Hydrogen on Demand -long road to technology commercialisation.

In 1967, while working as a researcher at IBM, Woodall discovered that liquid alloys of aluminum and gallium spontaneously produce hydrogen if mixed with water. The research, which focused on developing new semiconductors for computers and electronics, led to advances in optical-fiber communications and light-emitting diodes, making them practical for everything from DVD players to television remote controls and new types of lighting displays. That work also led to development of advanced transistors for cell phones and components in solar cells powering space modules like those used on the Mars rover, earning Woodall the 2001 National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush. Also while at IBM, Woodall and research engineer Jerome Cuomo were issued a U.S. patent in 1982 for a "solid state, renewable energy supply." The patent described their discovery that when aluminum is dissolved in liquid gallium just above room temperature, the liquid alloy readily reacts with water to form hydrogen, alumina and heat.
Woodall moved to Purdue university and continued to work on the aluminium alloy. His team succeeded in developing technology that produces hydrogen by adding water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium. When water is added to the alloy, the aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the process. The Purdue researchers are developing a method to create particles of the alloy that could be placed in a tank to react with water and produce hydrogen on demand. The Purdue Research Foundation holds title to the primary patent, which has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is pending. An Indiana startup company, AlGalCo LLC., has received a license in 2007 for the exclusive right to commercialize the process.
AlGalCo founder and president  Kurt Koehler is a businessman, not a chemist. He graduated with a degree in marketing and management from IU and went on to earn a Master's in European History. As luck would have it, an encounter with Purdue representatives at the Indiana State Fair piqued his interest and ultimately led him to Purdue professor Jerry Woodall, who had developed the aluminum alloy technology. After 14 years of beta testing product is rolled out for Carmel's city fleet. 

THE LONG ROAD TO TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION- CASE OF FUEL CELLS FOR TRUCK

Geoffrey Ballard, CM, OBC (16 October 1932 – 2 August 2008) was a Canadian geophysicist and businessman. One of the studies he had been involved in at the U.S. Federal Energy Conservation Research office was on electric cars powered by conventional lead-acid batteries. Ballard had  met Ralph Schwartz in Arizona, who introduced him to the idea of using lithium batteries in place of lead-acid, as they would be much lighter. However, at the time, lithium batteries were not able to be recharged. Schwartz convinced Ballard that they should study the problem, and Ballard cashed in his pension to buy a portion of their new joint venture, American Energizer. Schwartz and Ballard were introduced to Keith Prater at the University of Texas chemistry department, and sold him on the idea of developing a new rechargeable lithium battery technology with them. Prater was able to quickly determine that no one knew what the product of the lithium-salt reactions in existing batteries were, and guessed that it was lithium dithionite, which he was able to synthesize. Working in a trailer, Ballard and Schwartz built a simple battery and Prater brought a sample of the lithium dithionite, and when they were placed together and charged, a weak current was produced. After further development the system was able to be recharged about a dozen times. Ballard had always wanted to return to Canada, so Schwartz sold his interest in the battery technology to Ballard for $1, while Ballard sold his interest in Schwartz's latest venture, a mechanical anti-lock braking system for the same $1. In 1979 Ballard moved to Vancouver and became president and CEO of Ultra Energy.

In 1983, Ballard, Prater and Paul Howard started looking for new ideas for their development side to work on as the funds for the battery project dried up. Among a variety of ideas were a number of attempts to find government funding, which eventually led them to a Department of National Defense (DND) request for proposals for bids to produce a low-cost solid polymer fuel cell. Now known as PEM's, these cells had only been used commercially in Project Gemini and a few other space probes, and General Electric gave up on the technology when NASA moved onto other fuel cell designs for Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Although a number of attempts had been made to lower the high cost of PEM cells since then, none had been commercially successful. They won the $500,000 contract, which called for them to provide three prototype cells that produced between 50 and 150 watts and be ready in 28 months. After meeting the requirements, they won a follow-up contract, and it was during this project, in 1986, when they reached a milestone of producing four times as much energy per unit volume as any previous fuel cell.

Feeling the technology was ready for commercial use, in 1989 Ballard raised $4 million in public money from the British Columbia government to build a fuel cell powered bus, introducing it at Science World in 1993. He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the newly public Ballard Power Systems. Ballard told Time in 1999 that the fuel-cell cars should become economical by 2010.

