Tribune Review
Thursday, January 1, 2009

Oxygen boost in small package
Company's concentrator poised to burst onto market

WAYNESBURG -- Midway between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., some of the country's most sophisticated energy-related research and development is under way.

Housed in a long-abandoned nursing home outside Waynesburg, Greene County, off the R&D path trod by the likes of Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a firm that comprises primarily Ph.D.-educated researchers using some of the most modern equipment found anywhere.

Within days, Separation Design Group LLC will show a group of potential manufacturers its first product -- an oxygen concentrator that is smaller, more compact and lighter than any currently available.

Concentrators assist people with breathing problems because they boost the percentage of pure oxygen the user breathes. Separation Design's oxygen concentrator is about the size of an early portable CD player. The company plans to license its technology and the ingredient known as aDsorbent, used to remove nitrogen from regular air to make oxygen, which is key to the concentrator, according to Doug Galbraith.

"The market for small, portable oxygen concentrators in the U.S. is $600 million a year, and we've been told our product could capture one-third of that market," said Galbraith, Separation Design's CEO. He's an inventor/entrepreneur who spent one year in CMU's mechanical engineering program before quitting to concentrate on working.

Interest in the concentrator has come from companies in Norway, Israel and California, along with regionally based firms, including Philips Respironics of Murrysville and DeVilbiss Healthcare.

"We have had informal technology discussions, but nothing has been formalized," said Kristin Marstin, marketing director for Somerset-based DeVilbiss, which designs, manufactures and markets respiratory medical products worldwide.

Separation Design has garnered during its five-year life $3 million in grants and private investment from national powerhouses like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and local organizations including the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and the Catalyst Connection.

"We look to invest in technology that can make a difference, companies that are building something game-changing, like the portable oxygen concentrator," said John Manzetti, CEO of the Life Sciences Greenhouse.

Based in South Oakland, the Greenhouse is a public-private partnership that invests in Southwest Pennsylvania companies involved with life sciences-related products. It has invested $350,000 in Separation Design, which now has six full- and six part-time employees.

Some of the company's work is done in conjunction with Waynesburg University, with two of its senior researchers also university professors.

In addition to developing the oxygen concentrator, Separation Design is conducting research in a variety of scientific disciplines. In one former resident's room, its personnel, in conjunction with fellow researchers at Wheeling Jesuit University in nearby Wheeling, W.Va., are working on converting coal to methane gas while the fuel still is underground.

Galbraith said that once the oxygen concentrator deal is signed, Separation Design will work on what the researchers want to do, but "it definitely will involve energy and material efficiency."

One direction the company already is headed involves design of a combination heat pump/engine, virtually silent while used, which will operate on a variety of fuels. It will be able to produce five megawatts of electricity, or a continuous half-horsepower.

As a heat pump, the device will be able to extract water from air, recapture heat and cold normally lost in ventilation systems, and increase distillation efficiency as in ethanol production, according to Galbraith.

As an engine, it will provide silent power for boats and small aircraft, power motorbikes without transmissions or pollution, provide charging energy for hybrid electric vehicles, and can be used in combined heat and power systems.

"It will produce 30 times the energy density of lithium batteries, said Galbraith, referring to the current preferred battery type used in hybrid vehicles. Energy density is the energy packed in a certain volume of space, like a battery.