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Liberty's history began with a simple question and an unusual answer.  Soon after beginning business development work for MATRIC, Vic Sprouse poked his head into Dr. John Sawyer's office and asked a question, "What do you know about selenium removal?" A major coal company was in need of a solution after multiple technologies were tried and failed. "I may have something under the seat of my car that could work," Dr. John Sawyer responded. And from there, MATRIC began developing a technology that would lead to the formation of Liberty Hydrologic Systems and Liberty's crossing the $1,000,000 revenue mark within its first six months of existence. What was under the seat of Dr. Sawyer's car was media he had used in a previous business of keeping swimming pools algae-free. After months of engineering and bench scale testing, Liberty's patented selenium removal process began pilot testing. Selenium is a trace element critical to human and aquatic life in small doses. But, selenium becomes toxic at higher quantities, and Liberty's system removes excess selenium from surface water sources. When Liberty Hydrologic Systems was officially formed in October 2009, it had a single order for a pilot system in Idaho and another small pilot operating in West Virginia. Liberty has now grown to over 20 sites in the United States and leads the way in the field of selenium removal. "We have more selenium treatment sites than anyone else in the world," said Liberty CEO Vic Sprouse. "We are modular and cost effective and the only technology with the ability to go to remote sites without power and remove selenium to below required levels. That adaptability and our commitment to our customers is what makes us the leader in the market." Three key factors in Liberty's competitive market advantages are price, power and adaptability. Liberty systems are directly scalable and are often 4-10 times less expensive than its competition. Liberty technology adapts to fit any location including remote sites with no power. The modular system allows treatment of streams with high selenium content, large or small stream flow ratios and can also be used to treat other metal contaminants. Liberty uses sound chemical engineering principals to differentiate its systems from other technologies on the market. By improving mass transfer and reaction kinetics, Liberty's ZVI technology requires significantly less residence time to remove selenium impurities. With decreased residence time, the footprint of the unit is significantly smaller and the cost is significantly less. There is a patent pending on the Liberty system. Visit www.seleniumremoval.com for more information. | ||||||
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With over forty percent of MATRIC's research, development and engineering coming from international companies, a European-based subsidiary was incorporated in January 2010. MATRIC Europa, srl is largely owned by MATRIC and is headquartered in Milan, Italy. MATRIC Europa is lead by Ing. Giorgio Borghi, who earned his degree in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for several years for Dow Chemical's European subsidiary. Additionally, the MATRIC Europa board of directors is comprised of Dr. Mel Koch, University of Washington professor of chemistry, Keith Pauley, MATRIC's president and CEO, and Anthony Sistilli, a West Virginia native who practices law in Rome. MATRIC Europa has a small laboratory outside of Milan in a former Dow/Pfizer research facility, which is currently owned by the Italian state government and leased to private technology companies in a multi-tenant environment. Chemical, energy and pharmaceutical process development are the key offerings of MATRIC Europa. Specifically, we are focused on the utilization of micro-reactors. These micro-reactor systems are useful for highly exothermic reactions, mixing limited reactions, or reactions that produce undesirable co-products due to the time required in larger scale reactor vessels. MATRIC Europa is hosting a series of conferences in Europe to introduce our capabilities to local customers. The first conference was co-hosted with the University of Washington in April in Rome and attracted over 40 international companies. The second conference will be co-hosted with the International Forum on Process Analysis and Controls (IFPAC) in Cortona, Italy, in September, and will focus on pharmaceutical production. "In today's business climate, if you are not competing globally, you are not competing at all," say Keith Pauley, MATRIC's president. "This is the playing field on which we want MATRIC to compete and emerge successful." | ||||||
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In May 2010, the Department of Energy announced that MATRIC and Notre Dame University had been awarded a $2.6 million grant to investigate a less expensive way to capture carbon emissions from coal fired power plants. The grant comes through the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, known as ARPA-E. MATRIC and Notre Dame will spend three years on the project, exploring the development of technology that could potentially be used to capture carbon dioxide at a lower cost than currently known technologies. The research will particularly study how solid compounds will turn into an "ionic liquid" when they react with carbon dioxide and then turn back into a solid when the carbon dioxide is released. Ionic liquids require less energy than today's approaches to capturing carbon dioxide. With current technology, coal-fired power plants could use as much as a third of their produced electricity to capture and sequester carbon emissions. MATRIC plans to lend its engineering expertise to this project to make the ionic liquid technology practical for implementation and enable vast energy savings for coal-fired plants. MATRIC intends to use its labs and large-scale pilot plants as part of the research project. MATRIC and Notre Dame received one of 37 awards from the ARPA-E program. The Department of Energy awarded $106 million in grants through the program. ARPA-E is designed to foster energy independence, reduce energy-related emissions, improve energy efficiency and promote U.S. leadership in the development of advanced energy technologies. The Department of Energy received 540 applications for the ARPA-E grant funding, and MATRIC was the only West Virginia organization to receive one of the grants. | ||||||
