Altex is a privately held corporation, organized in the State of California, and located in the heart of Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco. The company was founded in 1985, to pursue the development of novel fuels processing, combustion, thermal management and power systems technologies, including fuel cells, gas turbines, biomass conversion, burners and heat exchanger components and systems. The early focus of the company was on the research and understanding of fuels and combustion processes. This work was accomplished in cooperation with academic and government research laboratory personnel at Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore. During the mid 90s, the company focused on the transition of fundamental knowledge to benefit power, energy and environmental products. This transition of knowledge to innovative products has been applied to all our development activities

Altex's facility has nearly 15,000 square feet of space, with approximately one half devoted to testing and test article preparation. Test instrumentation covers all of the equipment needed to characterize fuels and combustion system performance, including flow and temperature monitors, total sulfur analyzer, GC, and continuous gaseous emissions (CO, CO2, O2, NO, NOx and unburned hydrocarbons) monitors. Below on the left is a picture of our nearly 3MWt test boiler system that can support burner testing. Also, an ASHRAE 33 standard heat exchanger test facility is available for testing radiators and cooling coils. This unit is pictured to the right.

Altex has unique combustion and heat management and fuels processing skills based on proprietary technology, based on 30 years of fuels processing and combustion R&D. Altex has strong relationships with several manufacturing partners that support Altex from demonstration commercialization. By integrating strong R & D with product commercialization, solution development can proceed to market in a timely manner, and at low risk.

Core Competencies

Altex core competencies include a strong fundamental understanding of flow and reaction associated with energy production and utilization that can be translated into solutions for challenging fuels production and utilization problems. This competency is supported by a proven track record with many federal, state and commercial customers, and the ability to cover a range of activities from research and development to demonstration and deployment. Special test facilities are available to support heat exchanger, fuel cell and microturbine systems, biomass densification and conversion to liquid fuels and low emissions burners. Using unique knowledge, Altex has developed proprietary models in support of systems development.

Core Advantage

Altex's core advantage includes unique and proprietary heat management, combustion and fuels processing knowledge and experience. These skills are based on over 20 years of research and development, using special analysis and testing tools. These competencies allow Altex to continue to create innovative solutions to problems in deploying thermal management solutions, microturbine, low emissions burner and fuel cell based power systems and biomass conversion systems. Once Altex has addressed the problem through analysis, modeling and laboratory testing, relevant manufacturers are brought into the process, to support the demonstration and commercialization of the solutions. Altex has the advantage of having strong relationships with several manufacturing partners, which support Altex, from demonstration of the technology, through commercialization. Utilizing this collaborative approach, to support R & D activities, as well as product commercialization, solution development can proceed in a timely manner at low risk to the Altex customer.

Customers

Altex's customers include government, commercial, institution, and academic organizations. Some of our customers are:

Federal The largest percentage of our work is with federal agencies, which support us to define, design, test and demonstrate innovative energy solutions, for military and civilian applications

State We are also supported by state agencies, such as The California Energy Commission, to define, develop, test and demonstrate innovative energy solutions, for the emissions restricted California market.

Academic Under joint efforts, Altex has worked cooperatively and synergistically with top technical academic institutions such as: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Pennsylvania State University