A process for extracting high-grade crude oil from oil sands and tar sands has made Canada one of the world’s major oil-producing countries. Unfortunately, this technology has some undesirable consequences: the gasification of oil sands – one part of the upgrading process in which heavy bitumen from the sands is converted into high-grade crude oil – is a viscous sludge of soot particles. Tackling this problem, Siemens chemist Chad Felch developed a process that converts 90 percent of the particles into carbon dioxide. The Wisconsin native also determined that certain heavy metals found in the sludge can be used as catalysts to enhance the oxidation process – effectively turning hazardous waste into a valuable resource. At the core of Felch’s innovation is the process of wet-air oxidation, originally used to treat sewage sludge and heavily polluted industrial wastewater. The inventive researcher optimized this process for the new application.

Just optimizing train bogies – five millimeters shorter here, a few hundred grams lighter there – was not enough for Martin Teichmann, a Siemens researcher from Graz, Austria. Looking for a greater challenge, Teichman developed a completely new traction concept for powering the vehicles used in metro and regional rail systems. The Syntegra bogie is far smaller than conventional drive systems and weighs about two metric tons less. Equipped with this unique system, a four-car subway train can transport about 200 more passengers without consuming any additional energy.

Siemens engineer Frank Hannemann has refined the so-called integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) process for low-CO₂ fossil power generation. Today’s IGCC power plants convert fossil fuels into a synthesis gas from which CO₂ can be separated for subsequent underground storage. All that remains is hydrogen, which burns without producing any harmful substances. The conversion process, while ecofriendly, reduces efficiency. With Hannemann’s innovation, syngas is combusted in the turbine not with air, but with oxygen diluted with CO₂. The exhaust gas contains only steam and CO₂, and part of the CO₂ is fed back into the turbine. The advantage of this innovative process is that all the energy of the synthesis gas is used in the turbine, increasing overall energy efficiency.

In December 2007, OSRAM researchers Klaus Streubel and Stefan Illek, together with a colleague from the Fraunhofer Institute, received a very special honor. Germany’s President Horst Köhler presented the team with the 2007 German Future Prize for their research on high-efficiency, long-life light emitting diodes (LEDs). The prizewinners are pioneers in thin-film technology. This promising field is not only the key to producing extremely bright LED chips spanning the entire visible spectrum; it also enables LEDs to be packed tightly together in order to create large illuminating surfaces. The extremely small, highly versatile LEDs can be used in mini-projectors and rear-projection televisions, for example, as well as for general lighting purposes.

For Wolfgang Rossner, everything revolves around ceramics. The head of Siemens’ Center of Competence for ceramics is busy turning this brittle material into a key component of countless innovations, ranging from extremely powerful X-ray detectors to efficiency-enhancing nano-coatings that enable gas-turbine blades to withstand very high combustion temperatures. But Rossner and his team do far more than merely mix ceramic powder in the research lab; they also develop new ceramic materials with highly complex structures – a process that will be implemented in a virtual, computer-based environment in the future. Special simulation tools enable the experts to define nano- and microstructures all the way down to the atomic level and optimize ceramic materials for specific applications.

You might say that Siemens’ Dietmar Retzmann has been highly energized ever since 1982. That’s when he began driving the development of two key technologies: high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) power transmission and flexible alternating-current transmission systems (FACTS). HVDC systems allow asynchronous networks to be linked as needed and large amounts of electricity to be transmitted over long distances with very little loss. We’re currently constructing the world’s highest-capacity HVDC system in China. The system will transmit 5,000 megawatts at a voltage of 800 kilovolts over a distance of more than 1,400 kilometers, from ecofriendly hydropower plants in Southwest ­China’s Yunnan Province to the cities of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Transmitting alternating current, FACTS – the “little brother” of HVDC transmission – is used to stabilize grids. Dietmar Retzmann’s message: HVDC transmission and FACTS greatly reduce the risk of major blackouts.