“You want to separate the CO₂ from nitrogen. That’s the goal. What you want to make is a membrane that will transport one (gas) considerably faster than the other.”

NanOasis Technologies Inc. in Richmond, California, is also using carbon nanotubes for desalination. Chief technology officer Jason Holt worked with the researchers at Lawrence Livermore who founded Porifera before splitting off in 2008. NanOasis will use its grant to develop carbon nanotube technology membranes for water filtration that save energy and cost less, said Chris Kennedy, president of NanOasis.

“If you can remove salt from water, you can remove just about everything else,” Kennedy said.

While big companies, including Dow and GE, already make membranes, the energy savings from the process NanOasis is developing is the key to winning market share with water utilities and in industries like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals that rely on extra purified water for industrial processes.

PAX Streamline Inc., based in San Rafael, is using “blown wing” technology developed at Georgia Tech Research Institute decades ago and applying it to wind turbines. The goal? To develop simpler wind turbines made with virtual wings created by air.

Because blown wing technology relies on compressed air, and compressed air requires energy to compress it, one of the first milestones the company must achieve is to prove that the wind turbine can produce much more energy than it will use.

“Our early analysis with Georgia Tech suggested you can net out with substantially more energy than you put in,” said Peter Fiske, head of business development at PAX Streamline.

The real challenge will be to demonstrate this technology with a 100-kilowatt wind turbine in just two years, Fiske said.

PAX will get the money in $500,000 increments as it reaches its first two technology milestones.

“The big money comes when we build the 100-kilowatt prototype,” Fiske said.