Energy Production
AQUASPARK makes metal powders by electro-erosion dispersion: the working tool is an electric spark discharge, not a grinding body.
Technology brief
AQUASPARK makes metal powders by electro-erosion dispersion: the working tool is an electric spark discharge, not a grinding body.
The challenge
Products already in demand, per the order list in the source:
Platinum was requested but is explicitly excluded: platinum must be made by electro-explosion, not by this route.
Property-driven uses. High chemical reactivity and sorption capacity; unusual magnetic properties; homogeneous multi-metal powder blends, where the source states electro-erosion dispersion gives the highest uniformity of mixing available.
Feedstock flexibility. Metals and alloys with critical physical properties — refractory, hard, ductile, brittle, radioactive, chemically active — can all be dispersed. Recycling mode takes metal waste as feed.
ARBOK solution
AQUASPARK makes metal powders by electro-erosion dispersion: the working tool is an electric spark discharge, not a grinding body. Because nothing mechanical touches the metal, contamination during dispersion is eliminated entirely — which is what makes industrial batches of high-purity ultrafine and nanoscale powder possible at all.
The output is spherical polydisperse powder from 5 nm to 10 µm, produced at industrial volumes and at low cost, from pure metal or from scrap in recycling mode.
The particles carry amorphous, glassy or fine-crystalline structure with a very high specific surface. The developer is explicit about why that surface is large, and corrects a common misstatement in the source: it is not "dislocation density and lattice defects". Take one gram of powder, treat the particles as spheres, sum the surface of every sphere — that is the specific surface area. It is large simply because the particles are very small and there are very many of them.
For amorphous nano-alumina the structure is described as foam: solid pores formed by spherical films. Visually the material resembles cigarette ash or curd, at extremely small scale.
An electric spark discharge disperses the conductive charge into particles. Because the discharge is the working tool, there is no abrasive contact and therefore no contamination pathway.
Passivation in the same operation. An oxide film can be formed on the powder during dispersion by admitting a controlled quantity of oxygen into the inert gas, or by adding a corrosion inhibitor when working in a liquid medium.
Compound formation in the same operation. Changing the properties of the working medium yields not metal powder but oxides, hydroxides, nitrides, carbides, spinels and similar directly out of the dispersion step.
Electrical limit — the one hard constraint. For stable reactor operation the electrical conductivity of the charge must fall within a defined operating window. That covers practically all metals and alloys. Silicon does not qualify: it is a semiconductor, not a conductor, and cannot be processed. Chromium oxide can.
Market and application
Named demand at the time of the source, documented at the level of individual product orders placed with the developer: alumina, aluminium hydroxide, tungsten carbide with cobalt, tungsten carbide with nickel, and magnetite.
Quantified market sizing for the electro-erosion dispersion route specifically has not yet been compiled. The addressable segments span hard-metal tooling, catalysis, magnetic materials, ceramics, additive manufacturing feedstock, and metal-waste recycling, each a use case for high-purity ultrafine and nanoscale metal powder.
Detailed unit costing is not published in this overview; the process is described as capable of reaching industrial production volumes at relatively low financial cost per kilogram, including when scrap metal is used as feedstock, reflecting the absence of consumable grinding media and the ability to recover value from waste streams.
Use cases
Products already in demand, per the order list in the source:
Platinum was requested but is explicitly excluded: platinum must be made by electro-explosion, not by this route.
Property-driven uses. High chemical reactivity and sorption capacity; unusual magnetic properties; homogeneous multi-metal powder blends, where the source states electro-erosion dispersion gives the highest uniformity of mixing available.
Feedstock flexibility. Metals and alloys with critical physical properties — refractory, hard, ductile, brittle, radioactive, chemically active — can all be dispersed. Recycling mode takes metal waste as feed.
The source sets out the commercial sequence explicitly as two mandatory rules of the metal-powder business:
Serial production begins only after step 2 is approved.
Installation, siting, and staffing follow standard industrial process-equipment practice, scoped per project during the engineering and commissioning phase.
Thermally Expanded Graphite (TEG) · MAGNA (Metal-Graphene) · ARBOK-Aluminium · ARBOK-Tungsten
Powder feed for hard-metal and catalytic applications; the tungsten-carbide grades connect to the tungsten line, the alumina grades to the aluminium line.
AQUASPARK makes metal powders by electro-erosion dispersion: the working tool is an electric spark discharge, not a grinding body. Because nothing mechanical touches the metal, contamination during dispersion is eliminated entirely — which is what makes industrial batches of high-purity ultrafine and nanoscale powder possible at all.
The output is spherical polydisperse powder from 5 nm to 10 µm, produced at industrial volumes and at low cost, from pure metal or from scrap in recycling mode.
The particles carry amorphous, glassy or fine-crystalline structure with a very high specific surface. The developer is explicit about why that surface is large, and corrects a common misstatement in the source: it is not "dislocation density and lattice defects". Take one gram of powder, treat the particles as spheres, sum the surface of every sphere — that is the specific surface area. It is large simply because the particles are very small and there are very many of them.
For amorphous nano-alumina the structure is described as foam: solid pores formed by spherical films. Visually the material resembles cigarette ash or curd, at extremely small scale.
Products already in demand, per the order list in the source:
Platinum was requested but is explicitly excluded: platinum must be made by electro-explosion, not by this route.