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 Former West
Virginia Secretary of State Betty Ireland has joined MATRIC as Vice
President of Business Relationships. Ireland, who has been in the business
world for most of her working career, believes her role at MATRIC is a
perfect fit: she brings experience and contacts to the company which she
will use to initiate new business relationships and expand existing
ones.Ireland, who left the Secretary of State's Office in early 2009, is adamant in her belief that business is all about relationships. That's why she's called the VP of Business Relationships, instead of the usual "business development" moniker. "I'm here to make the state, the nation and the world more aware of MATRIC and all it has to offer in research & development, professional engineering, and commercialization of products. I am incredibly excited to be a part of this company at this important time in our state's economic history," she says. "MATRIC is very pleased to have a professional of the caliber of Betty Ireland join our management team," said Keith Pauley, MATRIC president and CEO. "Her extensive background in business and management will greatly increase our executive capacity, which will be the primary fuel for our future growth." Ireland will be resident in MATRIC's South Charleston facility but will be traveling to the company's other offices, as well as to other states and countries to help expand business endeavors. Send an e-mail to Betty Ireland | ||||||
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MATRIC is pleased to introduce this year's summer interns. Four students were selected from a large pool of talented applicants for this highly competitive program. The program offers students an opportunity to engage in hands-on cutting-edge research while partnering with experts in their area of interest.  Sophomore Matthew
Brumley from West Virginia University majoring in Chemical Engineering is
working in the South Charleston facility. Matthew's hometown is
Charleston, West Virginia. His parents are Michael and Elizabeth
Brumley. Senior Eddie
Jesinsky from West Virginia University majoring in Computer Science is
working in the Morgantown facility. Eddie's hometown is Germantown,
Maryland. His parents are Ed & Jill Jesinsky.
Graduate student Will McBurney from West Virginia University majoring in Computer Science is working in the Morgantown facility. Will's hometown is Charleston, West Virginia.  Second year
doctoral student Yueying Yu from Virginia Tech majoring in Chemical
Engineering is working in the South Charleston facility. Yueying's
hometown is Tianjin, China. Her parents are Shicai and Chunlan Yu.
These paid summer internships are full time and include projects researching new methods for carbon capture, developing geospatial, modeling and simulation analytical software, and applying distillation to separation of chemical products; each intern is partnered with at least one MATRIC PhD. "MATRIC has quite a number of professional employees who I want to work with and learn from their skills. I look forward to the integration between hands-on and theory," said Yueying. MATRIC's spring, summer, and fall internship programs help prepare students for careers in their area of study and are an important part of growing MATRIC's young talent pool. Interns are selected based on coursework, grade point average, teacher recommendations, and their goals and interests. For more information, visit www.matricresearch.com/employment.asp. | ||||||
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Governor Manchin's announcement on February 25, 2010, ended nearly a decade of uncertainty over the fate of Dow Chemical's South Charleston Technology Park, MATRIC's headquarters in West Virginia. The governor, on behalf of the State of West Virginia, accepted the donation of over 258 acres of the technology park which contains nearly 750,000 square feet of chemical laboratories, pilot plants and engineering facilities. The replacement costs for these facilities in 2010 dollars is estimated to be over $200,000,000. Without this donation, Dow Chemical had publicly stated that they would have demolished these facilities in a similar manner as other buildings, such the 701 lab building, 82 office office building, a gymnasium and cafeteria, which were brought to the ground over the past five years. The State of West Virginia will manage this property through its Higher Education Policy Commission, which has a bold and aggressive plan to develop a multi-tenant, globally competitive technology park focused on chemicals, energy and biotechnology. The plan calls for the following entities to be located in the Park:
Currently, Battelle Memorial Institute is conducting a 4-5 month study for the Higher Education Policy Commission, which will recommend governance and market strategies to the State. Battelle operates several national laboratories, such as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Their experience in operating technology parks around the world will be invaluable as the final plans for the new park are put in place. "MATRIC is excited to have access to stable facilities for the foreseeable future," states Keith Pauley, MATRIC's president and CEO. "Now the fetters are off and we can grow our capabilities to naturally accommodate the needs of our customer, including new analytical equipment, pilot plants and expanded engineering resources." | ||||||
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