September 2006 MATRIC NEWS
Greetings from Keith Pauley
 
When MATRIC set a goal to be a recognized international leader in research and development just thirty months ago, we had no idea that it would happen so soon. In the last year, MATRIC has conducted four significant projects for entities in Australia, the Middle East and Mexico.

MATRIC staff traveled to Australia in April to support development of pyrolysis technology that helps to solve the environmental problems created by the production of livestock. By turning manure into char, pyrolysis technology generates valuable syngas for energy production, and char for soil additives.

An Australian pharmaceutical manufacturer called on MATRIC in May to conduct a root cause analysis for a set of plant accidents. After isolating the phenomenon, MATRIC designed major upgrades to the facilities which will help to prevent future incidents.

Laboratory safety assessments, procedure development and proprietary technology creation were conducted for a corporation in the Middle East. MATRIC’s staff exhibited truly unique skills and experience that related to the handling of specific value highly energetic molecules.

Currently, MATRIC is working with scientists from Mexico to advance the development of anaerobic fermentation processes which produce methane and soil amendments from chicken and other livestock litter. In collaboration with Mark Chatfield at West Virginia State University, MATRIC is providing chemical process expertise to this international partnership.

MATRIC, along with Research and Development Solutions, LLC and the National Energy Technology Laboratory, is working toward solutions to global warming by potentially reducing the CO2 emissions from power plants worldwide. Another project with potential worldwide benefit is MATRIC’s use of Google Earth (a free-of- charge, downloadable, virtual globe program that maps the entire earth by pasting images obtained from satellite, aerial photography and GIS data over a 3-D globe) to help companies around the world map their proprietary data in innovative ways.

It is impossible to guess where MATRIC staff will be traveling in the future. However, it probably will be on another continent.

 
MATRIC and Google Earth
Mark Dehlin   Bringing Customers Data to Life

MATRIC is using the power of Google Earth to help customers interact with their data in ways they never dreamed of.

Google Earth is a free-of-charge, downloadable, virtual globe program that maps the entire earth by pasting images obtained from satellite, aerial photography and GIS data over a 3-D globe. In Google’s words, “It's a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route.”

Now, imagine having your warehouse of data integrated into this Google Earth system, allowing you to visually see such things as the geographic dispersion of your client base giving you a better understanding of where you need to spend your resources. Or, the converse, allowing your customer base to visually see regionalized data that supports your sales message. That’s what MATRIC can do for you. We help customers overlay, on-the-fly, their geographic data sets on top of Google’s map information by using a "Network Link" to share a set of data housed on a non-Google server. The Network Link is essentially a pointer to data in Google's spatial data format, KML, which supports both images and features.

So, if you would just like to fly from space to your neighborhood, or search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels or see how valuable your warehouse of data really is, partnering with MATRIC and Google Earth can get you there.  
Photo Credit: NASA Visible Earth
 
Carbon Dioxide Capture Technology Analysis
Dr. Duane Dombek   Process Concepts to Reduce Emissions from Power Plants

Coal-fired power plants release substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. The U.S. Department of Energy through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is supporting research on new adsorption concepts that could significantly reduce CO2 capture costs. The goal of the effort is to develop technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-based power plant flue gas, at less than a 20% increase in the cost of electricity from the plant.

The known technology for this process is absorption by an aqueous (water-based) amine solution, a costly and energy-intensive process. MATRIC is working with Research and Development Solutions, LLC (RDS) to develop a more economical process based on solid (dry) sorbents. MATRIC’s role in the project was to provide process engineering and analysis to guide sorbent development.

“Based on our preliminary evaluation, a dry sorbent process does have the potential to meet the program goals, though additional sorbent development work will be needed to design a plant,” says Daniel Fisher, the MATRIC engineer primarily involved in the project. “The advantage of this process over an amine system is the significantly reduced amount of heat energy used in the process to change the temperature of the sorbent and associated equipment which cycles in temperature.”

In its preliminary report, MATRIC has outlined a research agenda for an economical, new-generation process for the removal of CO2 from power plant flue gas at a significantly lower removal cost. Since most of the power produced in the world for the next 50 years will be provided by existing coal-fired plants that could utilize this process, we believe it has the potential to reduce power plant emissions and their effect on global warming.

For additional information, contact Dr. George Keller.

 
 
Resources
Keith A. Pauley  




Trade in R&D-Related Services: A New Indicator of Industrial Knowledge Flows
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06326/










International Space Station
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ station/main/index.html


MATRIC Values
http://matricresearch.com/values.asp

 
 
 
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