Catalyizing Clean Energy Technologies

In 2006, Dr. Bart Lipkens of Western New England College’s Mechanical Engineering Department worked with the U.S. Army to develop a way to use ultrasound and acoustrophor technology to separate the anthrax virus from water as way measure to capture anthrax particles that may contaminate a water supply. Today, Dr. Lipkens, is applying the same technology to produce biofuels from micro-algae, which, once developed, would be a significant milestone for the biofuels industry. “We are starting to have our first interest from industry with the main question being can it be scaled,” said Dr. Lipkens. “Our current efforts are showing that we can scale it up to larger quantities and that the cost of energy for our system seems to be less than the current methods used to do particle separation.”

Dr. Lipkens is among hundreds of researchers at Massachusetts’ world-class institutions working on the development of groundbreaking clean energy technologies. He is one of 13 private investigators at MassachusettsIn three rounds of the Catalyst Program, MassCEC has awarded a total of $520,000 in funds to investigators from ten Massachusetts research and academic institutions. Three of those researchers have developed their technologies into start-ups that have received early stage venture capital funding. Researchers are studying technology and developing prototypes in the areas of lithium-ion batteries, biofuels, carbon sequestration and fuel cell applications.