TechStream looks at new technologies being developed at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. If you’re interested in knowing what tomorrow’s technology will look like, then check back here frequently.
Over 20 years ago, Robert invented Low Swirl Combustion. In a nutshell, it’s a way to burn hydrocarbons and hydrogen efficiently, at a lower cost than traditional burners for heaters and power generation devices, with almost no polluting NOx and CO emissions, a.k.a greenhouse gases.
First, Robert’s invention defied traditional combustion theory. He had originally developed the burner as a way to stabilize flame for scientific study. The reduced emissions were a bonus. Yet when equipment manufacturers saw the “weak” flame, they didn’t think it would hold up in their large scale applications.
So, Robert sent burner hardware to companies so they could test it themselves. He has attended at least 70 industrial tests himself, some overseas, to answer questions and offer advice about using the burner for different devices.
But even with positive test results, manufacturers have to think carefully before instituting such a major change. Producing machines with new burners requires retooling factories, retraining workers, producing new installation and repair manuals, and a host of other very involved, very expensive (think multi-million dollar) changes. The financial and potential safety risk of introducing a new approach to consumers accustomed to traditional burners must also be considered.
Plus, only a small number of air quality jurisdictions require lower pollutant emissions than found in today’s heaters and power generators. Would customers switch out working equipment if they didn’t have to?
Robert Cheng's Low Swirl Burner unit.
Finally, some industries are just more accustomed to changing technology than others. A better way to build a cell phone or hybrid vehicle is generally met with more interest than a better way to build, well, a mousetrap, or a gas turbine, or an industrial air dryer, or anything else that customers believe is working fine just the way it is.
Yet Robert persisted.
He continued to meet with representatives of companies from multinational equipment manufacturers to 10-person firms making water heater parts. He networked far beyond research lab and university circles to meet decision-makers gathered at heating, ventilation and air conditioning technology conferences.
Why?
Robert gets that question a lot. His answer: “It’s my duty as a scientist to make the world a better place.” After all, his invention offers significant long-term benefits to the environment and human health.
His efforts paid off when Maxon Corporation licensed Low Swirl Combustion for industrial and commercial heaters. Hundreds of Maxon’s M-PAKT, SLS and Optima SLS burners incorporating his invention have been installed for applications such as industrial paint finishing, paper making, baking, textile production and grain drying—applications that benefit from the world’s lowest level of pollutant emissions.
Maxon’s decision to commercialize the burners serves as a strong endorsement for the adoption of cleaner technologies. No one can say, “It can’t be done.”
And Robert continues to encourage other companies to follow Maxon’s lead.
Berkeley Lab Tech Transfer is working with Robert and many other inventors to get their “better mousetraps” out in the marketplace where more people can benefit. Go here to find other available energy-related technologies.
Sometimes it seems that National Laboratory scientists and scientists in private industry inhabit two different worlds. During the last week of January, two very high-level groups of them got together in the same room, and tried to learn from each other.
In an event at the Claremont Hotel hosted by Berkeley Lab, representatives from private industry and the 17 National Laboratories met for two days at a conference focused on ways the public and private sector can work more closely together. It was such an important meeting that Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu flew in from Washington D.C. to attend it.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at the Materials for Energy Applications meeting.
Despite the different missions of basic and applied science, it was easy to pick up the sense of common purpose. The focus of this meeting was on developing advanced materials — mostly lighter, stronger, and cheaper. I saw that scientists from both sectors truly believe that the future of manufacturing in America hangs on progress there. “Increasing our industrial competitiveness,” Chu told the gathering, “has become an obsession with me.”
There once was a time when the kind of basic research that takes place in the National Laboratories was common in industry as well. Secretary Chu and Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos are both alums of Bell Laboratories, renowned in its prime for making fundamental breakthroughs. Chu won a Nobel Prize in Physics for work he did there. Today, the thinking goes that the National Laboratories and universities are the last sanctuaries for basic research, and the private sector is solely for research that can turn a dollar.
The level of corporate scientific brainpower on hand at the Materials for Energy Applications conference made it clear to me that extraordinary research is still occurring in the private sector. However, the flavor of it has changed, and the differences between the two cultures were discussed frankly. “If this had been an industry presentation, we would not just be focused on the science,” said Simon Bare, a Honeywell research fellow. “There would be something on the screen with dollar signs all over it.”
