BusinessTN

The road from good idea to fully realized innovation can be a treacherous one. Millions of dollars and countless man hours can be flushed away with one FDA ruling. An invention bursting with promise can die a slow, painful death for no other offense than bad timing. That doesn’t stop Tennessee’s brightest minds from trying. What follows are a selection of technological innovations at different stages of development: three at the starting line, two for which the race is well underway and one that is crossing the finish line. Together, they illustrate the boundless ingenuity at play in Tennessee.

• NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING The Toxic Fry-Daddy
• HYDROPHOBIC MATERIAL The Moses Effect
• WATER TESTING Beyond the Litmus Test
• GREEN PESTICIDES Natural Causes
• ANTI-CORROSION NANO-COATING More than a Penny Saved
• GIBSON LES PAUL ROBOT GUITAR I, Guitar

NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING

The Toxic Fry-Daddy

Wouldn't it be nice to live in an era when the consequences of using nuclear energy were much less dangerous than they are today? To be assured that we're not sitting on a radiation-emitting pile of nuclear waste that any minute can be detonated or stolen by terrorists? Jeff Binder, senior program manager for nuclear technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has that future in sight. As the increasing demand for affordable power feeds an atomic renaissance, so does the need to figure out what to do with all that nuclear waste. Thus, the U.S. Department of Energy is betting big on Binder and his team, who are working with out-of-state researchers on finding the way of processing nuclear fuel so most of it never leaves the premises of a nuclear plant. With $65 million in funding, Binder and team are devising a process of chopping up spent fuel, oxidizing it, dissolving it in nitric acid, and converting what's left back to the solid form. It's an astonishingly toxic fry-daddy of sorts, which breaks up nuclear fuel rods into pieces inside concrete and lead glass-laden "hot cells." The fuel is broken up into various radioactive elements, including neptunium, plutonium and uranium. The most toxic elements would be used again in reactors, while the rest can be stored in faraway places, taking a hundred years to disintegrate instead of thousands—and minus the "hot" elements of interest to terrorists. Binder says it may take 10 to 20 years to begin reprocessing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, but it is already looking manageable in his laboratory. The DOE has disclosed some 120 locations across the United States, including three in Tennessee, that store highly radioactive nuclear waste and surplus plutonium.

HYDROPHOBIC MATERIAL

The Moses Effect

John Simpson doesn't have anything against water; he simply wants to be able to repel it at will. And now he can. Bedecked in a super-hydrophobic suit, the ORNL scientist can be like a blade of grass, showing off the pearls of morning dew on the slopes of Appalachia. Literally translated from Latin and Attic Greek as "very much afraid of water," Simpson's super-hydrophobic coating is a giant leap forward for many industries struggling to keep their products dry. A result of differentially etched phases of powdered glass treated with a special hydrophobic solution, Simpson's coating has nanoscale features that make any surface it covers un-wettable. Even when submerged in water, the coating maintains a microscopic layer of air around the object. Applications are endless, especially because the coating is easy to fabricate and base materials are low-cost, says Simpson, who is a member of the Engineering Science and Technology Division at ORNL. Previously developed water repellents were too expensive to produce commercially and therefore exist only in laboratory settings. Simpson's patent-pending technology can be used in creating new eyewear, windshields, building materials, road surfaces and clothing (because the glass powder grains are superhydrophobic, the dry breathable coating they create traps air for insulation). As proof that Simpson's innovation has legs, a team of UT-Knoxville students took the $25,000 grand prize from ORNL's Global Venture Challenge, held in April. Their business plan, which impressed six out-of-state venture capitalists invited to judge the contest, focused on the superhydrophobic coating for ship hulls based on Simpson's invention.

WATER TESTING

Beyond the Litmus Test

Finding out that a local water utility exceeded the maximum allowed levels of carcinogens is of no use for those who drank it months before. University of Memphis chemist Gary Emmert is busy perfecting a device that you probably thought America's utilities have been using for years—a real-time, online monitor that tracks the levels of Trihalomethanes (THMs) and Haloacetic Acids (HAAs), both carcinogens that appear in drinking water as byproducts of chlorination. But currently, utilities only monitor water for basic things, such as pH levels, conductivity and ions. As for THMs and HAAs, utilities may find out they were in trouble months ago because testing is expensive and therefore spotty. Emmert is careful to point out that no conclusive evidence exists linking those carcinogens to cancer, but he says it's like "balancing the chance of dying tomorrow or finding a tumor on a kidney 75 years from now." The fact that Emmert is concerned about the issue now, he insists, is the reason why we have the safest drinking water in the world. "Some of the best water in the country is here in Tennessee," Emmert says. "Especially in Memphis, because we get our water from a very deep and ancient aquifer." While patent on the device is pending, it is being licensed to a company in Texas, which anticipates a $300 million market among utilities in the United States and Canada alone.