Property-driven uses. High chemical reactivity and sorption capacity; unusual magnetic properties; homogeneous multi-metal powder blends, where the source states electro-erosion dispersion gives the highest uniformity of mixing available.
Feedstock flexibility. Metals and alloys with critical physical properties — refractory, hard, ductile, brittle, radioactive, chemically active — can all be dispersed. Recycling mode takes metal waste as feed.
An electric spark discharge disperses the conductive charge into particles. Because the discharge is the working tool, there is no abrasive contact and therefore no contamination pathway.
Passivation in the same operation. An oxide film can be formed on the powder during dispersion by admitting a controlled quantity of oxygen into the inert gas, or by adding a corrosion inhibitor when working in a liquid medium.
Compound formation in the same operation. Changing the properties of the working medium yields not metal powder but oxides, hydroxides, nitrides, carbides, spinels and similar directly out of the dispersion step.
Electrical limit — the one hard constraint. For stable reactor operation the electrical conductivity of the charge must fall within a defined operating window. That covers practically all metals and alloys. Silicon does not qualify: it is a semiconductor, not a conductor, and cannot be processed. Chromium oxide can.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Working tool | electric spark discharge; no mechanical contact |
| Particle size range | 5 nm to 10 µm, spherical, polydisperse |
| Particle structure | amorphous, glassy or fine-crystalline |
| Contamination during dispersion | none — no grinding body |
| Charge conductivity limit | Must fall within a defined operating window for stable reactor operation |
| Materials excluded | semiconductors (silicon); platinum requires electro-explosion instead |
| Passivation | oxide film formed in-process via controlled oxygen in inert gas, or inhibitor in liquid medium |
| Direct compound output | oxides, hydroxides, nitrides, carbides, spinels, by changing the working medium |
| Blend homogeneity | highest available for multi-metal mixtures, per the source |
| Feedstock | pure metal or scrap (recycling mode) |
| Metals studied by the developer | 14 |
| Foam-type amorphous structure observed in | aluminium and magnesium only |
Throughput, energy consumption, and yield scale with reactor size and are engineered per production line; specific equipment specification is finalized during project engineering rather than fixed at the technology level.
Dispersion reactor operating on an electric spark discharge, with the charge of conductive metal and a working medium that is either inert gas or liquid. The medium is the control variable: its composition determines whether the output is metal powder, an oxide, hydroxide, nitride, carbide or spinel, and whether the powder leaves passivated.
Reactor design, electrode configuration, power supply, and scale-up arrangement are engineered per production volume; the reactor family scales from bench units to industrial throughput while preserving the same spark-discharge operating principle.
Purity by construction. The absence of a mechanical working body removes the contamination route that limits milled powders.
One step, several outcomes. Size, structure, passivation and even compound formation are all set within the dispersion operation by the medium and the gas composition.
Materials others cannot handle. Refractory, brittle, ductile, chemically active and radioactive metals are all dispersible on the same principle.
Blend uniformity. For mixtures of several metal powders the source claims this method gives the highest homogeneity.
Cost and scale. Industrial volumes at relatively low financial cost, including from waste feed.
Thermally Expanded Graphite (TEG) · MAGNA (Metal-Graphene) · ARBOK-Aluminium · ARBOK-Tungsten
Powder feed for hard-metal and catalytic applications; the tungsten-carbide grades connect to the tungsten line, the alumina grades to the aluminium line.
The source sets out the commercial sequence explicitly as two mandatory rules of the metal-powder business:
Serial production begins only after step 2 is approved.
Installation, siting, and staffing follow standard industrial process-equipment practice, scoped per project during the engineering and commissioning phase.
The developer reports roughly two decades of production experience turning aluminium hydroxide into alumina by this route, and the aluminium-based powder has been independently evaluated by an industrial partner. No formal technology readiness classification has been recorded for this product line in the technology database.
Named demand at the time of the source, documented at the level of individual product orders placed with the developer: alumina, aluminium hydroxide, tungsten carbide with cobalt, tungsten carbide with nickel, and magnetite.
Quantified market sizing for the electro-erosion dispersion route specifically has not yet been compiled. The addressable segments span hard-metal tooling, catalysis, magnetic materials, ceramics, additive manufacturing feedstock, and metal-waste recycling, each a use case for high-purity ultrafine and nanoscale metal powder.
Detailed unit costing is not published in this overview; the process is described as capable of reaching industrial production volumes at relatively low financial cost per kilogram, including when scrap metal is used as feedstock, reflecting the absence of consumable grinding media and the ability to recover value from waste streams.
Characterisation is thin and partly contested. The source is a question-and-answer exchange in which the developer corrects several claims previously passed to customers, including the explanation of high surface area. Anything carried forward from earlier marketing material should be re-checked against this document.
Measurement basis. Pore size for the alumina was determined by gas sorption with mathematical treatment, not by microscopy; those dimensions are not visible in the micrographs. Third-party testing by an industrial partner covered aluminium only — there is no equivalent data for the tungsten grades.
Scope of study. Fourteen metals were investigated; the foam-type amorphous structure was found in aluminium and magnesium only, so it should not be generalised.
Hard exclusions. Semiconductors cannot be processed. Platinum requires a different method.
Ownership attribution and formal readiness classification are still pending finalization, as are detailed equipment specification, throughput, and energy figures for this public overview.
Thermally Expanded Graphite (TEG) · MAGNA (Metal-Graphene) · ARBOK-Aluminium · ARBOK-Tungsten · Modified Glassy Carbon (GCM)
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