I also sensed an interesting subtext threading through much of the discussion. Basic research — rarefied, elite, expensive, and even described as ‘sexy’ — sometimes does not compute for industrial engineers intent on solving intensely practical questions on which the success or failure of new products may rest. As one General Motors battery scientist exclaimed, “It never occurred to me what an X-ray laser could do for me.” If there was a common refrain from industry, it was an acknowledgment that the science in National Laboratories was fabulous, but “what is it good for?” And as United Technologies’Michael McQuade said pointedly, “You have to understand that people in industry work on a clock…We have to pay the piper back home.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu (left) with Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos.
Perhaps the widest cultural gap between industry and government research centers on intellectual property. Research at public labs is, well, public. Research in corporate environments is proprietary. “Internally, you publish your knowledge gaps,’’ said Pratt & Whitney’s Sergio Loureiro. But this is not information to be shared. “It’s like asking us to publish our top problems,” he said.
Without a focus on the bottom line, the free-spirited inquiry of basic research makes many in industry nervous. But Stefan Wurm of the semiconductor industry consortium SEMATECH sees the work of National Laboratories as essential for the long term. “We need to work today to figure out what kind of materials we will need ten years from now,” he said. Here, collaborations with the government sector — like the one that launched SEMATECH 25 years ago— have made both business and scientific sense. When Sandia, LLNL, and Berkeley Lab began the $200 million collaboration with the industry, there were genuine fears that the U.S. was ceding the market to Japan. The results were extraordinary, and continue to pay off to this day.
In fact, it was very apparent to me that private industry badly wants a piece of the scientific action taking place at National Laboratories. It just needs a better sense of what is actually going on in those public labs, where to find out about it, and how to access it more quickly. Despite differences in focus over the proprietary nature of research, National Laboratories are reaching out to license their own technologies to the private sector, and business leaders made it clear they would simply like to speed up the process.
Honeywell research fellow Simon Bare
If the meeting was an effort to find common ground, you could find it during a poster session where the 17 National Laboratories were showcasing their science. The collegiality was genuine, and the enthusiasm was palpable. “By the evening’s poster session, I sensed a real shift,” said Cheryl Fragiadakis, head of Berkeley Lab’s Technology Transfer Department. “There was an excitement, an intensity, a feeling that more collaboration was possible, and that industry and lab staff had a better understanding of each others’ goals and interests.”
Berkeley Lab's Peidong Yang with meeting participants at the poster session.
A closing address by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla also inspired the group. “He encouraged taking risks with technologies that may seem like long shots, because the most disruptive technologies can be the greatest game changers,” Fragiadakis said.
With virtually every scientist at the conference having the initials PhD after their name, this was a meeting rooted in common experience. As a non-scientist observer looking for evidence of accord at this meeting, nothing was more apparent to me than the shared interest in nurturing young researchers and interns who work in universities, at National Labs, and in the private sector. The most valuable transfer of technology may occur with the exchange of talent, and everyone wanted to see more of it. As Pratt & Whitney’s Loureiro put it, “They are our future hires, our future engineers, and our future scientists.”
On Jan. 23, good news came to Richmond, Calif. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab named the Richmond Field Station as its proposed site for a consolidation of its biosciences programs. The goal here is to move sites the Lab currently leases—such as the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP)—onto one location. The plan, besides being cost effective for taxpayers, will lead to some other promising outcomes.
A rendering of the proposed LBNL site at the Richmond Field Station.
Approximately 800 people will move to the new site when it’s slated to open in 2016.
First, let’s talk about collaboration, or that dreaded word (though I’ll use it anyway), synergy. The Lab’s leased facilities are currently spread throughout several East Bay cities—Walnut Creek, Berkeley and Emeryville. Consolidating the programs onto one site will lead to new ways of approaching scientific challenges. For those of you that have worked in open labs, newsrooms, or creative spaces, you know that there’s a general sense of excitement when people of various backgrounds and skills find themselves talking over lunch, in the hallway, or at a whiteboard, reaching innovative solutions to common problems.
The Annenberg Center lounge’s second floor has a whiteboard within arm’s reach of the comfy chairs. (From Caltech E&S magazine, 2010)
” The aim of the new facility is to bring physicists, biologists, engineers, and computer scientists together to foster collaboration and interdisciplinary research and teaching,” said a story in the university’s magazine.
And Berkeley Lab’s new Richmond site will do similar…bring geneticists, cancer researchers, biofuels experts, and many others together under one roof.
