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PULLING MONEY FROM THIN AIR

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 17, 2007

Updated: 09/16/2007 09:55 pm

ODESSA - Deep inside Sunray Elementary in Holiday, behind a door few people open, cutting-edge technology is cooling the air that circulates through the school.

The air-handling unit has a heart made by Odessa-based Dais Analytic.

The core of the device is a blocky heat-exchanger that contains dozens of layers of white plastic sheets a little thicker than a newspaper page.

Each sheet is shot full of molecular-level pores, creating a high-tech filtration system capable of pulling large amounts of heat and moisture from the air when placed in front of a traditional air conditioning unit.

The unit was installed at Sunray several years ago to demonstrate the technology, said Mike Woodall, the school district's former energy manager.

The filtration technology is the first successful commercial venture for Dais founders Tim Tangredi and Scott Ehrenberg. They developed the plastic membrane a decade ago at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York with the help of Gary Wnek, now a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

The trio developed their membrane in the hope that it would be a key component in fuel cells. Fuel cells create electricity when hydrogen passes through a membrane to meet oxygen on the other side.
Fuel cells provide electricity on the space shuttle, but so far they've found limited uses on Earth.

'As a small company, we can't wait 10 years for a market to develop,' Tangredi said recently.

So the partners looked for other ways to make money with their invention. The possibilities included to filter air, remove salt from seawater and store large amounts of electricity within So far, Dais Analytic has made its name handling air.

The company moved to Pasco in 1990. In a nondescript building in the West Pasco Industrial Center, Tangredi's 14-person staff develops and builds filtration units made to fit within conventional air conditioning units.

The filters pull large volumes of heat and humidity out of the incoming air, sending out drier and cooler air that puts less demand on a building's ventilation system. The primary result is lower electric bills for the building owners and, in the long run, say Dais officials, less pollution sent into the air by power companies.

Progress Energy is among the power producers that give customers discounts for using the filtration units, Tangredi said.

'People are well aware of this product now and building it into their building codes,' Tangredi said recently.

Dais officials have gotten their product into the air conditioning units of a variety of commercial and industrial companies. The list includes Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry as well as Wal-Mart, Walgreens and two-thirds of the state's 67 school districts.

The success has turned Dais Analytic into a multimillion-dollar company, said Vice President Bob Brown.

'It's not too many million, but it's multimillion,' Brown said with a smile.

The nanotechnology project got attention last month from U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, who toured Pasco looking at potential recipients of federal research funding. Brown-Waite was impressed enough with the technology to order a system for her home.

From the side, the filtration units look like dozens of layers of black corrugated cardboard stacked one on top of the other. In reality, the corrugated layers are plastic frames with narrow channels on the underside. On top goes the filter, a white plastic film filled with holes a few nanometers wide - a fraction of the width of a human hair.

Outside air gets drawn through one set of channels while already-cooled exhaust air from the building travels through the opposite set of channels. The high-tech membranes help move heat and humidity from the incoming air to the outgoing air.

As a result, fresh air is already partly cooled and dried when it hits the air-conditioning unit and the school district spends less money to cool it to the temperatures it needs inside the school, Woodall said.

'It's very good technology,' Woodall said recently.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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