Tata to Help Sun Catalytix Commercialize Revolutionary Energy Conversion Technology
March 25th, 2011Sun Catalytix Scientific Advisory Board Chairman, Dr. John M. Deutch:
Dr. John M. Deutch is currently an Institute Professor at MIT, and as a faculty member since 1970, has served the MIT community as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of Science and Provost. He has published over 140 technical publications in physical chemistry, as well as numerous publications on technology, energy, international security, and public policy issues. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007 and is also member of the National Petroleum Council. He serves as director for Cheniere Energy, Citigroup, and Raytheon.
Prof. Deutch has served in significant government posts throughout his career. From 1977 to 1980, Prof. Deutch served in a number of positions for the U.S. Department of Energy: as Director of Energy Research, Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology, and Undersecretary of the Department. In May 1995, he was sworn in as Director of Central Intelligence following a unanimous vote in the Senate, and served as DCI until December 1996.
Prof. Deutch earned a B.A. in history and economics from Amherst College, and both a B.S. in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from MIT.
Via: Livemint:
In the first such effort, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has signed on a leading scientist from the globally renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to commercialize cutting-edge research that promises to produce cheap power from water.
Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry and energy, and his group of elite scientists at MIT attracted attention from Tata when he heard they had found a way towards one of science’s holy grails—to imitate photosynthesis, the process by which plants breathe, and produce power while doing so.
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As he did with the Nano small car and the Swach non-electric water purifier, Tata hopes Nocera’s solution will be the latest in the group’s effort to serve the “bottom of the pyramid” and turn a profit while doing so, said a Tata group executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Tata’s hope is that Nocera’s “personalized energy” can produce a stand-alone, mini-power plant, perhaps a refrigerator-sized box, that could reinvent rural electricity supply and bring power to about three billion people worldwide who don’t have it.
Nocera said MIT’s technique has seen more than a year of preliminary research and hopes to produce enough electricity from a bottle-and-half of water, however dirty, to power a small home.
“We hope to have a prototype in a year-and-a-half,” said Nocera, whose other backers include Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet and a former director of the US’ Central Intelligence Agency.
