KC, Israeli research labs partner for clean energy
A main focus of the facility’s efforts will be solar energy.
“There’s a lot of good ideas about renewable energy, particularly solar and biomass, in Israel,” said Roger Starnes, MRI’s group vice president of strategic and emerging program development.
MRI manages the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, which has done a lot of work with solar technologies. It is a not-for-profit institution.
“There are many types of solar energy. There are solar cells that tend to be on solar panels; there are solar troughs, solar towers,” Starnes said. “What we’re trying to do is provide a facility that will take entrepreneurs’ and companies’ and researchers’ ideas from universities … and work on the problems that prevent those from … being commercialized.”
Those technologies will be more and more in demand in coming years, said Meni Moalem, director of business development at Rotem.
“The funding is definitely higher than five years ago. It will continue to rise, primarily because of fluctuating oil prices but, more importantly, global-warming concerns,” Moalem said.
MRI and Rotem have secured a $10 million investment from Israel-based TASC Capital to start their joint work.
The physical distance between the two companies doesn’t cause too many difficulties, said officials in Kansas City, Mo., and Israel.
“In today’s telecom world, it’s not the largest hurdle you can have. Ten to 15 years ago, this would have been very difficult, but it’s not so difficult today,” Starnes said.
Partnership
MRI’s interest in developing an international partnership has been brewing for several years. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government asked MRI to research technologies for homeland-security purposes.
That led MRI to an Israel-based company with offices in New Jersey, which was developing similar technology. Ami Rudich was MRI’s contact with the Israeli company. When he returned to Israel, he told Israeli colleagues about MRI.
Soon, the Israeli government took an interest in MRI and asked it to be involved with developing renewable-energy technology. MRI began searching for a partner in Israel about 18 months ago. About six months ago, MRI officials decided on Rotem, which is the commercialization arm of Israel’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Starnes said.
“We said this would be good, because this gives us access to scientists in Israel, as well as lots of companies who know Rotem and who know the NRC, and by us managing NREL, it gives Rotem and Israeli companies access to what we’re doing in renewable energy here,” Starnes said.
Those at Rotem were also excited about the partnership.
“What we and MRI are trying to create here is a technological incubator for Israeli technology that could benefit from the accumulated experience of both MRI and Rotem,” Moalem said.
Starnes was slightly concerned about Dimona’s proximity to Beersheba, which was hit by rockets from Gaza during the recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, but said he was confident the Israelis would protect the Rotem facility and the nearby Israeli nuclear reactor. The Dimona complex is also widely believed to be the place where Israel has built the nuclear weapons it will not officially acknowledge having.
“It’s unsettling to a person like me to be conducting business when they’re under attack, but they want to do that. They want to press forward,” Starnes said.
Reached by phone while the conflict with Hamas was still raging, Moalem said that Dimona, about 25 miles southeast of Beersheba, was out of rocket range
Getting started
MRI and Rotem are already evaluating potential projects, and Starnes said they hope to make their selections by April and have six viable projects for this first year of the center’s operation. Starnes visited Israel in early December to officially open the center.
MRI’s role is to help evaluate projects, select projects, provide leadership … and generally provide oversight for the project, making sure that we do accomplish the things we think are possible when we select the project,” Starnes said.
MRI and Rotem will assign teams of scientists to work on projects as they commission them, mostly based at the facility in Dimona, with support from MRI. Most will work on the center’s projects part-time, in addition to other projects.
Some of the initial projects will last six to nine months, and some will continue as long as two years, Starnes said. They hope that within one to two years, they will have a product that can go to the commercial market.. Starnes estimated at least a three-year lag between now and any significant impact on the consumer market.
Once MRI and Rotem get things started, they plan to add six to 10 projects a year, which will result in “a real exponential turning up of the curve” in terms of product development, Starnes said.
“We hope that these are things that will be part of technology that will be deployed, whether it’s in your home, or whether it’s in a solar-collection farm, or whether it is utilized by a component supplier,” he said.
Possible buyers for any renewable energy technologies MRI and Rotem develop are utility companies, who would use it to generate electricity for use in homes.
Other energies
Solar technology has advanced considerable in the last few years, Starnes said. The process of converting solar energy into electrical energy was not very efficient when NREL began its research into solar cells — only 3 to 5 percent of the solar energy collected by the cells was being converted into electrical energy. Now, they have upped that to 15 to 18 percent in commercial practice and 40 percent in laboratory settings.
In addition to solar energy, the center may examine the potential of wind and biomass in the renewable-energy field.
MRI has already done research in biomass and is currently working on ways to process algae and use the oil its cells contain to make fuel. A more common biomass is corn-based ethanol.
“It’s how you break that down to actually make that into a fuel that’s costly,” said Linda Cook, vice president of communications at MRI.
In addition to these, Rotem has also done research into hydrogen technology.
MRI, Rotem´s greatest hits
Besides its work in renewable energy and government security, MRI has produced a number of products during its 65-year history.
The most famous, perhaps, is the machine that coats M&Ms at a rate of 3,300 pounds of chocolate per hour in the 1950s. More recently, it helped develop air sensors for post offices after the anthrax scares.
Rotem has gained notice for developing oxygen 18, a chemical used in medical imaging.