The assumption is that scientific output is significantly increased when scientists are able to have face-to-face interactions with their colleagues across a variety of disciplines and fields of study. For example, materials scientists from Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry are collaborating with energy efficiency experts from another Lab division to develop multifunctional window coatings for high-performance buildings. That means frequent meetings and near-daily communication.
In another example, a diverse team of Berkeley Lab scientists is working to quickly discover materials that can efficiently strip carbon dioxide from a power plant’s exhaust. That research involves chemists, computer scientists, energy policy analysts, and materials scientists—all working in close proximity and coordination.
And the “collaborating effect” goes beyond the scope of the Berkeley Lab. From a tech perspective, the new campus will also offer an opportunity for industry to be a part of this dynamic change. Future phases of the plan include incorporating private research space nearby, giving industry scientists an opportunity to work with their academic partners and—just as importantly—give Lab researchers an opportunity to work with industry.
Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos meets the media after the Richmond site announcement.
Ideally, the site will foster an environment where Berkeley Lab inventions are licensed and spawned.
“The Richmond Field Station will serve as the site for a vibrant research campus by the Bay that will inspire interaction, collaboration, innovation and invention,” says Bill Lindsay, Richmond City Manager in a release from the city of Richmond.
As Captain Picard of the starship Enterprise frequently said, “Make it so.”
Somewhere in a busy American seaport, a gamma ray detector meant to spot smuggled nuclear weapons material will scan the contents of a cargo container, and suddenly — off goes the alarm. But this time, like the last time, the feared substance will turn out to be a load of… bananas.
Or kitty litter.
Or slabs of granite for kitchen countertops.
To my surprise, I found out that such false alarms are not uncommon with the extraordinarily sensitive detectors put in place to guard U.S. shipping centers. Although bananas don’t quite compare with weapons-grade U-235, the natural potassium isotopes found in the yellow fruit often produce enough particles in a large shipment to produce a false-positive signal. Kitty litter is made from clay containing faint traces of radionuclide, and granite slabs contain enough natural uranium and thorium to trip radiation monitors — requiring a time-consuming physical inspection.
Berkeley Lab's Stephen Derenzo
Well aware of these problems, Berkeley Lab researchers led by Stephen Derenzo, senior scientist in the Life Sciences Division and Edith Bourret, senior scientist in the Material Sciences Division, have been exploring materials for gamma ray detectors that can distinguish the difference between the signals of threatening materials and those that are harmless. “If a shipment is found to contain radioactivity, you want to know what it is. It’s really vital, even if there were no terrorism,” Derenzo told me during a recent visit to his lab.
The critical component of these improved detectors is the scintillator, a fist-sized crystal of material that gives off a tiny burst of light every time it catches and stops a gamma ray. That signal is distinctive for each isotope of the radioactive element that emitted it. Derenzo explained that almost all radioactive elements produce a unique pattern of gamma ray energies. “When gamma rays are stopped by the crystal, the pattern of light flashes identifies the radioactive element,” he said.
A scintillator sample
Most commercial scanners use plastic scintillators, which are low-cost but only scatter gamma rays rather than stopping them. They can pick up the presence of the rays, but they can’t measure their energies — so they can’t distinguish in a sealed container a load of bananas from a plutonium pit. Sodium iodide scintillators are low cost but cannot measure the energies accurately enough to do the job. Crystals made from lanthanum bromide are better but impractically expensive. Derenzo said Germanium has outstanding gamma ray energy accuracy but is also expensive and requires super-cooling to -190°C.
During a high-throughput screening process developed under a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, the scientists evaluated thousands of potential scintillator materials. The right combination of attributes? Dense enough to actually stop a gamma ray, inexpensive enough for handheld devices, and accurate enough to distinguish security threat isotopes from commonly shipped isotopes — like those in kitty litter and bananas. The process turned up dozens of new candidates that combined excellent gamma ray stopping power with excellent energy measurement accuracy. Small crystals of the best candidates were grown and evaluated as gamma ray detectors in Bourret’s lab with support from the Department of Energy NA22 office. A crystal made of cesium, barium, and iodine (CsBa2I5) produced the highest energy resolution ever reported.
Pleased with the results, the Department of Homeland Security arranged Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding for companies to develop the Berkeley Lab scintillators into commercially viable products. This fall, grants totaling $500,000 were awarded to three small research firms in Massachusetts: Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc., Agiltron, Inc., and Capesym, Inc. First, they have to demonstrate they can grow one or more of the most-promising crystals. They include europium-doped CsBa2I5, BaBrI, BaBrCl, and BaClI, all discovered at Berkeley Lab. In later phases, they may partner with large chemical firms to scale-up production.
