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Spokane Area’s tech talent has energy to succeed

It is now slightly more than four months since I joined SIRTI. I continue to meet members of various communities — technology, financial, legal, higher education — across the Inland Northwest. I continue to be struck by the passion these leaders and innovators express for technology-led growth. I also continue to be impressed by the quality of technology I have found at our universities, in our home workshops and within our existing companies.

Patrick Tam
Special to The Spokesman-Review

An Inland Northwest competency that has quickly jumped out is energy. So it is fitting that energy serves as the focus for SIRTI’s second Technology Showcase. Our intent in producing the Showcase series is to make the public aware of research breakthroughs I like to call "disruptive," that is, grounded in the potential of changing the paradigms of current practices.

Energy is a field where our region can lay legitimate claim to a national, if not international, profile. One might even interpret the technology development of our region as energy-led, from the creation of the hydropower system, to the national research established in the Tri-Cities in the 1940s, to the specialization of faculty fields, and to the formation of many successful businesses around energy. Clearly, the Inland Northwest has taken and is continuing to make many right steps.

In Technology Showcase II, we will feature four emerging energy technologies from both academia and small companies. Their products or eventual products are all quite different. But their markets are huge. So is their impact. I would like to give you a glimpse of these energy technologies that SIRTI has chosen as path-breaking.

All four are patent-protected or patent-pending. All share certain attributes that SIRTI deems entry criteria for inclusion into a Showcase. First, they offer novel solutions to existing problems. As SIRTI works to implement the Innovation Economy mandate set by Washington state’s Gov. Gary Locke, we must find ideas that move in bold, not timid steps. All four respond well to this criterion.

The technologies span the spectrum of development — from a near-readiness to market to another requiring considerably more R&D. In the former case, PCS UtiliData has introduced a system of hardware and software controls that promise a 3.5 percent reduction of the load over electricity distribution lines. Estimates of the size of the U.S. market alone for PCS UtiliData’s Adaptive Voltage Control system range up to $5 billion.

In the latter case, the research team from Washington State University dares to build nothing less than the world’s smallest engine. Labelled the P3, the device is a product of WSU research in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The researchers’ goal: to produce portable power at a weight/output ratio that is a fraction of today’s battery technologies. Current global sales in small batteries, the size class addressed by the P3 engine, are $38 billion.

A third technology occupies a key niche in what many experts regard as our country’s energy future — fuel cells. InnovaTek, of Richland, has developed a component known as a reformer. The InnovaGen Fuel Processor converts ubiquitous hydrocarbon fuels to pure hydrogen — the raw material for fuel cells. Many companies are developing fuel cells, but few are addressing the more technically difficult process of reforming. As fuel cell technology matures and its applications come into clearer focus, forecasts now place the global fuel cell market at $2.4 billion in 2004 and $7 billion in 2009.

The fourth technology springs from an established base of local expertise in fluidized bed combustion. An engineer in Coeur d’Alene has partnered with the University of Idaho to improve efficiency — via a device known as the Stirling Engine — in a technology that offers significant environmental improvements to standard processes of burning fossil and biomass fuels. Coal-powered power plants are still the largest source of electricity for this country and for many others. And biomass plants are attracting increasing attention — here and abroad — for their ability to provide power and to solve disposal issues.

In addition, all four energy technologies carry the promise of treading softly on the environment. Depending on their ultimate success in penetrating the energy markets, the products can deliver large environmental benefits, ranging from reduction of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere to lower loads of toxic metals in municipal waste streams.

Since its inception, SIRTI has worked with energy technology companies. To the degree that SIRTI can assist in commercializing research that offers much higher efficiencies than current practice, we serve our state mandate and a national mission. To the degree that SIRTI can help to bring to market technologies that are greener than current practice, we serve subsequent generations of the Inland Northwest.

I hope you will be able to join us at the SIRTI Technology Showcase II to learn more about these breakthrough developments. It will take place on Dec. 12, at the WestCoast Grand Hotel, between 4:40-7:30 p.m. Admission is gratis. To RSVP, please call Theresa Timms at 358-2035 or register online at http://www.sirti.org.

Patrick Tam is executive director of the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=120102&ID=s1264205&cat=section.business

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