Montec Resodyn: A successful transformation

Making the transformation from Montec Research into Resodyn Corporation http://www.resodyn.com/ was just part of a natural progression for Larry Farrar. The Butte company has continued to grow by leaps and bounds since it was founded by Farrar in the mid-90’s. The new title better reflects the company’s shifting emphasis from research and development to manufacturing and marketing equipment.

By Paula J. Peters
for inBusiness Montana Standard

“You can’t have research in your title if you’re selling commercial products,” said Farrar, during a recent interview at the company’s 20,000 sq. ft. facility located on South Franklin Street in Butte, Montana.

For some, Butte might seem an unlikely place to base a high-tech research and development company. For Farrar, it was the perfect choice…combining where he wanted to live with what he loved to do. “I liked Butte, Montana. I liked the mountains,’ he said. “I have 2 requirements…lifestyle and doing high tech work, so here we are,” added Farrar.

Farrar said he attributes much of the company’s growth and success to funding he has acquired from the Small Business Innovation Research Program. “You have to have a high tech, high risk, high payoff idea,” said Farrar, whose research proposals have continued to win federal SBIR grant money since he opened Montec’s doors. “Since then we’ve won about 9 million dollars worth of support from that program,” said Farrar.

That funding has helped bring economic growth to Southwest Montana. The company currently employs 22 people and is still expanding. “Over the past 3 years we’ve doubled in size almost every year,” Farrar said.

Resodyn’s growth and shift to production has emerged from Montec’s broad research base in areas such as renewable products, biotechnology, and Resonant Sonics; a unique mixing technology using sound energy developed at Montec that has wide spread industrial applications ranging from mining to pharmaceuticals.

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Contact Information

Telephone 406-723-2222

FAX 406-723-2225

Postal address 1901 South Franklin
Butte, MT 59701

Electronic mail General Information: [email protected]

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Innovations in these technological areas have won Resodyn some impressive business contacts, with organizations such as NASA and The Dow Chemical Company on their list of clientele. Farrar credits his hard-working, highly-skilled staff with Resodyn’s success in establishing this impressive client base and making the transition from research to production.

Resodyn’s Commercial Programs Manager, Dick Talley, talked about one of the company’s expanding business ventures, which falls into the realm of renewable products. Resodyn has perfected a more economical process to produce biodiesel fuel from animal fats and recycled restaurant greases as part of a joint venture with Kenosha Beef International and is currently moving into the production phase.

Talley explained the economics driving the new technology. Currently, biodiesel fuel is made primarily from soybean oils. The cost of this starting material, or feed stock, makes up for 60 to 70% of production costs. Using the current technology and feed stock, biodiesel ranges in price from $2.30 to $4.50 per gallon.

“It’s fairly costly right now. That’s one of the hurdles that the industry needs to get over if we’re going to get widespread acceptance and use,” he said. Talley said that despite it’s higher cost, certain vehicles in the United States government fleet currently use biodiesel fuel. “Even in Montana, there’s a lot of use of biodiesel already,” he said. According to Talley, a large percentage of park vehicles operating at Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks currently are using biodiesel fuel.

Talley said finding a more cost-effective way to make biodiesel fuel ultimately will increase its use and help decrease this country’s dependency on foreign oil. Using the fuel has the added benefit of improving air quality. “It’s cleaner burning…it has cleaner emissions,” he said.

Resodyn http://www.resodyn.com/ began exploring the possibility of using recycled restaurant greases as feedstock to produce biodiesel as and alternative to higher priced soybean oils. In the past, used restaurant grease has been collected by rendering companies, processed and converted it into yellow grease. That yellow grease is then sold for use in products such as animal feed.

Once considered a poor quality feed stock due to its high content of free fatty acids, Resodyn developed a technology to more efficiently convert yellow grease into biodiesel fuel. The process has the added benefit of producing a high quality co-product, glycerin, which has other industrial applications.

Resodyn currently has a pilot plant up and running in Butte which is capable of processing 10 gallons of biodiesel fuel per hour. Talley said the company is currently designing a plant for a client in the Midwest capable of producing up to 10 million gallons of biodiesel fuel a year which should go into operation as early as spring of 2004. Resodyn has also been engaged by a Puerto Rican company to explore the possibility of implementing the new technology on the island sometime next year.

Resodyn employee Todd Mc Adams, who holds a Doctorate degree in chemical engineering, believes that Resodyn’s involvement in the field of biotechnology is another one of the reasons the company has fared so well in the high tech industry. “It’s really going to be the next growth industry over the next 5 to 10 years,” he said. Mc Adams currently is working on developing applications for Resodyn’s sonic mixing technology for use in bioreactors. “It’s a totally unique way of doing things, which is why it’s kind of exciting to explore,” he said.

Mc Adams described a bioreactor in layman’s terms: “A bioreactor is basically is a cylindrical tank in which you put a liquid that contains all the things cells like to feed on.” Mc Adams said that genetically engineered mammalian cells grown in bioreactors are currently used in the pharmaceutical industry to produce therapeutic drugs such as insulin and growth hormone.

“We’re hoping our sonic technology can make that process more efficient and cost less so we’ll have an attractive piece of technology to sell to these drug companies that are producing these drugs,” he said.

“Another product we’re working on is making TAXOL, which is an anti-cancer drug that is normally found in plant cells.” Mc Adams said research done by Montana Tech professors Donald and Andrea Stierle showed that a certain species of the fungus, Penicillium, was able to produce TAXOL.

Mc Adams is currently experimenting with growing the TAXOL–producing fungus in bioreactors on site at Resodyn. “The sonic mixing technology we’re using helps the fungus to grow in a more natural way,” Mc Adams said, going on to explain that the enhanced growth leads to better secretion of the desired product by the organism.

Finding more cost-effective ways to produce desirable products is what makes businesses successful in today’s market. According to Farrar, Resodyn’s resident specialist in non-aqueous enzymology is helping Resodyn do just that. According to Farrar, FX Yang has done some groundbreaking work in his field. Yang came to the U.S. from Beijing, China and after completing his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, went on to work for pharmaceutical giant, Merck, in the application of non-aqueous enzymology in the development of the cholesterol lowering drug, Zocor.

According to Yang, it was once thought that enzymes would not function in the presence of organic solvents such as hexane or toluene. This limited applications of enzyme technology to use with materials that were water-soluble. Yang’s research has shown that enzymes can be used with organic solvents. “It expanded enzyme applications to a whole new area,” he said.

Farrar said that Yang’s work has benefited other projects within the company, including renewable products such as biodiesel fuel and in pharmaceutical applications. Yang said the use of enzymes replaces the need for metal catalysts used to produce pharmaceutical drugs in the desired, selected form. Enzyme technology reduces the need for costly purification procedures, which ultimately result in an increase in chemical waste.

“What FX’s approach does is allow you to avoid the use of a lot of those undesirable chemicals,” said Farrar. “We call it an environmentally friendly process…sometimes we call it green chemistry,’ added Yang.

Farrar said although Resodyn is making the transformation from research and development to production, he still plans to continue to aggressively target industry and look for new technologies to effectively market in the field. “We try to stay right on the edge,” he said.

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