Jet stream in green
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“You have food, energy and climate change all converging over microalgae, and that’s an exciting place to be,” Mettais says. “The core technology of algae is well-proven. The question is, how do you engineer massive man-made systems to harness the power of algae? It is just getting started.” At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, senior research engineer Andy Aden agrees that algae’s time has not yet arrived. “It has a long ways to go before it competes with petroleum and diesel, even at $147 a barrel,” he says. He suggests at least five years. But petroleum prices will increase over time, and regulation of greenhouse gas emissions could further increase prices, he adds.
The other central part of George Bye’s business plan is energy efficiency, specifically electrification of engines. Electric engines are far more efficient than internal-combustion engines at converting energy into motion. The challenge – and it’s a central one for electrifying cars, too – is in storing the energy. Existing batteries in cars, for example, store enough energy for only short commutes.
The challenges of airplanes is an order of magnitude greater. “It’s a long ways down the road,” says Ahmad Pesaran, a principal engineer at NREL who has been working on batteries for 16 years. Lithium-ion batteries are one of the hopes, but a distant one. “Right now, we are talking about lithium-ion batteries that have 120 to 140 kilowatt hours per gram. Jet fuels have probably 100 times that,” Pesaran says. “We are a number of breakthroughs away from having the technology.”
One of those companies seeking breakthroughs is a Lafayette-based firm, Porous Power Technologies. Founded in 2006, it owns patent-pending technology invented by Kirby Beard, a company co-founder and vice president of technology. The separator membranes within the battery are highly porous, allowing for faster cell charge and discharge, less waste heat and longer battery life.
Company president Tim Feaver said the firm’s original seed was $1.5 million in small-business innovative funding, to prove feasibility. It now has nine employees and is in the process of raising $7 million from individual investors. Strategic partner funding is likely. It also is doing research at a location near Philadelphia. “We are in the process of scaling up production, and we have a number of different customers that are evaluating the product for different applications,” he said.
Bye Energy is one of those potential customers, a relationship it prefers to call a partnership. “It’s a real opportunity for all of us,” Feaver said. Production of batteries will begin within six to nine months, he said. Sales are to start within a year or two. Lurking in the background, but not every far, is the question of what role governments should play in fostering innovation of these clean energy startups, including Bye Energy. “We have to be viable in the marketplace in and of itself,” George Bye says.
But success is accelerated by support from governments. Loss of Adam Aircraft Industries last year and its 500 jobs ironically made the south metro area eligible for $150,000 in federal funding to create a proposal for a business incubator. Fourteen different incubators are candidates, including a clean energy incubator proposed for 27 acres of land at the Centennial Airport. Centennial’s direct interest, says Robert Olislagers, the airport’s executive director, is to generate revenue for the airport. The broader interest, however, is to ensure the continued viability of general aviation by improving the environmental and economic sustainability of fuels and operations. This is achieved with “very minuscule, incremental steps,” he said.
“George and his company would make a perfect fit. This is just the type of company we have in mind,” Olislagers says. Still, the question lingers of what exactly Bye Energy brings to the table beyond George Bye’s passion as a pilot to clean up aviation’s energy act. Steve Murchie, from the angel investor group Keiretsu Forum, says he heard a short pitch from Bye but was not persuaded. “My reaction was that I wasn’t exactly sure what they were bringing to the table,” he says. “Effectively, they’re operating as a system integrator, but I’m not sure how in this particular space they can monetize that system integration and generate revenues. Possibly as a consulting company, but probably not as a products company, near as I can tell.”
Bye has a ready reply to such doubts. “The Wright Brothers didn’t become Boeing. Henry Ford didn’t invent the car. He created the process to get the car into the market on an economic basis. Each has a role to play.” So, don’t be surprised if Bye Energy in 20 years becomes a household name, at least in aviation circles. But also keep in mind that there were 3,000 automobile companies started between 1900 and 1925. How many of them can you name?
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