Dr. Sean MacKinnon was Senior Research Scientist at Ballard Power Systems , where he drafted, negotiated and managed a High Temperature PEM research project funded through Natural Resources Canada, in collaboration with NRC-IFCI. Later he worked at General Motors Fuel cell Research lab as Principle Investigator and program manager for collabative membrane development programs with strategic partners. He continued work at National Research Council of Canada and developed proton exchange membranes for automotive polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Dr Deve Ghosh was Director R&D at NRC Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation in Vancouver, BC, development of Low cost durable PEMFC Pt alloy catalyst on non-carbon support ( $10M 3 year project with Ballard & AFCC) was one of major R&D project.

Mr. David Leger, has been working on the technology with inventor and engineer Mr. Greg Montie B.Eng for over a decade. Greg was a Director on the board for PowerDisc Technology, and has performed lead technical roles at Cummins Westport natural gas engines, dPoint energy recovery systems, and PowerDisc hydrogen fuel cells. During this time, he had invented and filed 10 patents resulting in a number of commercial successes. Invented and developed the patented the eFlow hydrogen fuel cell. Specifically, eFlow is an exponentially delineating hydrogen fuel cell, and is currently considered to have one of the highest specific power outputs and the only substantial fuel cell to claim uniform current density.

In 2005 Inventors Greg Montie, Rodney Bruce Redlich and David Earl Leger  filed patent for Fuel cell cathode flow field  ,Patent number: 7838169  assigned to Power Disc Development Corporation. A fuel cell cathode flow field has multiple channels each with a cross-sectional area that varies along the length of the channel such that oxygen availability at every lengthwise position along the channel is kept substantially constant for a given channel length and air stoichiometry ratio. Each channel comprises a flat floor with substantially constant depth and a pair of side walls extending upwardly from the floor; the side walls each taper inwards from channel inlet to outlet with a convex curve relative to the channel centreline. Achieving substantially uniform oxygen availability throughout the flow field results in substantially uniform current density throughout the flow field, which is desirable for efficient fuel cell operation and improved performance.

PowerDisc Development Corporation is a fuel cell company based in Vancouver BC with David Leger co- inventor of eFlow Fuel Technology was CEO and President and Dr Sean MacKinnon is Chief Scientist. PowerDisc has also been selected as a participant in the Canadian Technology Accelerator Program (CTA). Sponsored by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, and administered by the consular trade commissioner in Colorado, the CTA program is focused on assisting Canadian technology companies to enter the United States marketplace while providing  them with improved access to funding, customers and networks of expertise.

PowerDisc is later renamed as Loop Energy Inc in 2016  to  mark the introduction of the company's zero­emission powertrain for heavy­duty transportation. Cummins is a strategic partner and Loop will supply Cummins with its 30-kilowatt (kW) and 50-kW FC-REX range-extender systems for use in Class 6-8 demonstration trucks. Loop has several demonstration programs underway. One involves retrofitting two Class 8 Peterbilt 579 long-haul trucks with fuel-cell/battery-electric drive system integrator TransPower. Those trucks will haul up to 80,000 pounds of freight throughout the San Diego and Los Angeles regions later this year.  In 2019 company has established a joint venture and non-exclusive license agreement with IN-Power, a leading power electronics supplier to the transport sector in China. In April 2020 Loop Energy, received a purchase order from a leading bus manufacturer in China to support the Nanjing municipal government's objective of replacing its existing 7000-unit battery-electric bus fleet with an improved battery-hydrogen hybrid alternative.

During this journey the firm received several grants in Canada. It was awarded a $7.5 million grant from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to accelerate deployment of the company's new zero-emission powertrain for heavy-duty trucks. Funding under Western Innovation  (WINN) Initiative contributed to commercialize and scale fuel cell range extender for heavy-duty Class 8 trucks and buses beginning in 2018.

Technologies for Licensing from IOC RandD centre

Indian Oil's  R&D Centre is India's foremost commercial centre of research excellence in the areas of lubricants, refinery processes, pipeline transportation, alternative fuels fuel additives, engine testing, materials sciences and environmental sciences. Indian Oil holds 554 active patents in India & Foreign countries.
Example: Mosquito Larvicidal Oil composition
Disclosed is a very effective non-toxic mosquito larvicidal oil (MLO) composition which eliminates mosquito larvae and pupae by suffocating them, when the composition is applied on stagnant water surface. It is bio-degradable as well as non-toxic to plant and animals, particularly fish, in the area of its application. It poses no danger to human beings because it does not enter into the human food chain. The MLO forms an unbreakable thin film on the water surface. This film prevents the larvae and pupae present in the water from breathing in oxygen from the air above. Consequently, they die of suffocation within a short period. lit is devoid of side effects like pesticide resistance, resurgence of pests and numerous undesirable effects on flora and fauna that are common in similar mosquito larvicidal oil compositions. The MLO is an optimized combination of mineral oils and surfactants emulsifiers for excellent spreading and film formation characteristics. The mineral oil can be paraffinic or naphthenic, hydrocracked or mixture of these. The surfactants/emulsifiers are required for the spontaneous spreading of the oil layer over water surface and stability of the oil film after application on water surface.
Check list of technologies available for commercialisation here. 

