(Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 by Mass High Tech)

As part of each week’s Startup Report, Mass High Tech highlights five startup companies and their business goals and provides guest access to their company profiles in the New England Tech Directory. With each week’s Startup Watch, Mass High Tech will choose the weekly featured companies by soliciting nominations through a poll of 10 startup companies, with links to their respective websites.

Please choose five startups that you would like to know more about for the November 29 edition of Mass High Tech’s weekly Startup Report e-mail by visiting www.masshightech.com/startup-watch.

For guest access to today’s directory listings, visit the following companies:

Azarias International: Azarias International is an IT services startup that provides automation tools through its cloud-based vCTO operations management product. The Biddeford, Maine-based company was founded in 2010.

Back9 Network Inc.: Founded in 2010, Back9 Network is a multi-platform golf network for television, computer or mobile devices. The startup is located in Simsbury, Conn.

Cambridge BioSource LLC: Cambridge BioSource, founded in 2009, provides specimans such as DNA, RNA, frozen human tissues and human biomaterials to the biotech, pharmaceutical and scientific research industries.

Environetix Technologies Corp.: Orono, Maine-based Environetix Technologies develops wireless systems for use in harsh environments that include challenges with sensing temperature, vibration, strain, pressure and corrosion. The company was founded in 2009.

H3 Biomedicine Inc.: Cambridge-based H3 Biomedicine, founded in 2011, develops small-molecule cancer drug candidates based on human cancer genomics combined with synthetic organic chemistry and tumor biology.

ORONO, Maine — The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded the University of Maine a $1.2 million grant to improve tiny sensors that could help cut carbon dioxide emissions and energy costs by millions, according to the sensors’ creators.

The sensors are minuscule — about half a millimeter wide, a few millimeters long and weighing less than a gram — but could make a world of difference, said Robert Lad, a University of Maine professor of physics and president of Environetix, the Orono-based technology company that markets the sensors.

After Lad and his colleagues worked on the sensors at the university for about a decade, the technology drew interest from the U.S. Air Force, which wanted to put the sensors in jet engines to monitor their condition. Lad started Environetix in 2009 with fellow professor Mauricio Pereira da Cunha, in hopes of widely distributing the product.

The wireless, battery-free devices go into the most “hostile environments,” Lad said, such as turbine engines on aircraft where temperatures can hit 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. A langasite crystal constantly senses temperature and pressure changes, which the sensor sends out by radio frequency to an “interrogator box” or “black box” that holds the information, Lad said.

By looking at these readings, a mechanic “can tell ahead of time if something isn’t right and can replace a part before it fails,” said Don McCann, senior project manager at Environetix.

This sort of foresight can be especially important at power plants, where a part that isn’t performing correctly can be dangerous — and very expensive to repair, according to Lad.

“You have to always know what’s going on inside these plants,” he said.

Shutting down a power plant for one day for repairs can cost as much as $1 million. Even a 1 percent drop in efficiency in coal-burning boilers at a plant can cost as much as $300 million more per year and pump out an extra 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Lad said.

Keeping ahead of repairs and monitoring the efficiency of power plant facilities would be a perfect job for the sensors, Lad said, if only they could handle the heat.

The current sensors can handle temperatures around 1,800 degrees, but temperatures in power plant systems can reach 2,200 degrees, Lad said.

The $1,198,738 federal grant will help researchers find materials that can withstand the 400-degree difference.

“Another part of the grant is to figure out where our sensors are needed,” Lad said.

When their sensors can stand the heat, the university and Environetix will begin marketing them to power plants worldwide.

Sensor systems, which include about 100 sensors and and the black box, would cost a power plant $50,000 to $100,000, depending on the type of the power system, according to Lad.

Maine Energy Recovery Co., a Biddeford-based company that incinerates trash, is interested in a sensor system to monitor the condition of tubes, which can degrade over time because of heat and fumes, McCann said.

Prominent engine makers such as Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce have also expressed interest in the technology.

Once the sensors’ temperature tolerance improves, Lad said, power plants, steelmakers and even NASA — which might want the sensors to monitor the effect of heat and pressure on atmosphere re-entry vehicles — could be potential clients.

News Release (Source: NETL)
Release Date: August 9, 2011

Innovative Sensors and Controls to Support Efficient Operation of State-of-the-Art Power Plants
R&D Projects Focused on Computational Techniques, “Smart” Materials, Advanced Sensors

Washington, D.C.—The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has selected three projects to develop novel sensing and control technologies aimed at the efficient operation of advanced, zero-emission power systems and the improvement of operations at existing fossil energy power plants. The total value of the projects is approximately $4.9 million, with $3.9 million of DOE funding and $1 million in recipients’ cost-sharing.

The projects will help FE’s Advanced Research Program lead the effort to develop sensing and control technologies for seamless, integrated, intelligent power systems that use domestic resources.

Progress in the areas of advanced combustion, gasification, turbines, gas cleaning and separation technologies and carbon capture have brought challenges to the Advanced Research Program’s sensors and controls area. Harsh environments where temperature and pressure conditions are extreme and process conditions are highly reactive and corrosive are inherent to new systems that aim to achieve high efficiency with low emissions. Additionally, these systems are complex, with operational constraints and system integration challenges that push the limits of traditional process controls. New, robust sensing approaches, including durable materials and highly automated process controls, are needed to optimize the operation and performance of these advanced systems.

One of the selected projects will focus on the development of computational techniques that can interface with multiple sensors and nodes to transform data into information and enable cognitive-type computation at the network level. The remaining two bench-scale efforts will develop embedded sensors and “smart” materials that can be applied to power systems to enable real-time, online assessment of a system or component.

The projects will be managed by FE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Descriptions of the projects follow.

• Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio—Case Western, teaming with Charles Stark Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass., will develop a theoretic sensing and control framework that will use connections between control, estimation, signal processing, and communication theory to provide a systematic context for acquiring, processing, fusing, and using data from heterogeneous sensor networks to support advanced power plant operations. (DOE share: $1,500,000; recipient share: $434,827; project duration: 36 months)
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.—Virginia Tech will develop a first-of-a-kind technology for remote fiber optic generation and detection of acoustic waves for structural health monitoring. The technology requires no electric power supply at the monitoring site and the detected acoustic signature, as well as the additional returned optical signal, allow extraction of information about multiple material conditions including temperature, strain, corrosion, and cracking. (DOE share: $1,195,770; recipient share: $298,944; project duration: 36 months)
• University of Maine, Orono, Maine—The University of Maine will team with Environetix of Orono, Maine, to develop novel high temperature harsh environment thin film electrodes, piezoelectric smart microwave acoustic sensing elements, and sensor encapsulation materials that are engineered to function over long times at 1200°C, and a radio-frequency (RF) wireless interrogation electronics unit that will be located outside the high temperature harsh environment. (DOE share: $1,198,738; recipient share: $314,937; project duration: 36 months)

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