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Alex Brendel ( email: abrendel@algaefuel.org )
Education
·AA, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA
·Machinist Certificate, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA
Relevent Experience
·Mechanical Technician, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley Lab / Building Superconducting magnets and
positioning magnets for the construction of the new Advanced Light Source - Lawrence Berkeley Lab
http://www.lbl.gov/MicroWorlds/teachers/quickfacts.pdf
New Tooling Installation of hydraulic presses, cranes and water cooling piping used in the construction of super-conducting magnets.
Machining - mills, lathes, punches, presses, saws grinders, etc.
·Lab Equipment Technician, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Assembled, tested and installed ultra high vacuum synchrotron radiation beam line components
·Senior Mechanical Engineering Technician, Eco-Energies (formerly Photovoltaics International)
PVC and copper pipe fitting and plumbing installation
Stanford Linear Accelerator/ Worked on High-vacuum beamlines.
Solar Car Project 1200 mile race with cars powered only by sunlight. Team won 3rd place in 1997.
Alex built the "SAM", the "Solar Array Maximizer", a fixture for holding the car while it is in charge mode.
SAM is designed to tilt, following the moving sun, keeping the car's solar array as perpendicular to the sunlight as possible.
SAM must also hold the lightweight, $250,000+ car from blowing away in high wind conditions!
New Facilities Development
·Survey & Alignment of Lawrence Berkeley Lab Advanced Light Source storage ring
·Biodiesel R&D
Industrial concrete floor: re-bar installation, concrete pouring
Painting, commercial buildings: multi-story interior and exterior
Machine tool procurement
Tel. (925) 922-4890
info@algaefuel.org
DAN GRANETT
·Founder & Owner, Granett Engineering, an R&D Lab with prototype design, machining, casting and fabrication expertise, located in Berkeley, CA.
·President of nonprofit corp., SANTA CRUZ RESEARCH INSTITUTE, (SCRI) an organization for the hands-on dissemination of Alternate Energy and Renewable Resource concepts for local citizens and school children. SCRI moved from Santa Cruz to the San Francisco Bay Area, and now working with AlgaeFuel in design and R&D of advanced algal biomass production systems. Dan is doing design and R&D on equipment for algal settling, harvesting, drying, and oil extraction equipment.
·Co-Inventor of 3 NASA patents:
1. US4645442 Shell Forming Apparatus - A coaxial, double spinning nozzle assembly for encapsulating one material within another. Used as means of placing deuterium in small packages for feeding the SHIVA Fusion Laser at the Lawrence Livermore Lab. A similar machine and method were later used to encapsulate oil-eating bacteria in beeswax for successful remediation of oil spills.
2. US4549435 Vibrating-Chamber Levitation systems
3. US4520656 Gravity Enhanced Acoustic Levitation Method and Apparatus. Both of the above patents relate to the manipulation of objects in microgravity by sound waves and were used in several of NASA’s Space Shuttle flights in "Containerless Processing" experiments. (An oven melted a glass sample while the glass was positioned away from the walls by intense acoustic standing waves in 3 axes.)
·The inventions above were created under employment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where Dan was designing and building apparatus for experiments in coal desulphurization and microgravity materials science.
·Built special use machines including:
1. Engine Driven Blowers that collect insects from crops as an alternative to pesticides;
2. Glass Crushers;
3. Hydraulic Pallet Dis-assemblers;
4. Etching Presses for artists,
5. Centrifugal Caster,
6. Vacuum Former
·Dan also built a prototype, low technology turbine for electrical generation and water pumping for small villages around the world. The design is based on the bladeless, or smooth disk turbine invented by Nikola Tesla in 1913. Dan’s working prototype was built and tested on compressed air, powering a generator and 4KW of halogen lights. This successful prototype has led to a current project: adapting the turbine to run on agricultural and biological wastes, which are abundant throughout the developing world. The turbine has only one moving part, can run on dirty, abrasive fuels and requires little maintenance.
2655 Cloverdale Avenue
Concord, CA, 94518 USA
Tel. (925) 922-4890
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