CVEN alum Tyler Huggins selected to participate in the Chain Reaction Innovations program
On December 20, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced that CU Denver CVEN alum, Tyler Huggins (MS, Environmental Engineering/Sustainability Engineering, ‘12), has been selected as one of the first innovators to participate in a new embedded entrepreneurship program at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
The Chain Reaction Innovations program is part of a new initiative to accelerate the development of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies and drive manufacturing growth by helping startups and innovators reduce development costs and risks. A panel of judges selected the inaugural cohort of five Chain Reactions innovators from more than 100 applications.
Tyler and Justin Whiteley, his business partner at their energy startup Emergy, have developed a process that uses a biological organism cultivated in brewery wastewater to create the carbon-based materials needed to make energy storage cells, including those used in cars: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/11/beer-power-electric-car/
Tyler and Justin’s term at Chain Reaction Innovations is designed to help them bring this technology to market.
A summary of the technology: Emergy has developed a versatile biomanufacturing process to make low cost advanced porous carbon materials for energy storage and filtration applications. Emergy’s platform technology utilizes the efficient biomechanics of filamentous organisms to produce tunable material properties through a bottom-up approach. The use of a robust biological system also allows for the utilization of waste carbon sources such as industrial wastewater as a renewable feedstock. Ultimately, this process facilitates low cost and sustainable manufacturing of porous carbon materials with select characteristics directed towards specific applications. For example, Emergy can produce low cost, high surface area, pure carbon electrodes for supercapacitors from the treatment of brewery wastewater.
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