Research in Action: Trans Ionics Corporation

Trans Ionics Corporation (http://www.transionics.com/) looks to be an enterprise worth a second look. I ran across the name in an article called “Top-10 Most Promising ‘Clean Tech’ Companies Revealed" (http://www.hartfuel.com/1108/f.top10cleantech.html) which led me to The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/). The Rice Alliance sponsors The Rice Alliance Technology Venture Forums, which, according to its site, “are some of the largest technology venture forums in North America. Representatives from emerging technology companies showcase their new ventures in front of investors and venture capitalists, industry representatives, business leaders, advisors, mentors, service providers and entrepreneurs. The Rice Alliance holds four Technology Venture Forums a year – one each in energy/clean tech, information technology/Web 2.0, nanotechnology, and life science.”

I followed a link to a “company directory” (http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/Company_Directory.asp?SnID=2) which included a description of the company …

“Trans Ionics Corp. —Trans Ionics is developing a desulfurization process that removes sulfur from petroleum streams, including diesel fuel, to meet government mandated diesel sulfur specifications for fueling on and off-road diesel-powered vehicles.”

A patent search on Trans Ionics produced the following recent patent:
Title:
Process for desulfurization of hydrocarbons
US Patent 7527724
Abstract:
The present invention is a method of removing sulphur from a hydrocarbon feed stream, comprising the steps of:
(a) dissolving sodium in a liquid solvent to form a solution containing sodium atoms;
(b) combining the liquid solution from step (a) with a liquid hydrocarbon feed containing an organosulfur component to form a combined stream at a temperature of addition and at a pressure near or above the vapor pressure of the solvent at the temperature of addition;
(c) reacting the combined stream for sufficient reaction time and at sufficient reaction temperature to form a modified composition comprising one or more sulfur-containing species and less of the organosulfur species than had been present in the hydrocarbon feed;
(d) extracting a portion of the sulfur-containing species from the modified composition.
Inventor:
Schucker, Robert C. (The Woodlands, TX, US)
05/05/2009