Queensland’s innovators power the future. Here are the highlights of 2008, as covered by Business Acumen magazine.

Robots rule

Advanced Robotic Technologies (ART) featured an innovative award-winning aluminium cutting router at the 2008 Queensland Manufacturing Technology Exhibition (QMan), at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

ART was recently awarded the coveted Advanced Manufacturing Innovator of the Year Award, for its high-speed aluminium cutting router with tangential print head and integrated swarf extraction system, by the Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited (AMTIL). ART’s plasma cutting machines are used by steel fabricators, engineering firms, air conditioning ducting makers, by trailer and automotive manufacturers, as well as by the agricultural and mining industries.

www.advancedrobotic.com

Bilexys’ Enterprize win gets $100,000

The Bilexys team’s innovative and cost-effective wastewater treatment technology scored $100,000 in commercialisation funding in UQ Business School’s Enterprize competition – and they were up against some brilliant competition.

With its technology already in operation at the Fosters Yatala Brewery on the Gold Coast, the Bilexys team (pictured below left, celebrating their win) is confident their concept – which three years ago was a 50ml laboratory experiment – can be scaled up successfully.

Team member Paul Barrett said the Fosters pilot plant had been in operation for over a year.

“The technology can also be applied to other industries including bio-diesel, organic chemicals, petrochemicals, brewing and beverages, distilling, sugar, and pulp and paper industries,” Dr Barrett said.

Bilexys’ technology is a new version of a bio-electrochemical system (BES). BESs use bacteria as catalysts to remove dissolved organics from wastewater.

www.uniquest.com.au

www.business.uq.edu.au

Biogas heads innovation funding

Quantum BioEnergy Limited, of Currumbin Waters, won a Federal Government grant to commercialise its process for extracting biogas from wet organic waste sites, such as rubbish dumps, and using it to generate electricity.

Quantum Bioenergy has an improved method of creating biogas as a fuel for electricity generation and improved waste treatment.

Quantum BioEnergy received $64,000 as one of 57 recipients of the latest $3.6million in Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET) grants.

www.ausindustry.gov.au