NREL Gas Jet Proposal (Jan 1995)

From: Edward Beardsworth
To: UFTO Subscribers
January 1995

This cover letter is to introduce the enclosed materials from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Dr. Desikan (Des) Bharathon has been awarded internal funding at NREL for his proposal to develop efficient gas jet ejectors. He believes he can improve dramatically on the very low efficiency of commercially available units. Dr. Bharathon is looking for utility partners for this program, and I agreed to provide this cover letter and your names to him.

These devices have wide application in utility power plants and in other industries, chemical processing in particular. They use thermal energy in place of mechanical energy to compress gases. In power plants, they are used to remove noncondensible gases from steam systems.

The business terms of any arrangement between you and NREL (and perhaps a manufacturer) are completely open at this point, and could represent an important ground floor opportunity for you.

At this point you know about as much as I do about this technology, but if I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

Sincerely yours,

Edward Beardsworth

Bulletin #4 (Jan 3, 1995)

To: UFTO Subscribers

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope your holidays were good, and your in-basket isn’t filling up too fast. We had a great time here, and now it’s time to get UFTO back into high gear.

1. Expect to hear soon from NREL about an internal program to develop more efficient gas jet ejectors. They’re looking for partners, and I gave them your names, along with a letter of introduction.

I also gave your names to Dr. Hanafy Meleis, of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at NIST, and asked him to send you information about a workshop he and Dave Cain at EPRI are sponsoring January 30-31 in Atlanta on Information and Telecommunications Technology for U.S. Utilities, and open forum to discuss technical, strategic and economic issues, and needed R&D. Have a look, and see if someone from your company should be there.

2. A revised roster of subscribers is enclosed. Welcome to Bill Muston at Texas Utilities, and Daniel Madet of the R&D Division of Electricite de France (office in Palo Alto!).

3. Plans for January include:

– Writing up the full report for NREL

– On Site Briefings for several more subscriber utilities (3 of you have already completed this).

– Site visits to LBL and possibly another lab.

– Ongoing follow-up

4. If you (or anyone from your company) will be in California for EPRI meetings later this month, let’s try to get together for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and/or for visits to the various startups I’ve been telling you about.

5. By the end of February at the latest, I’d like to try to reach agreement about the scope of this year’s program, and which labs will be included in our program. I’ll propose a list in the next few weeks.

One very important question– Are we going to get together as a group, and if so, when? How does mid to late March sound? Any volunteers to host such a meeting? What are your thoughts about the program or what we’d try to accomplish? I’m sure we could get some Lab (and DOE) representatives who would welcome the opportunity to meet with us and make a presentation.

6. Do you (or someone from your company) want to pay a visit to one of the labs? We found followup visits to be very valuable. Dave Odor at PSI has already said he wants to go to NREL, perhaps in March or April. Want to join us? Let me know.

Sincerely, EdB

PS: I just signed up with a local internet provider, giving me full directaccess via Mosaic. It’s very exciting, but I can see it’s easy to spend far too much time “net-surfing”. Any of you have experience on the net? Any good sites for information on energy technology?