The Athens Rotary Club may not seem like an ideal audience for an explanation about ceramic matrix composites, but Jon Lyford of GE Aviation broke it down into simple terms for the uninitiated.

Put simply, the Huntsville plant he oversees manufactures materials used to make airplane engines run hotter and more efficiently. A engine running hotter burns fuel more efficiently and produces less harmful gas emissions.

“With the new generation of engines that contains ceramic materials, we can run engines 300 degrees hotter than the previous generation,” he said.

GE is one of the world’s top producers of aircraft engines. If you’ve ever flown Delta, United or American Airlines, odds are good your plane was powered by a GE engine.

Lyford serves as the plant manager for GE Aviation’s new $200 million Huntsville facility, which is nearing completion. The plant will produce raw materials used to make the ceramic parts for engines.

Lyford said initial occupation of the GE Aviation facility occurred in November, and there are about 80 employees at the site. He said the company would like to have 140 to 150 staff on site by year-end.

“We’ll start producing material in the fourth quarter of this year,” he said.

The Huntsville facility may outgrow its current space by the year 2025, Lyford said. The plants were built in 100 acres, however, so Lyford said there is room to “double the size of both plants.”

He said officials hope the plant will be running at full capacity in 2019 and 2020. GE operates another CMC plant in Newark, Delaware.

“We use 95 to 98 percent of the world’s supply of silicon carbide fiber,” Lyford said. “We consume everything we make.”

What the plant does

The Huntsville facility is actually two plants. One plant manufactures silicon carbide, or SiC materials. It is modeled after a SiC fiber factory of NGS Advanced Fibers in Japan, a joint company of Nippon Carbon, GE and Safran of France. Lyford said the plant will eventually be a standalone company.

One SiC filament is less than a width of human hair. There are about 500 filaments in one silicon fiber.

At the second plant, or what Lyford referred to as “the big building,” the SiC has some “slurry” or “goop” added to it before it is rolled up in a tape-like form. The ceramic matrix composite tape is then shipped to a facility in Asheville, North Carolina, where it will be turned into ceramic parts for aircraft engines.

He said the feel and weight aren’t too dissimilar to to a coffee cup, but he described it as “the most expensive coffee cup you’ll ever handle” because it can withstand temperatures that can melt metal.

“If a piece falls off, the engine just chews it up and spits it back out,” he said. “Not that you’d want to have a piece of your engine fall off.”

Benefits to carriers

Before launching into his presentation, Lyford explained new workers are often told they’ll have “a real hard time telling anyone what you do.” He said the company’s goal is to make airplane engines stronger.

He went on to explain GE Aviation is the second-largest business within GE and produced $23.7 billion in revenue in 2017.

Each engine it sells comes with a 10-year service agreement. What helps sell the engines are how much it costs to operate them.

“It’s about efficiencies for the airline because margins tend to be razor thin,” he said.

A GE Aviation engine with ceramic parts could save a carrier up to $2 million over the life of the aircraft for a twin-aisle aircraft. For single-aisle aircraft, the potential savings is $1 million over the life of the aircraft.

The engines produced by GE Aviation have a lifespan of about 10,000 hours.

Confidence in the future

Despite GE’s stock having plummeted more than 56 percent, Lyford contended the company remains strong. According to a recent report by U.S. News and World Report, the company’s finances took a hit after it announced it was taking a $6.2 billion charge on its fourth-quarter earnings as part of a review review of GE Capital, the company’s financial services subsidiary.

“The press makes a big deal out of it because it must be a slow news day,” he said.

He thanked officials in Athens, Huntsville and Limestone County for their work in bringing the plant to the Huntsville area.

“This has been a great community to locate a business in; the story of the growth is phenomenal,” he said. “I’m someone who firmly believes prosperity comes from growth.”