|
An inside tour of PARC's cleantech projects
Famous for computing breakthroughs like the GUI and ethernet, PARC is now a cleantech hotbed.
Dallas Kachan, cleantech.com, February 15, 2008
Excerpts from the article:
If Madonna can reinvent herself now and again, why not the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)?
Silicon Valley-based PARC is using its new status as an independent business to leverage its almost 40-year history in IT, mass production, microfluidics and other scientific expertise for a variety of mostly corporate clients—unlike the government focus of other research institutes.
And now, there are a number of interesting cleantech-specific initiatives underway at the sprawling hillside complex, a stone's throw from Stanford University and the VCs of famed Sand Hill Road.
"Our cleantech effort was bottoms-up, driven by researchers," said Scott Elrod, manager of PARC's hardware systems laboratory, of the nine or so cleantech projects now in various stages at PARC.
The center's most visible cleantech-related initiative in recent years has been helping incubate solar concentrating startup SolFocus, which resided in and operated from PARC's labs until August of 2007.
The success of the partnership inspired PARC to institute a formal incubation program, which it calls Startup@PARC. Fledgling cleantech and other companies can leverage PARC staff and facilities in exchange for cash, royalties, equity compensation, or a combination.
We received a tour of the facility, and learned about the center's current cleantech-related projects, including:
Printing for solar PV - Gridlines on the front of most manufacturers' silicon cells for collecting current tend to be relatively wide, hiding much of the substrate beneath from the sun. PARC developed a new extrusion method for printing narrower yet taller gridlines on silicon with the same conductivity, but less "shadow"...
LED lighting - Could PARC's optics and thermal management experience translate into differentiated designs? Researchers pursued phosphor-based solid state lighting that has proven to be 10-20 percent more efficient than LEDs, PARC claims...
Membrane-less water filtration - A novel design inspired by years of toner manipulation through apertures has lead to what appears to be a high volume water filtration process not requiring a membrane. PARC scientists leveraged the centrifugal force of contaminants in water to direct them through an alternative path in a spiral flow...
Liquid fuels from the air - Perhaps the most ambitious project underway at PARC is an investigation into the practicality of generating liquid fuels from simply water and carbon present in the air...
Other cleantech projects underway at PARC include demand response-like adaptive control technologies for data centers and power grids, new manufacturing techniques for small form-factor fuel cells that take advantage of PARC's print head expertise, biofuel from algae [ed.: everyone's gotta be looking at algae, right?] and reusable paper.
Cameras aren't normally allowed at PARC. Here, then, are rare photographs from our visit with hardware lab manager Scott Elrod:
|
