Cool fix for hot problem

At nearly $4, a double mocha latte from your favorite coffee shop can be pretty pricey. So it’s a shame when the first sip is so hot it scorches your tongue but the last gulp is so cold you wind up throwing it out.

Rusty Sutterlin doesn’t have that problem. He has a coffee mug that cools his morning wake-up to the perfect temperature within a minute, then keeps it there for another 10 minutes.

What’s his secret? Sutterlin’s company, Renewable Alternatives LLC, has developed a substance that mimics the phase-change attributes of ice. Phase-change materials are those that change from liquid to solid — or otherwise change their state of matter — at a specific temperature.

When a phase-change material such as ice melts, it absorbs energy and heat, cooling its surroundings.

That’s how ice keeps a drink cold. When water freezes, on the other hand, it releases heat.

But water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so ice is too cold for coffee. So Sutterlin created a phase-change alternative that uses fats and oils from agricultural products such as soybeans. Like controlling a room’s temperature with a thermostat, the melting point of the agricultural oils can be set to any temperature.

“A lot of our research focuses on renewable feed stocks, such as soybeans, oils, corn and other agricultural products,” said Sutterlin, co-founder and CEO of Renewable Alternatives.

The new technology and its rising commercial use are a perfect example of the kind of entrepreneurship MU has been working hard to spin off academic research in recent years, especially in the area of life sciences.

James Gann of MU’s Small Business and Technology Center, a branch of the Missouri Innovation Center, said Sutterlin’s venture “is kind of a prototype of what the university would like to see more of.

“This commercialization of university-developed technology is something that is not really fairly new, but the university desires making those connections even a bigger part of what the university does.”

Resources at MU, such as the Missouri Small Business Development Office and the Missouri Innovation Center, act as springboards for entrepreneurial opportunities. They helped Renewable Alternatives secure lab and office space at MU and provided accounting services on a contractual basis.

“One of our charges is to help university faculty members, students and people external to the university with technical assistance with creating and maintaining small businesses,” Gann said.

Galen Suppes, co-founder and chief scientific officer for Renewable Alternatives, won the first grant for research on phase-change technology in 2001. After teaming with Sutterlin to form the company, they won Small Business Innovative Research grants.

“It’s basically high-risk, high-reward money,” Sutterlin said.

Renewable Alternatives has a contract for lining coffee mugs with phase-change materials that regulate the temperature of coffee by melting at a perfect 140 degrees.

“Hot coffee usually perks around 190 degrees Fahrenheit,” Sutterlin said. “That is usually too hot for most people, unless you’re a true man trying to burn your tongue off.”

Here’s how the mug works: When coffee hotter than 140 degrees is poured into the mug, the oils in the lining melt, absorbing heat from the coffee and cooling it to about 140 degrees. When the coffee’s temperature dips, the oils solidify, releasing heat that warms the coffee back up.

“So now you have a coffee that you can start drinking less than one minute after pouring, at the optimal drinking temperature, and this extends the length of time your coffee is right,” Sutterlin said.

Neither Suppes nor Sutterlin has a business degree. Suppes, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MU, earned a doctorate in that field at Johns Hopkins University. Sutterlin earned a doctorate in analytical chemistry at MU.

“Dr. Sutterlin took the lead in this,” Suppes said. “From the start he was a small business ‘steward’ of the technology, providing funding to my lab and capitalizing on his avenues to commercialize the technology.”

Phase-change materials are doing more than cooling and heating coffee. Since it was established in the summer of 2003, Renewable Alternatives has secured a variety of contracts, most under the protection of confidentiality agreements. Under one contract, it lines textiles with a phase-change material that freezes at 68 degrees so that the textiles can be used as cooling devices for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The material is superior to ice because it can sit directly against the skin. Ice on the skin brings the risk of frostbite and constricted blood vessels.

Cooling vests can also be made to cool military search dogs, whose ability to detect weapons and drugs can be compromised in high heat.

“The insurgents realized the dogs cannot work in the heat of the day,” Sutterlin said. “The dogs were not as effective because they were panting so much. This panting diminishes their sense of smell. So the insurgents would do a lot of their transporting of illegals and explosives during the heat of the day (when) the dogs could not detect them.”

When used in textiles, phase-change materials usually are captured either in macro-capsules about the size of marbles or micro-capsules so small that 10,000 can fit in the head of a pin. This prevents the materials from swishing around like a liquid with every movement. The cost of the materials normally ranges from $1,000 to $2,000 per pound, but encapsulation raises the price.

Renewable Alternatives is also licensing out another technology using glycerin, a waste product from the manufacture of biodiesel. The supply of glycerin has increased substantially, but the demand has remained the same, driving the cost of glycerin down from about $1 a pound to 30 to 40 cents.

In cooperation with the Missouri Soybean Council and MU, Renewable Alternatives is using the glycerin to produce a petroleum-free form of propylene glycol, which is used in antifreeze, cosmetic products, soap and other household items. The product is in the commercialization stages.

Renewable Alternatives continues to grow and recently secured contracts that should cause profits to skyrocket next year. Sutterlin would give no details.

Currently in Engineering Building North, Renewable Alternatives plans to relocate to the Discovery Ridge technology park being developed at MU’s South Farm.

“Rusty has some interesting challenges because he and Dr. Suppes have done some pretty earth-breaking technology,” Gann said. “That’s kind of fun to be associated with that, because those folks are going to be able to perhaps change the world.”