WSU’s Grant Norton, left, and other founders of GoNano Technologies, Inc.
GoNano Technologies, Inc. is a small company but a grand example – an example of university education and research innovation moving into the community to create jobs and into the world to solve problems. In the coming months, in fact, it plans to develop a production facility and provide jobs in the Palouse.
The company grew out of work – and a resulting happy accident – by Grant Norton, associate dean of research and graduate programs in the College of Engineering and Architecture at WSU, and David McIlroy, a physics professor at the University of Idaho.
Cool and capacious
The researchers were trying to build nanowires several years ago and instead accidently created a Nanospring. The researchers soon determined that Nanosprings – unique, coiled structures more than 5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair – have valuable properties. The most important quality is that they provide an extremely large surface area for their size.
After receiving a W.M. Keck Foundation grant in 2004 to study the properties of the tiny structures, the researchers determined that, compared to other nanomaterials, Nanosprings are pretty “cool.” They can be processed at a relatively cool 350 degrees Celsius, meaning that they can be processed onto multiple substrates – glass, steel, stainless steel or aluminum – with relative ease.
At the same time, the surface area of the Nanosprings is highly accessible, making them useable with a number of materials.
The researchers began getting patents for their technologies and, in fall 2007, established GoNano and opened an office in Moscow, Idaho. The company has eight employees, and the work is focused on scalability, cost reduction and application development.
Addressing global warming
Among the applications is using the tiny springs to address the huge environmental and human challenge of global climate change. Specifically, Nanosprings are being used to catalyze carbon dioxide into other products.
Burning fossil fuels releases gigatons of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere every year. Carbon dioxide acts as a blanket, trapping heat and contributing to global warming.
While capturing carbon dioxide from smokestacks is possible, building pipelines and pumping it into the ground is considered cost-exorbitant, possibly unsafe and untested.
But carbon dioxide can be catalyzed – converted chemically into such products as formaldehyde, formic acid, methane and methanol. These products can be used, for example, as chemical feed stocks, for plastics or for natural gas production.
While the process has been understood since the 1970s, researchers have only been able to demonstrate a maximum conversion rate of eight percent, making the process economically unviable.
But by using Nanosprings, with their large and highly accessible surface area, researchers at GoNano have demonstrated a conversion rate of more than 30 percent, 400 percent more efficient than the closest competitor, said Tim Kinkeade, CEO of GoNano Technologies.
“The process,” Kinkeade said, “turns CO2 into a commodity rather than a waste product.”
The researchers have a prototype at the laboratory scale, and they are beginning to test their process at the University of Idaho wood-burning plant this month.
Improving car catalytic converters
In the meantime, they also are using Nanosprings to develop better and less expensive catalytic converters for automobiles.
Using precious metals, catalytic converters convert harmful hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide to less harmful carbon dioxide and water. Nanosprings placed inside the cores of the catalytic converters enhance the surface area. This makes the conversion process more efficient and saves money, since less precious metal is needed.
Palouse production facility
In the next few months, GoNano researchers plan to develop a facility to produce catalytic converters and carbon capture and recycling panels. So far, they have scaled up production of their processes by 1000 percent.
“This is the green economy,” Kinkeade said. “We believe that through the creation of this production facility, we can create many high-paying, sustainable jobs in the Palouse region.”
Universities enable innovation
GoNano and its future potential is innovation that grew out of university research, Kinkeade said. On the practical side, the company has developed and maintained service center agreements with the universities, allowing GoNano access to facilities that would otherwise be cost prohibitive for a startup.
More important has been access to brain power from both universities.
“The most critical component of our association with WSU is that it has allowed us access to a highly trained pool of technical talent,” Kinkeade said.