COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL
The TGER system can support a 550-person unit that generates about 2,500 pounds of trash per day, converting about 2,000 pounds of that garbage. With proven benefits for Army FOBs, the prototype may also be useful in situations involving a high volume of garbage and low amounts of electricity, such as oil and mining operations, campsites, hospitals, mess halls and areas recovering from natural disasters.
make synthetic gas that enables a generator to run at about 75 percent power. Within 12 hours, alcohol is produced and blended with the synthetic gas to run the generator at full power at a steady state.
HARNESSING NATURE As part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Com- mand, ECBC has been pursuing opportunities to address critical issues for the warfighter with greater efficiency and productivity. Biotechnology is one area that Valdes is tapping into.
“Over the billion years or so that we’ve had life in various forms on this planet, nature has evolved ways to manufacture very complex things,
from chemicals
to people,” Valdes said. “Bio-manufac- turing is the ability to harness nature to manufacture things that you cannot produce through synthetic chemistry. It’s harnessing the power of nature and the information in the genes to make products that are very difficult or impos- sible to manufacture chemically.”
Te environmentally friendly TGER 2.0 has a zero carbon footprint, reducing
the volume of waste in a 30:1 ratio. For example, 30 cubic yards of trash becomes one cubic yard of ash, a benign soil additive tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that is safe enough to use for rose bushes.
CONCLUSION Te new TGER prototype is useful not just in military applications; it also could be transitioned to the commercial sector, said Valdes.
“Longer term, we will be talking to the PMs [project managers] about transition- ing it, but we’ll also be talking to some companies that support oil and gas opera- tions in places such as Mongolia and parts of the world that are difficult to have camps in,” he explained.
Oil and mining operations, campsites, hospitals, mess halls and even areas recovering from natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy are just a few of the places where the green technology could prove beneficial. ECBC and SAIC recently entered into a cooperative research and development agreement to speed com- mercialization of the technology.
“TGER is geared toward a smaller base camp, but industrial operations start off small and build up. Tey still have to get rid of garbage, and they have to somehow get energy into remote outposts. If you think about it, there are far more commercial opportunities for TGER than there are Army applications,” Valdes said.
ECBC and SAIC are also working with TGER Technologies Inc., Defense Life Sciences LLC and Purdue University.
For more information about ECBC, visit
http://www.ecbc.army.mil/ or call 410-436-7118.
MR. DON KENNEDY is nications and public affairs
the commu- officer for
ECBC at APG. An eight-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, he has also served as chief of media production at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, and managing editor for the Mid-Atlantic region of the Navy’s largest newspaper, Te Flagship. He holds a B.A. in English and history from Christopher Newport University.
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