GREEN PESTICIDES

NATURAL CAUSES

You've heard of green cars, green buildings and organic foods. Now, get ready for green pesticides. Developed by Vanderbilt University biochemistry professor Essam Enan, the invention targets chemoreceptors on insects with a fatal blend of oils, bringing to the world the first natural pesticide. The blend is harmless to humans, who lack such receptors, and the oils have been okayed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Licensed by Vanderbilt to TyraTech of Florida, the science behind green pesticides has generated a strong whiff of interest: Scotts Miracle-Gro subsidiary, Kraft Foods and Dow Chemical are involved in product development with TyraTech, which went public on the London Stock Exchange last year under the ticker "TYR." The first natural poison in a 32oz. bottle dubbed Crawling Insect Spray is being sold to hotels, restaurant chains and hospitals in Florida. (We're told the roaches, bed bugs, and spiders are taking notice.) Twenty-four more products are in the pipeline. Vanderbilt owns roughly 23% of TyraTech, which nowadays translates into some $50 million. Not a bad start in the $25 billion worldwide pesticide industry.

ANTI-CORROSION NANO-COATING

More than a Penny Saved

Eugene Pinkhassik is living proof that the terms "businessman" and "scientist" need not be mutually exclusive. Since arriving in Tennessee 11 years ago after completing post-doctoral studies at the University of Colorado, the assistant professor of chemistry has done well for himself and his current employer, the University of Memphis. The native of Kazan, Russia, is now one of the principals of the University of Memphis' first spinoff, NanoTect, which is on the verge of commercializing the ultra-thin protective layer for metal piping that Pinkhassik developed as part of his research in nanotechnology. "Anti-corrosion sensors aren't as glamorous as sensors that diagnose cancer, but it's a simple technology that can be easily commercialized," says Pinkhassik, whose long-term goal is to develop sensors capable of detecting cancerous growths early on as part of a simple blood test. "It can happen in the next 10 to 20 years." It was in this lofty research that Pinkhassik happened upon the curious results of applying nano-coating to sensors for diagnosing illnesses. Pinkhassik, along with colleagues Erno Lindner and Andrew Richter, discovered that their coating solution could slow down corrosion in copper by four times the current rate. Their side project won the FedEx Institute's first business plan competition in 2006, followed by another award from EmergeMemphis, as well as backing from Mercury Technology Labs of Memphis.

GIBSON LES PAUL ROBOT GUITAR

I, Guitar

As of December 2007, achieving rock stardom has become somewhat easier. Aspiring musicians have at their disposal a self-tuning electric guitar from the paragon of electric string instruments, Nashville's Gibson Guitar Corp. Over the course of a human lifespan, the Gibson Les Paul Robot Guitar can save months, if not years of fiddling with finicky strings. Instead of tiresome tuning, all one has to do is push or pull the control knob, which is also in charge of the instrument's volume, to reach one of six widely used altered pre-sets. If a string goes out of whack or the weather changes, the guitar automatically sets to the standard A440 tuning. The robot guitar became such a hit that its initial shipment sold out in four days across the world—a tribute both to the manufacturer and its marketing department.

How does it work? The powerhead-locking tuners, made with lightweight alloy housings, are controlled via a motorized gearbox by the Neck CPU mounted on the back of the headstock. The strings carry the control signal and the power supply from the data-transmitting tailpiece to the processing unit, which operates each of the powerhead tuners individually. The world's first self-tuning guitar is not all that expensive at $2,900 and demand has been strong. On the heels of stellar sales, the company put out in April a limited edition of the Gibson Robot Les Paul Studio and Robot SG Special, which cost one grand more than the first Gibson Robot. But rock 'n' roll purists take heart—something tells us that motorized tuners and the intelligent master control knobs will not lessen the creative angst of future of the Kurt Cobains and Janis Joplins out there.