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Pasco company inks $200 million deal with China

Deal expected to bring 1,000 jobs here

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 21, 2009

Updated: 09/21/2009 07:36 pm

An Odessa company that makes filters for heating and cooling systems has landed a $200-million deal with China it says will bring 1,000 jobs to Pasco County in the next five years.

Dais Analytic plans to announce the deal Wednesday morning. Company President Tim Tangredi and county officials confirmed the deal today. Tangredi did not say if the deal was with the Chinese government or with a Chinese company.

The Chinese deal could mean a major expansion for Dais Analytic, which works out of a small space in an industrial park off State Road 54, in west Pasco. A small crew of engineers and assemblers make filters for commercial and residential air handlers using a high-tech plastic film the company developed.

Dais Analytic has been in Pasco since 1998. The company set up shop with financial help from county officials.

The company's announcement comes as Pasco County officials are eager to shift the county – long a bedroom community for Hillsborough and Pinellas counties – away from its dependence on low-wage service jobs and residential property taxes. The county's unemployment rate is now more than 12 percent.

Pasco scored a major economic development victory this summer when Maryland-based financial management firm T. Rowe Price bought nearly 100 acres in Land O' Lakes for a future expansion.

Dais Analytic's heat-exchanging technology is the company's first successful product. Tangredi and co-owner Scott Ehrenberg developed their heat exchange system in the mid-1990s while at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

The technology began as an attempt at creating a fuel cell to generate electricity by passing hydrogen and oxygen through a porous plastic film.

That result proved out of reach at the time, but the material showed an alternate use of heating and cooling air.

The heat exchangers use paper-thin membranes, stacked on top of one another. Outside air is drawn through one set of channels while already-cooled exhaust air from inside a building travels through an opposite set of channels. The high-tech membranes help move heat and humidity from the incoming air to the outgoing air. That can reduce both energy demand and air pollution, company officials say.

Several years ago, Dais installed one of its heat exchangers in Sunray Elementary School in Holiday to demonstrate how it works. The company has also installed its technology at Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry.

County Commission Chairman Jack Mariano said Dais Analytic's announcement was encouraging, given the efforts to turn around the local economy.

"It's tremendously fulfilling to see a company you've helped flourish," Mariano said.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 731-8168.

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