New Mexico Business Weekly | March 9, 2010

Simtable, SW Bio Fuels Win LANL Funds

March 9, 2010

Los Alamos National Laboratory selected two companies, Simtable and Southwest Bio Fuels, as awardees for $100,000 grants from the lab’s Venture Acceleration Fund.

The fund provides seed money to help northern New Mexico businesses with connections to LANL technology or expertise to further develop their products or services for commercialization.

Santa Fe-based Simtable worked with LANL experts to develop algorithms for the company’s simulation technology for wildfire training. Simtable projects Google Earth and GIS data onto a sand surface, allowing users to hand-model the terrain elevation. The simulation shows where a fire is most likely to spread and where traffic will backlog during an evacuation.

The company will use the LANL funds to improve the user interface for its hardware and software and to market and advertise its product, said Simtable CTO Stephen Guerin in a news release.

“Venture Acceleration Fund support is allowing us to move research developed at the Santa Fe Complex out of a lab environment and into the market for real world validation,” Guerin said.

Southwest Bio Fuels, a veteran-owned business, chemically alters waste vegetable oil into biodiesel. The company will use LANL funds to increase production by buying and installing new equipment at its plant in Albuquerque.

That will help the firm meet projected in-state demand from local customers, including municipal and state government agencies, said co-owner Nathan Gonzales.

“In July 2010, all municipal and state governments will be required to use a five percent biodiesel blend,” Gonzales said. “The Venture Acceleration Fund award will enable us to upscale and meet this new demand, while saving governments 15 to 20 cents per gallon in distribution alone.”

The company has received assistance from LANL’s Bioscience Division to develop technology to speed up biofuel production.

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Source: New Mexico Business Weekly