Savannah River National Laboratory

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has been selected to receive the prestigious 2011 R&D 100 award from R&D magazine.  The award recognizes the SRNL-invented porous walled hollow glass microspheres as one of the 100 most technologically significant products of the past year.

Each microsphere is about 50 microns in diameter, about half the width of a human hair. SRNL originally developed the microspheres as a solid-state storage method for hydrogen as part of the Lab’s support of DOE’s nuclear defense mission.

Porous walled hollow glass microspheres have potential for use in targeted drug delivery, hydrogen storage and other applications.  SRNL’s partners in the winning technology include Toyota, the Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU), and Mo-Sci Corporation, a Rolla, Missouri, specialty glass provider that has been licensed by SRNL to manufacture and market the microspheres.

The SRNL research and development team included Dr. George Wicks, Dr. Leung Heung, Dr. Ray Schumacher, Dr. Steven Serkiz, and Dr. David Peeler.  Other honorees included Dr. Rana Mohtadi of Toyota, Dr. Bill Dynan of GHSU, and Ted Day of Mo-Sci Corporation.

Tersus Environmental, LLC, located in Wake Forest, N.C., a developer and marketer of advanced, innovative technologies for the remediation of soil and groundwater, and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC (SRNS) recently announced the signing of an exclusive patent license agreement for the MicroBlower™. This royalty-based agreement grants Tersus Environmental an exclusive worldwide license to manufacture, use, and sell the MicroBlower, a passive soil vapor extraction technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), which is operated for the DOE by SRNS.

“This license agreement with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions enables us to expand our strong foundation of intellectual property,” said Gary Birk, Managing Partner of Tersus Environmental. “Working with the outstanding researchers at Savannah River National Laboratory will provide our associates at Tersus Environmental more design freedom as we develop the next generation of remediation technologies to meet the demands of this ever-expanding environmental sector.  Our customers will benefit as we continue to implement an expanding array of uniquely effective remediation strategies.”

Targeting the “vadose zone” during remediation traditionally has been considered difficult, and SRNL researchers have developed a MicroBlower assisted barometric valve specifically for the remediation of organic compounds in this zone. 

The MicroBlower uses a small, low power vacuum blower to extract or inject gases into the subsurface for characterization or remediation.  While similar in design to an active soil vapor extraction (ASVE) blower, the MicroBlower is a low-cost alternative designed to run on renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind energy, to treat volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination in the unsaturated zone. MicroBlowers offer the advantage of a reduced carbon footprint, and very low operating and maintenance expenses.

The use of natural processes is a growing trend in environmental remediation. Researchers at SRNL are developing remedial approaches that take advantage of natural phenomena, and these approaches are reducing cleanup costs and intrusion on the environment. The MicroBlower technology is an example of such an approach, based on natural venting cycles between the surface and subsurface. When atmospheric pressure is higher than the subsurface’s pressure, air is induced to flow through wells into the subsurface. Conversely, when atmospheric pressure is lower than subsurface pressure, air flows out of wells into the atmosphere, taking with it organic contaminants such as chlorinated solvents in the gas phase.