PSU Magazine Fall 2003

"' ..:, < ~ w ---' u: 0: UJ Cl z ~ "because the potential was great, and l knew my knowledge and experience would help take it [the companys tech– nology] Lo commercial application." o far, the business has no corporate park and no publicly traded stock. (Of course, O'Brien is always interested in talking with "angel" investors.) The company is run out of O'Briens home in Clackamas County and a PSU chemistry lab. Because VOC Technologies is linked to PSU, the University will hold the patent to VOCTECs basic technology, but will either sell the patents exclusive rights to the company, or, in a more likely scenario, provide the licensing for free in return for a equity share in the company The second option became possible when Oregon voters approved a ballot measure in May allowing universi– ties to profit from the technologies pro– duced by their faculty. As of this writing, no other university in the state has jumped in to claim this right, according to Bill Feyerherm, PSUs vice provost for research and graduate studies, so PSU is sailing in uncharted waters. "We want to do this soon, but we don't know what the rules are yet," he says. A Chemistry professor Bob O'Brien is an expert in testing the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that exist in air. ◄ As a student Lucas Klesch helped O'Brien develop the technology now used in their company. As it stands, the basic tech– nology devel– oped by O'Brien and Klesch has hundreds of potential uses, from atmos– pheric testing and monitor– ing, to health , to environmen– tal quality. lL even has possi– ble applica– tions in law enforcemem because many of the processes for making illegal substances leave chemical traces that could easily be detected by VOCTEC's instruments. Even the war on terrorism is a candidate; O'Brien has applied for a grant with the Department of Defense to work on detecting chemical warfare agents. The technology, developed by O'Brien and Klesch in the late 1990s, is called pneumatic focusing gas chro– matography, which measures and graphically displays compounds in the air. Versions of this technology have been around for 50 years, O'Brien says, but he and Klesch took the concept a quantum leap forward in two ways: they made it ultra-sensitive (it can mea– sure elements down to 50 parts per trillion) , and they made it automated. By automating it, they can set up a device anywhere-in a building with poor indoor air quality, or on a rooftop in a neighborhood where pollution is suspected to be high-and obtain a continuous readout of whats happen– ing in the air. ln one study over several weeks, O'Brien and his assistants set up a device to measure the outdoor air in Portland, and discovered a sharp spike in the level of a group of pollutants that wafted through downtown. lt hap– pened on a regular basis, and always between midnight and 3 or 4 a.m. Coincidentally, this was the same time of night that gasoline, shipped to the region by barge, was being unloaded to storage tanks in the northwest indus– trial area. Empty tanks contain fumes that are displaced into the air when they're filled. Under Oregon law, com– panies involved with gasoline storage are required to trap those fumes so they don't enter the atmosphere. Since those measurements were taken, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is now forcing companies to recover gasoline fumes . OCTEC's methods make other ways of testing nearly obsolete. One of its studies showed a high con– centration of a particular compound in the outdoor air occurring only in the summer. O'Brien compared his meth– ods, which compress air samples into high concentrations and give an imme– diate reading, to traditional methods used by DEQ and others in which sam– ples are put in canisters for later testing in a lab. O'Brien filled a canister and found that the compound detected by his more advanced methods-which at times was more prevalent than all the other compounds put together-didn't even show in the canister sample. "lt either decomposed or stuck to the walls of the canister. That's the advan– tage of our technology: we can see things that can't be seen through traditional methods," says O'Brien. VOC Technologies is also working to improve the air inside some of Portland States buildings. It is studying the air quality inside Neuberger Hall, which has long been a source of com– plaint, most likely due to solvents and chemicals used in the Art Department, says O'Brien. It also is part of the remodeling team for the Helen Gordon Child Development Center, testing the indoor air for signs of mold or harmful vapors from building materials. In both cases, O'Brien says his technology can point to energy-efficient solutions to improving the air. Instead of expensive ventilation improvements for a whole building, for example, he'll be able to suggest spot ventilation systems that concentrate only on problem areas. he future of the "green" approach to indoor air quality-pinpointing and eliminating harmful materials and finding the most cost-efficient ways of venting a building-is unlimited. Energy-efficient building methods and materials over the last decade or two have created tightly sealed homes and buildings. But that same efficiency also traps the indoor air and creates a breeding ground for mold-which sometimes can be fatal. O'Brien says there could be a bright future in working with heating, ventila– tion, and air conditioning companies. Coupled with its future in medicine and outdoor monitoring, O'Brien and Klesch may find that anywhere there's air, there's business. For more information about applica– tions of this new technology, check out the Web sitewww.voctec.com. D (John Kirkland, a Portland freelance w1ite1; wmtc the article "Damn That Traffic jam" in the spring 2002 PSU Magazine.) FALL 2002 PSU MAGAZINE 11