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| Zurich – Montreal, October 2009 Vol. 6 | |||||||||
Xunlight Corp. makes first shipment of flexible PV modules
It was a watershed moment for budding thin-film solar manufacturer Xunlight Corp. of Toledo, Ohio. Xunlight delivered in August its first shipment of flexible and lightweight solar modules from its new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. The plant's production line can produce 25 megawatts of triple-junction amorphous silicon modules annually and uses a roll-to-roll process that both lowers cost and increases output. "Our first sale and delivery of solar modules marks a significant milestone for Xunlight," said company chief executive and co-founder Dr. Xunming Deng. 
Xunlight is a technology spin-off of the University of Toledo, which is also its first customer. The modules which were successfully installed and which are now feeding power back into the electrical grid are part of a 10-kilowatt solar array at the university's Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation. This first order has quickly been followed by a take-or-pay contract from a European customer of USD 53 Mio. Xunlight's production line is fast, capable of churning out PV cells at 720-square feet per hour. The line is composed of a 200-feet long series of vacuum deposition chambers, which use a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition process to deposit a thin film of silicon on a stainless steel substrate. The substrate is three feet wide and comes on a mile-long roll that is continuously guided through the production line. Even though nine layers are deposited in total, the thin film is still one-hundredth of the thickness of a typical sheet of paper. Emerald-backed Xunlight has raised more than $40 million from institutional investors and another $13 million of research and development funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Ohio Department of Development. Earlier in the year Xunlight was recognized with the Red Herring 100 North America Award, which honors the most promising privately-held technology companies on the continent. Additionally, Xunlight was recognized with the Global Cleantech 100 Award by Guardian News and Media and Cleantech Group, LLC, who highlights the most promising privately-held clean technology companies from around the world. Emerald was the lead investor of Xunlight’s first venture capital financing in 2007 and has continued to support the company’s growth. Senscient Inc. trials unique gas-detection technology
These are exciting times for Houston and Poole, U.K.-based Senscient Inc., which is seeing strong customer demand for the initial application of its gas-detection and analysis technology. Senscient's enhanced laser-diode spectroscopy technology, or ELDS, can detect trace amounts of both toxic and flammable gases along an open path up to 200 meters long. Target gases include methane and hydrogen sulfide, and they can be detected with a high degree of accuracy and reliability. The company's ELDS system has passed all witness tests of the American National Standard "Performance Requirements for Open Path Combustible Gas Detectors" and did receive its Certificates. Senscient is the only supplier in the gas-detection market, including among the majors, to have achieved this milestone. The benefits are clear to industries where safety and environmental protection are paramount. Mining, oil and gas exploration, medical research, aerospace, and national defense are just a few of the areas that demand the ability to detect, analyse and measure the presence and quantity of such gases, both reliably and with high precision. Eight of Senscient's systems have been in operation since July. Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), half owned by Royal Dutch Shell, is trialing the technology at a site in The Netherlands. Valero Energy is also using systems at a refinery in the United States. Results to date have been excellent. A third trial is underway with BP, which recently received and installed its first system. That system is currently being evaluated by BP customers across the United States for both onshore and offshore installations. Soon to follow will be a trial with ExxonMobil, which will install the technology on a platform in North America. Petrobras will also conduct a trial at a refinery in Brazil. Meanwhile, Senscient continues to bolster its management team through the hiring of two highly experienced global sales managers for the Americas and for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). A distributor from Norway has also been added, bringing the total number of global master agents and distributors to ten. Emerald led a $5.6 million (U.S.) Series-B financing of Senscient in early 2008. River Basin Energy Inc. rebrands after trials
It began as FMI NewCoal, but after the successful end to its proof-of-performance tests and customer trials at its demonstration plant in Laramie, Wyoming, the company has renamed itself River Basin Energy. The new name is derived from Wyoming's Powder River Basin, a vast source of low-sulphur and low-mercury sub-bituminous coal. The problem is that this low-rank coal contains a lot of moisture, meaning a far lower heat content and lower efficiency for the coal plants that use it. River Basin Energy has developed a coal upgrader technology that uses a pre-combustion process to economically remove moisture. The end result is a cleaner-burning coal with the heat content that typically comes from a dirtier high-rank coal, allowing coal plants to increase output while complying with sulphur-emission regulations. Plants that will use River Basin Energy's patent-protected process will have lower construction and operating costs compared to rival technologies. The benefit of the process is that it doesn't rely on prototype technologies and all subsystems are derived from similar applications found in the chemical and power-generation industries. This means the technology is proven, available and can be scaled up as required. Removing moisture from low-rank coals is a continuous process that requires its own energy source. River Basin Energy uses the raw coal feed itself as a low-cost heat source to achieve dehydration, but using temperatures that do not break down the coal. There's also no need to pulverize the coal or turn it into briquettes. The company has successfully removed moisture from a variety of coals at its demonstration plant in Laramie. It's a flexible process, capable of operating independently of where coal mines or power plants are located, and it doesn't rely on steam or heat from third parties. Finally, air emissions from the process are negligible and there is no liquid waste stream to dispose. Emerald invested in River Basin Energy in the fall of 2008, at which time investment director Charles Vaslet joined the company's board of directors. Pressure Pipe Inspection Co.'s "PipeDiver" hits market
Mississauga, Ontario-based Pressure Pipe Inspection Co. (PPIC) is one step closer to tapping the multibillion-dollar market for the inspection and assessment of in-use municipal water pipelines. Since Emerald's initial investment in PPIC in the summer of 2008 the company has validated its new PipeDiver inspection system and is on target to do its first commercial inspections later this year. It's well accepted that water and wastewater pipelines around the world, particularly in North America, are more than a half-century old and in a chronic state of disrepair. Utilities, faced with limited financial resources, can't fix these problems all at once. As a result, they require a low-cost way of prioritizing pipeline rehabilitation projects. The goal is to reduce as much water loss as possible, avoid catastrophic pipeline failures, and defer capital expenditures while meeting all regulations. PipeDiver fits that bill. The system is designed for use in pre-stressed concrete pipes that are in operation and can't be taken out of service. PipeDiver is a free-swimming, battery-powered robotic tool. The system is neutrally buoyant and has flexible fins that help center the tool and provide propulsion within a pipe. This flexibility allows it to go through butterfly valves and bends in the pipeline, as well as travel long distances with the flow of the water. The system was engineered to overcome the difficulty of inserting the robotic tool into a live pressure main and retrieving it at the end of its inspection. During its journey, data is collected and interpreted by an above-ground analyst trained to pinpoint and quantify locations where a pipeline is distressed. The fact that a pipeline doesn't have to be dewatered and shut down before inspection offers tremendous cost savings to a utility. PipeDiver's accuracy was validated in July in a water main in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The four pipe sections that previously were detected as prestressed were removed from the ground so that a complete inspection of the wires could occur. This involved the removal of mortar and the examination of each wire wrap in the concrete pipe for breaks. The above-ground inspection was then compared to the PipeDiver inspection. In all cases the wire break positions matched the locations predicted by the PipeDiver. With this milestone passed, PPIC is expecting to perform its first commercial inspections in Mexico City and Texas, in the fourth quarter of 2009. Use of PipeDiver has also been proposed for a number of large international projects that are aiming to inspect pipelines without having to shut down water service. A complete list of our portfolio companies can be found under: |
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