Argonne wins Federal Lab Consortium research award

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 17, 2004) — The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has won the Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for an improved industrial process used in producing agricultural products.

The technology, which significantly improves the efficiency of electrodialysis cells and stacks, was successfully integrated into a new process developed by an industrial partner for the production of a specialty agricultural chemical.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium award honors "outstanding work in the process of transferring federally developed technology to the marketplace." A panel of experts from industry, state and local government, academic and the federal laboratory system judge the nominations.

Argonne researchers Ed Daniels, John Hryn and Greg Krumdick developed the process and worked with the industrial partner to adapt the improvement to their existing process. Controlling the pH levels in the production of the chemical enhancer is key to increasing the useable yield, and a synthetic chemical offered the potential, if it could be produced in large quantities at a reasonable cost.

The process uses a buffer agent that is continuously regenerated, producing large amounts of the chemical effectively and efficiently. During the first phase of commercial demonstration, more than 100,000 gallons of the chemical were produced over six months in a series of sustained round-the-clock production runs.

Argonne's contributions involved creating the improved process, scaling up the industrial partner's bench-scale work and adapting it to Argonne's pilot plant, defining and proving operating conditions, producing commercial quantities of the material, and training the partner's personnel to operate the plant.

"The fact that this comprehensive effort was successfully completed in 18 months shows that a government lab can deliver results at a pace consistent with industry's needs and timetable," noted Steve Ban, director of Argonne's Office of Technology Transfer.

The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is operated by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

For more information, please contact Catherine Foster (630/252-5580 or media@anl.gov) at Argonne.