The road from a research lab curiosity to a commercial process is a difficult one. It requires not only great technology and intellectual property (IP), but also, a market, a great multi-disciplinary team that can work together effectively and is driven, money, and a lot of perseverance. For the case of a large company with deep pockets and an entrenched business it is almost impossible to start a radically new product line because of the immense market threshold required (that is, for a large company having $25B/yr in revenue, the new product must typically have a potential market of maybe $500M/yr, minimum). For high-temperature solarthermal chemical processing, the best path forward is to mitigate issues associated with continuous processing. This talk will review the path taken from a laboratory curiosity to a successful commercial process for the rapid carbothermal reduction process and will then focus on the path forward for solarthermal chemical processing.

Alan W. Weimer, H. T. Sears Memorial Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in 1996 after a 16-year career with the Dow Chemical Company. He was named recipient of the Dow Spangenberg Ceramics Founders Award in 1991, Dow Research Inventor of the Year in 1993, and received Dow's coveted Excellence in Science Award in 1995 for commercializing high-temperature processing to produce advanced materials. He is recipient of the 2005 DOE Hydrogen Program R&D Award for developing solar-thermal technology to split water, the 2009 AIChE Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems for his pioneering effort to functionalize fine particles with thin films, and the 2010 AIChE Excellence in Process Development Research Award for his persistence to commercialize his academic discoveries.

For additional details, visit: 
http://www2.me.gatech.edu/www/calendar/view_seminar.asp?speaker=Alan%20Weimer&startDate=2/4/2016&startTime=11:00%20AM