June 17, 2011

Cleantech Open Announces North-Central Region Semi-Finalist Companies Midwest clean and green entrepreneurs participate in a regional program and move on to compete for over $1 million in prizes and national acclaim

MINNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The North-Central region of Cleantech Open (www.cleantechopen.org) has named the top 20 start-up companies to represent the region in the world’s largest cleantech business competition and entrepreneur incubator. These semifinalist teams were selected from a talented pool of cleantech entrepreneurs from more than 10 Midwest states.

The 20 semifinalists will now compete for regional prizes including cash and in-kind services. The top companies advance to represent the region and compete at the national level for a grand prize of up to $250,000 in investment and services, and an opportunity to present in front of 2,000 attendees at The Cleantech Open’s Global Forum in November 2011.

Over the next few months, semifinalists will receive advice from the national network of Cleantech Open expert mentors, an opportunity to participate in entrepreneurial “boot camp” academies in Silicon Valley and Boston, and will have access to investors from across the country. This unique platform helps each start-up accelerate the commercialization of technologies and offers important opportunities for raising the capital necessary for scaling a business.

“We are exceptionally proud that the North-Central region is showcasing an excellent group of entrepreneurs again this year. These start-ups are working to solve some of today’s most significant environmental and energy challenges through innovation,” said Justin Kaster, regional director of the Cleantech Open and an investment banker with Cherry Tree Companies, LLC. “Our local leadership team is excited to see how this year’s incubator builds upon the inaugural 2010 program, which led to several of our alumni companies landing customers and funding.”

The semifinalists for the 2011 North-Central Cleantech Open may be viewed on the Cleantech SemiFinalists site.

Cleantech Open Sponsors Support
The Cleantech Open is made possible by the generous support provided by our Global Partner, Chevron; Global Foundation Partner, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; National Sponsors, Autodesk and Wells Fargo; and National Premier Sponsor, University of Phoenix. The North-Central program is also supported by the following corporate partners: Deloitte, Jones Lang La Salle, Faegre & Benson, Padilla Speer Beardsley, and HER Communications.

About The Cleantech Open
The Cleantech Open runs the world’s largest cleantech business competition and entrepreneur incubator. Its mission is to find, fund and foster entrepreneurs with big ideas that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges. A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, the Cleantech Open provides the infrastructure, expertise and strategic relationships that turn clever ideas into successful global cleantech companies. Since 2006, through its one-of-a-kind annual business and mentorship program, the Cleantech Open has enabled hundreds of clean-technology start-ups to bring their breakthrough ideas to fruition and helped alumni contestants raise over $300M. Fueled by a global network of more than 1,000 volunteers, partners and sponsors, the Cleantech Open unites the public and private sectors in a shared vision for making America’s cleantech sector a thriving economic engine in the future. For more information, visit www.cleantechopen.org.

 Participant feedback indicated that those in attendance found the material very helpful and well presented.  For questions pertaining to a personal training visit to your facility, contact us via email or call at 952-556-5205.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Learn how important noise and vibration are to your customers, patients, and staff.
2. Learn how reduced noise and vibration could be a cost reduction measure resulting in increased profit.
3. Understand the preventive and reactive measures and their influence on healthcare facilities.
4. Acquire cost effective ways to address these dynamic issues.

SPEAKERS:
• Dr. Daryoush Allaei, Director of R&D, QRDC, Inc.
• Jon C. Scholz
• David Tarnowski, VP of Operations, QRDC, Inc.

Abstract

Significantly improved long-term reliability of wind turbines has become critical as they increase their penetration into the national and international electrical power base. The major subsystems in wind turbine systems include blades, gearboxes, generators, power transferring shafts, bearings, and towers. Advanced acoustic and vibration modelling techniques and monitoring systems have been employed to effectively predict and monitor the health of wind turbines. The goal is, in addition to having system capability for determining structural condition, to reduce unscheduled outages, and to predict maintenance cycles in order to avoid failures. By better understanding the root causes of noise and vibration, one could significantly boost performance, maintainability, and reliability while reducing downtime and catastrophic failures of wind turbines that are becoming crucial to meeting the global renewable energy goals.

The main root causes of wind turbine noise, wear, damage, and failure is excessive vibration. In particular, excess noise has become a growing problem for farmers and those living near wind farms. In this paper, the top six of the most important causes of rotating machines and turbines failures due to excess noise/vibration are discussed. Such root causes are blade mistuning, misalignment, imbalance, resonance, fastener looseness, and bearing damages and defects. Three of these root causes have been responsible for over 80% of excess vibration and noise, and machinery wear, failure, and downtime. Wind turbine-generator systems are no exception and follow the same failure modes.

We approached the wind farm noise in manner similar to our work in the mining and processing industry. In the latter case we replaced the root causes of excess noise in vibratory machines (i.e., 200 lbs eccentric electrical motors) with 1 lb PZT-based actuators that practically make no noise. Using the same methodology, we have managed to fully mitigate the excess vibration and noise from the conventional wind farms by eliminating the root causes of vibrations, namely turbine blades, gearboxes, generators, power transferring shafts, bearings at the top of towers.

The Vibration Institute, an organization for the dissemination of practical information on evaluating machinery behavior and condition 2010 Spring Reliability Training.

SPEAKERS

The speakers for the Vibration Institute have played an important role in the development and application of plant reliability technology and have the ability to communicate their knowledge to others. Our speakers draw their extensive industrial experience for case histories and examples to illustrate current best practices.

Dr. Daryoush Allaei - has over 25 years of research and development and business experience. Dr. Allaei has provided the technical innovation and business leadership through fifteen years of funded research and development that led to several technological and product breakthroughs. Since 1992, Dr. Allaei has founded and co-founded six companies. He currently serves as the Chairman and Director of R&D of QRDc, Inc. in Minnesota, USA.
Dr. Allaei received his Ph.D., MSME and BSME degrees from Purdue University in the field of mechanics with his doctoral emphasis on Systems and Structural Dynamics. His technical expertise is in dynamics systems with emphasis on vibration and noise control. He was a professor or adjunct professor at the University of Mississippi, Mankato State University, and Iowa State University. His engineering and scientific accomplishments in this field include over 85 national and international publications, numerous speaker invitations at conferences and workshops, Chair or Vice Chair positions at several conference sessions, fifteen (15) USA patents and nine (9) internationals patents, and over 10 technology awards and grants
totaling about $8,000,000 from the U.S. government. He was the recipient of The Technology of the Year Award in 2000, The Smart Structures & Materials Product Implementation Award in 2002, Tibbetts Award in 2002, and R&D-100 in 2004. Dr. Allaei is a member of the ASME, AIAA, SME and SAE. Dr. Allaei is a registered Professional Engineer and Certified Manufacturing Engineer.