THE
DREAM
M A K E R S
The inventions, from a new lubricant to less-polluting smokestacks, are all advances in traditional ways of doing things.
The Product Became the Company
T
'he late Reginald S. Fleet, a 1916 mechanical engineering graduate, and his brother, Preston, were the largest stockholders among seven founders of the WD40 Co., which was incorporated in 1953 as Rocket Chemical Co. The firm developed WD-40, a lubricant and rust-arresting compound, as its only product, and in 1970 changed its name to WD-40 Co.
Hair-Curling Experience
T
'he late Arnold F. Willat, a 1907 electrical engineering graduate, taught electrical engineering at Stanford before starting his own manufacturing business in San Francisco to manufacture two of his highly successful early inventions—a type of phonograph needle and a telephoneand-electrical cord coiler. In the 1920s, he manufactured hot-permanent wave machines for a large distributor. In 1932, he invented cold permanent waving and revolutionized the cosmetics industry.
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'Sandwich' Recipe Targets Acid Rain Source iter working on the ingredients for 10 years, Dr. Jack Winnick has cooked up an electrochemical "sandwich" that could eliminate sulphur dioxide, the chief component of acid rain, from coalfired industrial smokestacks. Because the technology is in the final stages of development and projected to be comparatively inexpensive, Winnick has received world-wide interest in his patented process. "It's a whole new idea of treating flue gas," the chemical engineering professor says. Many coalburning plants use liquid chemicals as scrubbers to remove sulphur dioxide, resulting in large quantities of waste sludge. "It's a mess; it's expensive," says <Winnick. For the past decade, Winnick has been developing a process that would create an electrochemical separation of sulfur dioxide from smokestack emissions, using an electrolytic cell sandwiched between two gas-
GEORGIA TECH • Summer 1990
diffusion electrodes. "We use an electric field to attract the sulfur dioxide out of the gas," Winnick explains. The flue gas containing sulphur dioxide flows by a charged plate that draws the sulphur molecules through an electrolytic membrane. The fully oxidized molecules come out as highly concentrated sulphur trioxide that could yield such byproducts as sulfuric acid or oleum—chemicals used to make fertilizer, paints, detergents and explosives. The flue gas, cleaned of sulphur dioxide, can be safely released into the atmosphere. Winnick estimates his technology could reduce the cost of scrubbing a typical 500-megawatt power plant by 75 percent. In lab tests, the process has exceeded 99 percent efficiency, he says. Winnick has identified the materials to make three of the four main components in his device, but the ideal material for the electrolytic cell matrix still hasn't been identified. He estimates that it will take two more years until his research, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is completed and the device can be tested in a pilot-scale model.