If successful, a new generation of radiation detectors will become widely available, with improved cost, sensitivity, and accuracy. The new materials discovered at Berkeley Lab hold the promise of a less cumbersome and more reliable cargo screening process. “We knew that better scintillators were waiting to be discovered,’’ Derenzo told me. “And our search paid off.’’
In an earlier post, we touched on Berkeley Lab technologies that have gone on to help “save the world.” In one case, it was the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, developed through the Cookstove Projects led by the Lab’s Ashok Gadgil. That effort led to the creation of the Darfur Stoves Project, now a separate nonprofit partnering with the Lab. Debra Stein is one of the project’s staff members.
Debra regularly travels to Africa to work on their project and just reported back from a trip to Ethiopia, where coffee is king:
“Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee, which is a main thread in the fabric of Ethiopian culture. The coffee ceremony is a key social event, and turned out to be a great time to speak to local women about our stoves. I travelled to Alem Gena with Zertihun Tefera, the Executive Director of SIQQEE, an Ethiopian charity that had helped form the women’s group. We walked into a classroom at SIQQEE’s branch office full of chatter and the sound of coffee beans crackling over the fire, the air redolent with their roasted aroma.
I first listened to the woman focused on stirring the roasting beans as she explained that they are the first of SIQQEE’s many women’s groups and that with seed funding, they are now able to earn a small income by selling grain at their local market.”
The Darfur Stoves Project began in 2005 after a trip by Lab researchers. They were looking at existing wood-burning stoves and what could be done to make them more efficient, requiring less firewood. On this latest trip, Debra found that the idea of U.S.-based researchers thinking about helping an African country came as a surprise:
“The group was pleased that I was sharing my first coffee ceremony experience with them and astounded when they learned that scientists in the U.S. had tailor made a stove for Ethiopia. To help address Ethiopia’s high rates of deforestation and diseases caused by inhalation of cooking smoke, our partner, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) developed the Berkeley-Ethiopia Stove™.
This stove is similar to the stove that we distribute in Darfur but has been adapted for Ethiopian culture and cooking. The new design includes features such as notches that hold a coffee-roasting pan in place and metal rods that hold a jebena, the traditional pot used throughout Ethiopia to brew coffee.
As the first round of coffee was poured into small cups and served to everyone sitting in our circle, one woman described to me the day-long journey she takes each week to collect heavy loads of firewood for cooking. With over 90% of the Ethiopian population dependent on firewood and charcoal for cooking and lighting, deforestation has forced these women to travel further and further, taking up their valuable time that could be used for more productive pursuits.
One woman’s loud cough throughout our discussion was a reminder that these women are all too familiar with the harmful effects of cooking. The need for fuel-saving stoves around the world is tremendous. In fact, the need is so great in Ethiopia that the government recently committed to putting nine million clean cookstoves into use throughout the country by 2015. But they need the help of groups like us who have the ability to link the world’s best science with local customs. The innovative technology of the Berkeley-Ethiopia Stove™ can help lift many Ethiopians out of poverty.
The women expressed their eagerness to learn new job skills as stove sales agents and to serve as role models to young girls. This seemed especially fitting when I learned the name of their group means “growing by working” in the Oromo language.
As my second cup of coffee was filled, I told them more about our work in Darfur. Despite the already significant hardships that these women face, they audibly gasped when they heard about the dangers that await Darfuri women when gathering firewood.
Debra Stein visiting with a women’s group from the Ethiopian organization, SIQQEE, in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.
As we sipped our final cup of coffee, the women volunteered to use the stove to prepare meals for their families and suggested that they demonstrate the stove at their local market. Zertihun will report back with the women’s feedback, which will help us to ensure that Ethiopian families are getting the greatest possible value from their stoves.
I left that day feeling over-caffeinated and inspired to hear from these women who are so eager to create their own opportunity that they volunteered to do a market trial.”
The real success of a technology isn’t so much what it’s made of, or who designed it, but how it’s being used to change people’s lives.
How do investors and entrepreneurs learn about the breakthrough inventions that become the foundation of their next tech start-ups?
Around a teak and frosted glass table in an unmarked office space in Silicon Valley?
From smuggled research documents labeled “Confidential?”
Or, over phone calls from people who share their concern about unhealthy bacteria levels in a local waterway?
Wait, what was that third one?
