Technology Overview Page | 46 CFOAM® Carbon Foam Products CFOAM® LLC - Rudolph Olson III, PhD The Millennium Center - 1142 Middle Creek Rd., Triadelphia, WV 26059
INVESTMENT AND BARRIERS
What is the magnitude and type of investment needed to take this technology to the next stage? What is the magnitude and type of investment needed to take this technology commercial? What major hurdles or barriers to next steps of development need to be addressed?
CFOAM® carbon foam has grown 300% in 24 months making a coal-based product used by virtually all U.S. aerospace companies and we have already created about 50 jobs. It has been deployed in Iraq to absorb radar, built parts which have flown on aircraft in Afghanistan, and has built rocket nozzles for U.S. rockets. CFOAM, Ltd has been focused on high value, small market CFOAM® carbon foam applications. This technology is a great, high value job creator – adding an order of magnitude of labor per ton of coal; the coal grows in value as it becomes an advanced material. By adding an additional business strategy – focusing on very large applications – such as aggregate for lightweight concrete or proppants (>50 million tons in North America in 2017), we could also maximize the use of coal. The base CFOAM® technology that was originally funded through SBIR programs from the Navy, Air Force, and Department of Energy is solid and proven at scale. The ultra large volume applications will need some research funding to make them a reality quickly. CFOAM® carbon foam holds the promise of a large-scale, environmentally friendly industry that sequesters carbon and could produce energy as a by-product.
Tripling capacity will cost about $23 million and this can be done at our current location along I-70 just outside Wheeling, WV. Expanding this plant will add about 185 new jobs with both this plant and its largest customer located in the same industrial park.
To achieve large coal volume processing means entering new markets with a less-expensive and much larger scale processing facility. This would require about $3.8 million in R&D costs and a new plant with a cost of $37 million. These large-scale plants would likely be located on coal mine properties.
CFOAM, Ltd. and its largest customer, Touchstone Advanced Composites, are both growing rapidly, but are constrained by a lack of sufficient capital. Achieving meaningful sales in high volume, lower cost markets will require significant R&D ($3.8 million) to elevate the process from a batch mode to a continuous mode.
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