Northwest researchers nearing micro advances.

Byline: SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard

The good thing about those hazardous materials suits: They're airtight. The bad thing is the same thing. Without air circulation, people wearing them are vulnerable to heat stroke, a serious drawback for soldiers going into battle or for first-responders cleaning up toxic messes.

To be safe, soldiers and hazmat crews must either work in cool weather or carry a 15- to 20-pound portable air conditioner, a logistical nightmare if you're ferrying thousands of soldiers and their gear to distant conflicts.

But a cadre of Pacific Northwest engineers tinkering with metal at very small scales is on the brink of solving this problem.

In fact, the researchers from Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are closing in on solutions to a host of finicky challenges stymieing progress in a range of arenas - space flight, car travel, even environmental cleanup.

Their work has progressed to the point that the participants have formed the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, a joint venture to continue to develop and help market the products their technology supports.

The institute's 40 affiliated researchers will introduce their work today at an open house in Portland.

Among their advances that have moved beyond the proof of principle stage:

A wallet-sized biosensor that uses cells from a Siamese beta fighting fish to detect the presence of chemical and biological warfare agents and other toxins such as the E. coli bacteria.

Chemical reactors the size of a pen that are capable of cleaning up toxic waste by converting it into inert - harmless - components.

Microprocessing plants that astronauts could carry with them to Mars capable of producing fuel from the planet's atmosphere, drastically reducing the overall cost of the trip and the amount of fuel astronauts would be required to carry.

Onboard car systems that use gasoline to produce hydrogen for fuel cells. Current systems now fill the back of a pickup truck. Microtechnology could reduce such processors to the size of a briefcase.

An eraser-sized battery that could keep a laptop computer running for days instead of hours.

In the case of the hazmat suits, a 20-pound battery-operated cooling system could be reduced to a 3- or 4-pound book-sized piece of gear that could keep a soldier cool for several hours, said Kevin Drost, a mechanical engineering professor at Oregon State University and co-director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute.

The portable cooler is about three years away from completion, he said.

This isn't mere James Bondian gadgetry, but a technological advance that could spawn new industry the way that microelectronics pioneered putting pint-sized computers into everything from cars to telephones.

The Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, a paper rather than brick-and-mortar affair that stretches between OSU's Corvallis campus and the national lab in Richland, Wash., has about $10 million in grant support from various government agencies, including NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense.

Its technology is based on the principle that smaller is better for certain processes.

"When nature has to transfer heat and mass, it goes small," Drost said.

Nature, for example, moves oxygen from the atmosphere to mammalian bloodstreams through countless tiny tubes in the lungs called bronchiole, Drost said.

The mechanical and chemical engineers of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute have found a way to mimic nature, using paper-thin sheets of metal etched with tiny channels and sandwiched together.

These systems function at sizes about the thickness of a human hair, Drost said, and get about five times the output of more conventional devices.

"If it's a device to make hydrogen, at the same weight or volume my device would give you 10 or 100 times more hydrogen," Drost said.

OSU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have a unique working relationship, said Landis Kannberg, co-director of the institute and a longtime mechanical engineer with the laboratory.

The lab is a branch of the Department of Energy with a $500 million research budget and 4,000 Richland-based employees whose primary mission has been development in energy, the environment, molecular sciences and national security.

OSU is one of the nation's few academic institutions with several engineers working on microtechnology, Kannberg said.

Beyond the breakthroughs themselves, researchers believe they're on the cusp of creating a new industry that could help fuel the economy of the Pacific Northwest.

They expect their advances to attract venture capital, and not just for industries responding to government agency needs, but those who can put the technology to broader use.

Imagine, for example, miniaturized silent heat pumps installed in the walls of each room in a home controlling heating and cooling, and reducing the energy loss from the duct work of current heating systems.

While both institutions will retain the intellectual property rights for their products, potential investors will be able to share in them through various deals such as conventional licensing and equity agreements, Kannberg said.

"If we're aggressive, we could get a whole new industry located in the Northwest," Drost said.

CAPTION(S):

Oregon State University professor Kevin Drost is a part of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute.