Longmont company wins $150K grant for work on ‘nanofluids’

You probably don’t think much about the tiny particles suspended in your bloodstream. And you may not want to.

But a Longmont scientist and patent attorney – that’s one person – and his partner, a former business executive, say human blood is a good analog for the new “nanofluid” technology they are developing.

Michael Minard (left), Ed Clancy and Hongting Zhao of ACTA received a National Science Foundation grant to conduct research to increase energy efficiency in coolants with the use of nanoparticles. Photo by Lindsay J.C. Lack

“Blood is a nanofluid,” says Dr. Edward Clancy of Advanced Cooling Technology Applications, LLC.  “People might not understand what that means. But you can think of it as (small particles) in your blood that you can’t see and you can’t feel.”

ACTA’s work with nanofluid technology in vapor compression systems – think air conditioning units – is sufficiently intriguing that the company recently was awarded a $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation. That money, which ACTA will receive in January, will help the research team – which includes two other scientists and partnerships with Pennsylvania State University and the University of Cincinnati – will help ACTA determine if the concept is commercially viable.

“We are going to use the money to research the use of nanofluids, which is the combination of liquid and nanoparticles,” says Michael Minard, a retired executive for General Electric who has worked with Lockheed Martin, IBM and others developing the business side of technological innovation. Minard stresses that he’s “about as layman as you can get,” and his job is to search out potential business partners for ACTA’s technology.

At at time when green technology is frequently in the headlines, ACTA’s work with nanofluid technology could not only save enormous amounts of energy, but also pare down consumers’ electrical bills, Clancy and Minard say.

Essentially, the technology would take advantage of the fact that nanoparticles have a high surface-area to mass ratio. If they can be suspended in the liquid used by air-conditioning condensers, they would significantly improve the heat transfer capability of the system. That, Minard conservatively estimates, could reduce the energy consumption of the average household air conditioner by about 15 percent.

“That means if you were spending $500 a month (in electricity on a four-ton air-conditioning unit), it would go down to about $424,” he says. “That is a fairly substantial savings. And when you multiply that by percentage of the world that uses air conditioning, that is a substantial reduction” in both energy use and cost to cool buildings.

But if that sounds “easy” – as “easy” as something involving nanotechnology can sound, at any rate – the idea is riddled with complexities, Clancy says. First, it isn’t simple to keep particles suspended in fluid. And the real “trick” is keeping the particles corralled off in just one part of the system, he says.

We want to keep them there (in the condenser),” Clancy says. “We don’t want them traveling through the system,” where they might damage the compressor and cause inefficiencies.

But that’s what SBIR grants from the NSF are all about: providing resources so entrepreneurs and innovators can test their ideas and, with luck, bring them to market. The SBIR vetting program is rigorous, and competition steep. In 2009, of 161 proposals, 28 received “phase one” grants and 20 “phase two” awards (companies must receive phase-one funding to become eligible for further funding in phase two). Colorado received no phase-one grants and three phase-two grants for 2009.

While the grant is specifically for work on the use of nanofluids in vapor-compression systems, Clancy says the company already is looking ahead and foresees a potential to use the technology to more efficiently cool everything from laptop computers to satellites.

Minard and Clancy credit the Longmont Entrepreneurial Network and its executive director Alex Sammoury (who also was elected to the City Council on Nov. 3) with helping to get the company off the ground. In fact, the two partners met through LEN.

“LEN has created the environment, the ecosystem in Longmont so entrepreneurs can help each other,” Clancy says. “I don’t think I would have met Michael without them.”

Email: editor@longmontledger.com