EnerTech's History
Like many technology companies, EnerTech was created to provide a new solution to a challenging problem.
After a 30 year career as a chemical engineer for a large construction and engineering company, inventor Norman Dickenson took early retirement to develop new chemical processes for waste treatment. His passion for innovation led him to spend the next fifteen years researching and testing a new process to thermally convert domestic and industrial waste into renewable energy. After countless hours of fine tuning, Mr. Dickenson patented for commercial use what would become the SlurryCarb™ technology.
In 1992, Mr. Dickenson, his son Peter Dickinson, and his grandson Kevin Bolin co-founded EnerTech Environmental, Inc. The founders saw the SlurryCarb™ technology as an opportunity to revolutionize the waste industry by recycling high-moisture waste streams into renewable energy.
With high hopes for the new company, the founders faced some important challenges. Commercializing a new technology is both time consuming and costly. Raising the capital to build a team and undergo a long-term research and development strategy was the first obstacle for EnerTech.
After two years of phone calls, trade shows, and cross country plane flights, EnerTech established a relationship with Mitsubishi Corporation. This relationship grew into a partnership that would lead to the development and construction of the Ube City, Japan SlurryCarb™ process demonstration plant. This 20 ton per day facility was designed and operated to process municipal solid waste utilizing the SlurryCarb™ technology for a planned 3-year period. The Ube City facility proved the viability of the SlurryCarb™ technology on a commercial scale.
Both the plant operations and EnerTech’s relationship with Mitsubishi proved successful. After the operation of the Ube City facility, EnerTech focused on evaluating a variety of feedstocks and determining the best practices to produce the renewable fuel. It became apparent that the process worked especially well on biosolids (sewage sludge), and that the renewable fuel produced by the process made an ideal substitute for coal.
EnerTech then entered into an important chapter in its history. The company built its core team to execute its business plan and entered into imporant agreements with its project partners. The company developed relationships with a group of initial customers dedicated to providing the biosolids industry with sustainable, environmentally beneficial biosolids management options. And, finally, the company found a group of investors who shared the same vision as EnerTech to provide critical capital for execution.
In 2007, the company broke ground on its first commercial SlurryCarb™ facility, the Rialto Regional Biosolids Processing Facility.