Patent IPR Licensing- Technology Commercialisation – Innovation Marketing : Guide Book for Researchers, Innovators

My new book:
The guide book by Indian Innovators Association will help researchers and innovators to clearly understand the difference between patent licensing, technology commercialization and innovation marketing. Everything is important but each one is different. Intellectual property is a common thread and the reader is taken through the fundamentals of IPR before explaining each of the three. topics.

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Technology Commercialization- I Corps Teams

Government funding agencies and research organisations have thousands of technologies, declared as ready for transfer to industry but the off-take is minuscule. Similar problem exists in other countries too and they addressed the problem in different ways. The experience of USA in promoting I-Corp Teams is interesting.
The objective is to identify NSF-funded researchers who will receive additional support - in the form of mentoring and funding - to accelerate innovation that can attract subsequent third-party funding. The purpose of the NSF I-Corps Teams grant is to give the project team access to resources to help determine the readiness to transition technology developed by previously-funded or currently-funded NSF projects. The outcomes of I-Corps Teams projects will be threefold: 
1) a clear go or no go decision regarding viability of products and services,
 2) should the decision be to move the effort forward, a transition plan for those projects to move forward, and 
3) a technology demonstration for potential partners.
What is importance of supplementary grant?
The tendency of researchers is to close the project, declare it as success and apply for grant to next project. There is little economic or academic interest in continuing work on so called completed project till clear go/ no-go decision is taken. CSIR tried this model but results were not satisfactory mainly due to limitation of taking all CSIR scientists into the team. PI not interested,  Entrepreneurial Lead and Mentors are in short supply. 
It is time to take up similar program in right earnest. Even if this does not lead to dramatic raise in license, the junk (from commercialization perspective) can be cleared.

Technology Commercialization- Mars research project on techniques to generate oxygen on Mars using solid oxide electrolysis.

Legacy fuel cell technologies like proton exchange membranes (PEMs), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs), and molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), have all required expensive precious metals, corrosive acids, or hard to contain molten materials.  For decades, experts have agreed that solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) hold the greatest potential of any fuel cell technology. With low cost ceramic materials, and extremely high electrical efficiencies, SOFCs can deliver attractive economics without relying on CHP. But until now, there were significant technical challenges inhibiting the commercialization of this promising new technology. SOFCs operate at extremely high temperature (typically above 800°C). This high temperature gives them extremely high electrical efficiencies, and fuel flexibility, both of which contribute to better economics, but it also creates engineering challenges.

Dr. KR Sridhar was Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona where he was also a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Under his leadership, STL won several nationally competitive contracts to conduct research and development for Mars exploration and flight experiments to Mars. KR has served as an advisor to NASA and has led major consortia of industry, academia, and national labs. His worked for the NASA Mars program to convert Martian atmospheric gases to oxygen for propulsion and life support. Dr. Sridhar and his team built a fuel cell capable of producing air and fuel from electricity generated by a solar panel.They soon realized that their technology could have an even greater impact here on Earth. In 2001, when their project ended, the team decided to continue their research and start a company. Originally called Ion America, Bloom Energy, was founded with the mission to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone on earth.

Enigmatically, for months the firm’s webpage contained only a clock that counted down to Feb. 24, 2010, signaling a major event was to occur. Just days before the event, publicists for the Sixty Minutes television show spread word that they would air a sneak peak of Bloom “Box” fuel cells that might be “an energy breakthrough.” The Sixty Minutes’ story revealed that Bloom had developed and manufactured 100-kilowatt SOFC stacks that had already been in successful operation at big named firms, such as Bank of America, eBay and Google. In fact, Bloom demonstrated that its SOFC units that could be easily “plugged in” to a company’s power network after being set in place with a forklift. Srindhar claimed that his design avoided the use of expensive catalysts, such as platinum, and he displayed his solution that consisted of two square, white panels, one imprinted with a green “ink,” and the other with black.