PDF Publication Title:
Text from PDF Page: 014
his own way or lose his job. When he tried for a permanent position and didn’t get it, he started looking for jobs on the West Coast closer to Montana. In 1995, a job opened in the UM chemistry department, and he got to come home. Now an oceanographer far from the sea, DeGrandpre taught college chemistry classes while continuing to work on his sensors and garner research awards. At one point he tested a SAMI in Montana’s Placid Lake. In 1999, he and UM patented the sensor method, and Sunburst was born. “We sold our first SAMI for $20,000 to a well-known carbon-cycle scientist in Canada,” he says. “Since he had the only one in the world, we think he got a good deal on it. We offered the first product you could put on a buoy, and we were the only company selling these for at least six or seven years. We were the first.” Business was slow but showed some promise. Sunburst added two or three employees, and in 2002 a new SAMI was developed to measure pH instead of CO2. For a time the firm was housed in MonTEC, a UM-affiliated technology incubator. Beck says about 70 of the original sensors were sold in the first nine years of the company’s existence, but after redesigned units were released in 2009, Sunburst has sold more than 300. In 2012, the company was hired to produce 145 units for the Ocean Observatory Network. A new unit today sells for about $17,000. “The first year I was there, I think we sold three instruments,” Beck says. “I know our sales were under $100,000. But last year we sold over $1 million. So things have picked up.” A SAMI-pH draws in sea water, puts in a dye that changes color depending on the water’s acidity – much like litmus paper – and then shines a light through the dye. The resulting color of the water reveals the pH. “It doesn’t seem like much, but the machining of this is actually quite complicated,” DeGrandpre says. “We have some manufacturing techniques and designs that keep us special, and we designed this thing in a way that nobody else does – and that’s where the real innovation is.” He says Sunburst works with Montana companies whenever possible. Big Sky Machining of Superior and Diversified Plastics of Missoula are key partners. Sunburst CEO Jim Beck (left) recovers his company’s tSAMI device after its return from 3,000 meters underwater off the coast of Hawaii during Phase 4 of the ocean health XPRIZE competition. (XPRIZE photo) Presently located in adjacent, nondescript Missoula storefronts near Broadway Street, Sunburst employs nine people. It seems an unlikely place to produce an XPRIZE, but the interior is packed with workspaces to assemble, test and repair SAMIs. Beck largely runs Sunburst, but he and DeGrandpre email frequently and meet every two weeks or so to discuss company business. DeGrandpre’s UM lab also teems with SAMIs in various states of assembly that he uses in his research, and he often sends students to Sunburst to become employees. And it’s interesting to note that Todd Martz, a former doctoral student of DeGrandpre’s, was on Team DuraFET, which won a second-place XPRIZE during the competition. So UM helped win two XPRIZE grand prizes and also helped educate a team that came in second. ••• DeGrandpre says Sunburst has long been a leader in ocean sensor technology, so when the XPRIZE was announced in September 2013, they knew they had to defend their turf. The sensors have been deployed in locations worldwide on buoys, and they recently had a SAMI-CO2 and SAMI-pH deployed under the ice in the Arctic. The sensors hung on a line – one above the other – and transmitted their data via satellite. The XPRIZE affordability purse called for Vision 2016 12 the creation of a sensor costing less than $1,000, and that meant a major redesign of the Sunburst product. Beck says just one pump and valve in their regular SAMI costs $640, and the housing for those two items increases the cost to well over $1,000 – and there are many parts beyond these. So a much simpler design was required, but eventually they created the “inexpensive” iSAMI. DeGrandpre says they already had a head start to create a cheaper sensor from a Small Business Innovation Research Program grant. (The idea for that grant is to produce great research results by seeding the world’s oceans with inexpensive sensors on disposable drifters.) To compete for the XPRIZE accuracy purse the team needed a sensor that would work at 3,000 meters. The deepest a Sunburst sensor had been tested before was 900 meters. So they created a slightly slimmer (and more expensive) SAMI in a titanium housing called the tSAMI. Seventy-seven teams from around the globe expressed interest in seeking the prize, but only 24 eventually registered for the competition. The contest was divided into several phases. Only 18 teams competed with sensors at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. Fourteen teams then advanced to coastal trials at the Seattle Aquarium, and then five finalists sent sensors down to 3,000 meters using a research vessel near Hawaii.PDF Image | Carbon Vision 2016
PDF Search Title:
Carbon Vision 2016Original File Name Searched:
Vision_2016.pdfDIY PDF Search: Google It | Yahoo | Bing
NFT (Non Fungible Token): Buy our tech, design, development or system NFT and become part of our tech NFT network... More Info
IT XR Project Redstone NFT Available for Sale: NFT for high tech turbine design with one part 3D printed counter-rotating energy turbine. Be part of the future with this NFT. Can be bought and sold but only one design NFT exists. Royalties go to the developer (Infinity) to keep enhancing design and applications... More Info
Infinity Turbine IT XR Project Redstone Design: NFT for sale... NFT for high tech turbine design with one part 3D printed counter-rotating energy turbine. Includes all rights to this turbine design, including license for Fluid Handling Block I and II for the turbine assembly and housing. The NFT includes the blueprints (cad/cam), revenue streams, and all future development of the IT XR Project Redstone... More Info
Infinity Turbine ROT Radial Outflow Turbine 24 Design and Worldwide Rights: NFT for sale... NFT for the ROT 24 energy turbine. Be part of the future with this NFT. This design can be bought and sold but only one design NFT exists. You may manufacture the unit, or get the revenues from its sale from Infinity Turbine. Royalties go to the developer (Infinity) to keep enhancing design and applications... More Info
Infinity Supercritical CO2 10 Liter Extractor Design and Worldwide Rights: The Infinity Supercritical 10L CO2 extractor is for botanical oil extraction, which is rich in terpenes and can produce shelf ready full spectrum oil. With over 5 years of development, this industry leader mature extractor machine has been sold since 2015 and is part of many profitable businesses. The process can also be used for electrowinning, e-waste recycling, and lithium battery recycling, gold mining electronic wastes, precious metals. CO2 can also be used in a reverse fuel cell with nafion to make a gas-to-liquids fuel, such as methanol, ethanol and butanol or ethylene. Supercritical CO2 has also been used for treating nafion to make it more effective catalyst. This NFT is for the purchase of worldwide rights which includes the design. More Info
NFT (Non Fungible Token): Buy our tech, design, development or system NFT and become part of our tech NFT network... More Info
Infinity Turbine Products: Special for this month, any plans are $10,000 for complete Cad/Cam blueprints. License is for one build. Try before you buy a production license. May pay by Bitcoin or other Crypto. Products Page... More Info
| CONTACT TEL: 608-238-6001 Email: greg@infinityturbine.com | RSS | AMP |