Hartford Business Journal

14 Hartford Business Journal • August 24, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Matt Pilon mpilon@hartfordbusiness.com T echnology is becom- ing increasingly energy efficient, but the fact remains that plenty of devices, from a simple light bulb to an industrial boiler, emit waste heat into the environment. "We have a lot of wasted energy and it's ejected as waste heat," explains Joel Rinebold, energy director at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) in East Hartford. "The problem to solve is 'how do we get value out of that waste heat?' " Bloomfield's R&D Dynamics, a bearing and turbomachinery manu- facturer that has made its bones in the aerospace and commercial sec- tors over the past 30 years, is aiming to be at least part of the answer. R&D has launched a waste-heat recovery product line called Ther- moGen, which it is marketing to in- dustrial facilities, colleges, and other producers of uncaptured waste heat in Connecticut and beyond. The company has already secured its first official sale. A pending $1-bil- lion fuel-cell-powered data center in New Britain plans to use seven of R&D's 200-kilowatt systems, which use waste heat to vaporize an or- ganic liquid chemical that has a low boiling point. That gas then spins a turbine that produces electricity. The process, known as organic rankine cycle, is similar to spin- ning a turbine with water heated to steam, but is more economical for waste heat at lower tempera- tures (as low as 170 degrees). R&D Dynam- ics founder and President Giri Agrawal has sky- high hopes for the new product, which he says could grow his privately held company's an- nual revenue tenfold (it cur- rently gener- ates about $10 million to $20 million per year). "This could be the biggest product for us," Agrawal, 83, said in a recent inter- view. "This could bring a lot of money to Connecticut." Agrawal, whose son Sunil Agrawal is R&D's vice president and his father's presumed successor, is an accomplished mechanical engineer who helped pioneer new air-foil bearing designs while at Hamilton Sundstrand, a United Technolo- gies Corp. company that has since become part of Raytheon. R&D's bearings are used in sys- tems that cycle air inside airplane cabins, and are also a key component of its compressors, blowers and alter- nators that are used in wastewater treatment, food processing, HVAC systems, fuel cells and a variety of other processes and products. Those same kinds of bearings are a key component in the ThermoGen system, and Agrawal sees it as a competitive advantage over systems that use oil bearings. Still, there are reasons to doubt Agrawal's latest project, since simi- lar heat-recovery technology has been around for decades and hasn't yet caught on to a significant extent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition, R&D is entering a somewhat unfamiliar market where it will face established competitors such as Ormat Technologies, whose heat-recovery systems are dominant in the geothermal sector. ThermoGen project manager Sam Rajendran said there are plenty of facilities that could earn a healthy re- turn on their energy costs by purchas- ing a ThermoGen system, but he's unaware of any examples of organic rankine cycle systems operating at industrial facilities in Connecticut. CCAT's Rinebold, who R&D Dy- namics has hired to issue a report on ThermoGen's merits, says that's not because the technology isn't proven. It's because it's challenging to make the systems cost-effective, particularly for lower-temperature waste heat from smaller industrial sources. Payback periods for similar technology have been fairly long, and maintenance costs have been high. "I'm pained to say this: It's a beautiful technology that has been discussed and vetted for years, maybe decades, but it has not been cost-effective," Rinebold said. "The real barrier is 'who can make the machine that's lower cost, more durable and more reliable?' " Rinebold said R&D could be the answer, in part because of the com- pany's proprietary bearings, which it says enables higher efficiency, lower costs, and less maintenance. "I think these guys have the right machine," Rinebold said. "R&D Dy- namics has what appears to me, after considerable time researching this, solved the problem." A taxpayer bet Connecticut taxpayers should hope he's right, since they have already bet on the company's expansion, in the form of a $2.3-million Manufacturing Assistance Act loan issued in 2015, half of which will be forgiven if R&D cre- ates 38 new jobs within eight years. The company is likely to miss that mark, as it has 70 employees at its 85,000-square-foot Bloomfield facility, Harnessing Heat Bloomfield bearing pioneer sets sights on wasted energy market Giri Agrawal (right), president and founder of Bloomfield's R&D Dynamics, is a pioneer in the world of air-foil bearings used to cycle air inside aircraft cabins. He and his son, vice president Sunil Agrawal (left), are hoping those bearings will be a competitive differentiator in R&D's new waste heat recovery system, ThermoGen. Sam Rajendran, project manager for the ThermoGen line, at the state Capitol, where lawmakers in 2018 granted the heat-recovery technology renewable energy incentives. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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