good margins can be made with the knowledge that our aerogels can be made for much less.
Dry Tech Aerogel Binding Formulations
During the last five years Dry Tech Aerogels found them in a R&D process of researching in how to get it into and how to apply hydrophobic silica aerogels into different basic products like water, solvents, acrylics, polyurethanes, polypropylene, polyethylene and many more. These formulations are impossible to get or you might pay unreasonable amounts of money to come by. These formulations or binders can be applied into any existing tested coating, paint or any other product bringing into it the unbelievable attributes of silica aerogels.
Patents
Obviously to have all our stuff patented would be much stronger offer but at this stage of Dry Tech Aerogels financial position we have not yet patent any of the manufacturing processes or formulations. The reasoning behind that is that we know that it will cost a lot of funding to do it in a full proof international patent format. The risk of reverse engineering is just too big to patent it in a cheap unprofessional way and then the decision should still be make weather one must patent or not.
Conclusion
The fact That Dry Tech Aerogels has all the experience, formulations and techniques and that they can manufacture their own aerogels at low cost is a huge asset and should be taken seriously by a investor.
With this technology in your arsenal and the fact that silica aerogels will be used more and more as markets open up it is our submission that we will be in a very strong competitive position not only to use it in their own current production processes but to provide binders to other companies in need of this technology.
From a nanotechnology perspective, silica aerogels will continue to serve as the staple substrate for scientists seeking to develop nanotechnologies which rely on high surface areas or Nano porosity. Things like chemical and biological sensors will benefit from silica aerogel-based technologies in the coming decade.
As far as insulation is concerned, the future of silica aerogel may be very well lying in already-developed technologies. Both transparent and opaque silica aerogel-based insulation has tremendous potential to displace technologies such as mineral wool, fiberglass, foams like Styrofoam® and polyurethane in the future, even thermal pane windows, but only once their production has reached a level of efficiency and cost competitiveness with existing technologies. That time is not far away (possibly 2015-2020), and companies like Dry Tech Aerogels have already started paving the way towards this exciting future.