Maynard Complex Bets On Tenant's Technology
Clock Tower Place could be powered by hydrogen
The site had a long history of green power, dating to its original construction, when the waters of the Assabet River powered the massive looms in the former textile mill, according to Joseph Mullin, public relations director for the Wellesley Cos.
As far back as 1973, former personal computing giant Digital Equipment Corp., previous owners of the complex, were granted a permit to study the possibilities for hydroelectric power generation at the site.
But one of Clock Tower Place’s tenants presented a unique opportunity to go beyond more traditional green power sources like wind, solar and water, Mullin said, and bring Clock Tower Place into the hydrogen economy.
The property company hopes to work with Nanoptek Corp., a tenant of the complex, on powering the complex using the firm’s cutting-edge technology.
Nanoptek was founded in 2002 by John Guerra, who has created a machine that produces clean hydrogen gas using only saltwater and sunlight. That hydrogen can then be converted into energy to power anything, including an office complex.
“Once we caught on to what John was doing, we started chatting about the possibility of a commercial test of his ideas and the patents he has pending,” Mullin said.
Beam Me Up
Mullin said Wellesley and Nanoptek pursued and were awarded a $40,000 Large Onsite Renewables Initiative (LORI) grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to study the feasibility of installing some of Guerra’s Star Trek-like machines, roughly the size of a refrigerator, on the roof of Clock Tower Place.
Mullin said Wellesley hopes to use the hydrogen generated by Nanoptek’s machines as both a supplemental power source for the buildings and to power the fleet of vans the company uses to transport tenants around the parking lots and to and from the South Acton commuter rail station a few miles away.
Nanoptek’s machines themselves, if proven to be commercially viable sources of hydrogen production, might just be the next big thing to come out of Clock Tower Place and the town of Maynard.
Nanoptek recently secured $4.7 million in venture funding, Guerra said. The company will use that cash infusion to help make its prototype machines more robust and reliable. Guerra said he also plans to hire more product development engineers to augment its current small staff of three, including himself.
Guerra’s ma-chines work just like a common high school chemistry experiment that uses electrodes to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen — a process called electrolysis. Nanoptek’s technology works similarly, except it uses light instead of electricity, a process called photolysis.
Green Light
The extra bonus of Nanoptek’s machine is that it produces no greenhouse gases as a side effect. Most commercial hydrogen production plants burn natural gas to produce hydrogen, which both consumes valuable gas and produces greenhouse gases as a side effect, Guerra explained.
“If you’re driving around in your fuel cell Honda and thinking you’re so green, well, you’re really not,” Guerra said. “If you’re using hydrogen made in the traditional way, it’s not green.”
The machines are relatively inexpensive, he said, and are scalable to meet a wide variety of production levels.
Interestingly, Guerra’s business plan does not call for Nanoptek to manufacture the machines to be sold commercially. Instead, Guerra plans to own and operate the machines himself, and sell the hydrogen they produce to end-users such as gas distributors or industrial gas consumers.
Because the machines can be installed just about anywhere there is sunlight, including the roof of Clock Tower Place, the source of hydrogen production can be located closer to its ultimate user, which cuts down on costly transportation infrastructure, Guerra said.
The partnership between Nanoptek and The Wellesley Cos. will be beneficial for both, Mullin said. It offers Wellesley the chance to expand its green footprint, while also offering Guerra and Nanoptek a chance to test their products on a limited, and relatively safe, commercial scale.
Mullin said he hopes to move forward on the partnership in the next year, but said regulatory challenges to storing the hydrogen and Guerra’s own challenge of developing working models of his machines will take some time.
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