Through this collaboration they are looking to drive the implementation of LAIIER´s Severn Water Leak Detector for commercial and industrial buildings and to combine their technology and innovation capabilities to further develop the solution. A novel sensor system solution, it aims to detect water leakages in buildings at a much earlier stage to reduce the high repair costs resulting from a water leak.
Henkel is a supplier of printed electronics materials and services, and its Loctite portfolio of functional inks allows it to print functional electronics circuits on foil for various applications. The range of functional inks include silver, carbon, dielectric and other non-conductive inks, as well as silver/silver chloride inks.
These materials enable Henkel´s partners to develop printed electronics applications tailored for the specific properties demanded by industrial customers. Beyond water detection sensors, the company´s inks are suitable for a broad variety of sensor technologies including self-regulating heating, pressure sensing, or printed antennas.
LAIIER has created a smart tape by combining printed carbon and dielectric inks from Henkel with electronic hardware and digital services.
The Severn Water Leak Detector (SWLD) is thin, conformable, robust, self-adherent, and designed to work throughout the building, and is applicable to various surfaces, as well as being highly sensitive with a large coverage area.
Due to its high resolution SWLD can detect the presence of just a couple of drops of water (~0.1ml) for example below pipes and tubes. The sensors are split into multiple sensing zones, which allows them to identify the precise location of a leak.
The data includes parameters such as the sensor condition, condensing humidity and emergency messages in case of leak detection, which are transmitted wirelessly to the cloud for smooth integration into building management systems and, as such, offers a variety of benefits and improvements for commercial and industrial buildings.
“We are very excited about the partnership with Henkel as we are bringing together unique technology expertise to further drive the implementation of printed electronics solutions for smart and digital building applications,” said Matt Johnson, CEO and Co-founder of LAIIER. “Henkel´s functional inks have been critical to developing a sensor which is easy to install in a wide variety of spaces, covers a large enough area to be useful and is sensitive to detect a leak as it starts. Together with Henkel we will market and further improve the technology by adding new functionalities such as non-contact liquid level detection tailored for industrial applications as well.”
“Our partnership with LAIIER is another proof point of how we leverage our material expertise in printed electronics within a strong ecosystem to enable digital capabilities for analogue products,” added Stijn Gillissen, Global Head of Printed Electronics at Henkel. “The LAIIER technology addresses a global challenge by offering a transformative continuous monitoring solution for commercial property insurers and facilities management that helps reduce costs and save resources. Together we aim to further develop the technology and to increase potential application areas towards Industry 4.0 and machine learning as well.”
The Severn WLD technology launched in November 2022 and looks to address markets such as building construction, building material suppliers, facility management, IoT integration and commercial property insurance.