Yes, one of Berkeley Lab’s spin-outs, PhyloTech (now Second Genome), started with a call from John Hulls of the State Water Resources Control Board to Corey Goodman, a scientist and entrepreneur. A few years earlier, Hulls and Goodman had joined forces to challenge findings about the source of pollution in Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco, where both men make their homes.
Berkeley Lab’s DNA Microarray for Rapid Profiling of Microbial Populations, also called PhyloChip.
Back then, Goodman had been appalled by the antiquated state of bacteria testing. When Hulls learned about the PhyloChip, a Berkeley Lab invention being used in a new water quality study of Tomales Bay, he phoned his friend with the news.
Goodman met Berkeley Lab scientist Gary Andersen, one of PhyloChip’s developers, and Goodman’s entrepreneurial plans were in motion.
What is the PhyloChip anyway?
It’s a tiny DNA microarray that can identify, within hours, over 50,000 different microbes without the involvement of a single petri dish. The invention has been used to detect oil-digesting bacteria in the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill plume and to catalog microbes in diseased coral beds near Puerto Rico.
The PhyloChip sparked interest from potential investors, especially after placing third in the 2008 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards and being named one of the top 100 new technologies by R&D Magazinethat same year. But the right investor didn’t appear. Large companies wanted the PhyloChip to be more market-ready. And smaller companies didn’t have the money or know-how to take the invention to prime time.
Fortunately, Corey Goodman had the scientific and entrepreneurial background to assemble the right team, prepare a solid business plan and negotiate a license for the technology with Berkeley Lab. He brought in potential investors who spent hours with Berkeley Lab’s Gary Andersen learning how the PhyloChip could ultimately accelerate research to cure conditions such as Crohn’s disease, clean up polluted recreational waters, and ensure higher levels of drinking water and food safety.
The investors were sold, the license signed, and a start-up was formed in 2009. By 2010, Second Genome was taking orders and paying royalties to Berkeley Lab and PhyloChip’s inventors.
And it all started with a phone call between friends.
Which invention will spark the next great start-up? Check out all the technologies available for licensing or further research at Berkeley Lab’s Technology Transfer website.
In October, some of our Berkeley Lab researchers told us about a new biofuel they had created…something that may one day be an inexpensive alternative to today’s diesel fuel. It’s called bisabolane.
Taek Soon Lee, who directs the Berkeley Lab-led Joint BioEnergy Institute’s metabolic engineering program, said, “This work is also a proof-of-principle for advanced biofuels research in that we’ve shown that we can design a biofuel target, evaluate this fuel target, and produce the fuel with microbes that we’ve engineered.”
Sitting around a conference table with my colleagues afterwards we started talking about all the other technologies coming out of Berkeley Lab and wondered if enough people knew about all the opportunities to license technology. And thus, you have this new blog.
It’s not going to just be about biofuels, or cool new batteries, or gadgets you might see in a future Star Trek movie. But it will be about the technology at the Lab that may lead to a new start-up or the next new product.
We’ll highlight some of the latest efforts here and I’m going to see what kinds of themes we might have…biofuels is an obvious one; but there’s energy efficiency, nanotechnology, computing sciences—and so much more…technology that can drive our nation’s economic engine just a little bit faster. If only enough people knew about it.
Like most of the national labs, Berkeley Lab is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy but operated by another institution, in our case, the University of California. We’re great at creating research, products or related technology, but our mandate pretty much stops there. We rely on industry and our academic partners to help take the technology to market and the next logical steps. So, what exactly do we have available?
I started digging around our TechTransfer website and there’s so much, I can’t get to it all in this single entry blog (which basically means you’ll have to check it out for yourself or keep coming back to this blog).
Berkeley Lab’s tech transfer office, by the way, is the conduit that helps move research out of the lab and to market.
Since we’re talking about bisabolane, let’s take a quick look at the biofuels section on their website. Divided into product areas such as Feedstocks, Fuel Synthesis, and Technologies and Software, there are currently 34 technologies available for licensing (there were 32 just a couple of weeks ago). Since bisabolane is a recent discovery it’s marked as a “new” entry.
There’s great promise for bisabolane. And there have been a number of success stories already from our TechTransfer program, including Aeroseal, which was recently named a Best New Home Product by This Old House magazine, and the Darfur Stove project, which is helping to save lives in Africa. That project has recently branched out to one looking at efficient cook stoves for survivors of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
A lot going on here at Berkeley Lab…and it’s waiting for the next entrepreneur, business, or investor. Who’s interested?!?
