At the heart of GE’s new $200 ecomagination Challenge is using venture capital investments in clean technologies to accelerate their development and bring them to scale. While the Challenge is currently looking for the next hot start-up or big idea, GE has already invested in an array of small companies on the clean-tech cutting edge. One of those is Massachusetts-based Advanced Electron Beams, which uses its electron beam technology to sterilize food and beverage packaging, cure printing inks, and make plastics stronger — all in a more sustainable way. As CEO Mitch Tyson says in the video below, part of a new “ecomagination CEO Series” just launched on video sharing networks such as Yahoo! Video and Blip.tv: “Our electron beam emitters produce a cloud of electrons. Anything that goes into the cloud gets transformed chemically and either makes chemical bonds or breaks chemical bonds, very similar to a thermal process that uses heat or chemicals in the process… But in each case, the electrons do it much more efficiently.” Tyson says the process not only uses 20 percent less energy to do the job, but it helps the environment by eliminating the use of chemicals and rinse water.
AEB has also caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy, which recently awarded the company a grant to accelerate its research on a new method to zap organic air pollution. As the local press described it after AEB’s recent press conference announcing the grant: “High-tech electronic beams [would] hit a combination of gasses leftover from burning industrial waste — including methane and carbon dioxide — and turn them into clean water.”
Added tech blog Xconomy.com: “At present, large, high-energy thermal oxidizers burn off the chemicals, which are essentially precursors to smog, Tyson says. These existing methods of using heat to break down the complex hydrocarbon chains do so inefficiently, he says.”
As Tyson explained: “Heat is like shaking it until it breaks. An electron beam is like using scissors to cut the bond.”
* Learn more about GE Energy Financial Services’ venture capital investments
* Learn more about AEB
* Visit the challenge website
* Visit ecomagination.com
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
