Garbage never smelled so sweet: InEnTec of Bend has partnered with Waste Management Inc. to build its trash-to-gas machines at landfills across the country. The result could be a renewable energy dream ? and InEnTec is promising big returns for Central Oregon, in the form of gree

Jun 07, 2009 (The Bulletin - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- WMI | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Two weeks ago, Bend-based InEnTec LLC announced a joint venture with Houston-based Waste Management Inc., a Fortune 500 company with more than $13 billion in revenues.

While a big step for privately held InEnTec, a small waste-to-energy company that relocated to Bend last year from Richland, Wash., it also promises big returns for Central Oregon.

The new joint venture, called S4 Energy Solutions LLC, will be based in Houston but is opening an office in The Old Mill District, adjacent to InEnTec's office. S4 will eventually employ more than 20 chemical and other engineers, generally earning more than $100,000 a year, according to Jeff Surma, a founder of InEnTec and S4's first CEO.

They are the sort of high-paying green jobs that politicians love to promise, working with technology that turns everyday garbage into fuel and other products without any harmful emissions. But InEnTec hasn't been visited by presidential candidates promoting renewable energy, or sitting senators touting the green spending in the stimulus bill.

"You'd think it would be the perfect opportunity," joked Surma, who stepped down as InEnTec's CEO two weeks ago to take the same position with S4, though he will stay in Bend.

Perhaps converting garbage into energy isn't as sexy or as simple as harnessing the sun and wind. Rather, Surma chalks up the company's "under the radar" existence to emerging technology -- using super-hot plasma to convert trash into synthetic gas that can be refined into hydrogen or ethanol -- that is only now ready for commercialization on a scale that could make it as well known as the solar panel or the wind turbine.

"If we ever get to a hydrogen economy, this technology would be a fantastic source of distributed hydrogen that would make hydrogen available all across the country," said Surma, referring to the widely held vision of a future in which zero-emission, hydrogen-fueled cars have weened the nation from its dependence on oil.

InEnTec's joint venture with Waste Management envisions S4 building InEnTec's Plasma Enhanced Melters at many of the more than 180 landfills Waste Management operates throughout the country.

Waste Management operates landfills in Portland and Seattle. In Central Oregon, the region's landfills are operated by county governments.

That means, for the most part, InEnTec's work will go unnoticed in Central Oregon. But it and S4 are likely to contribute to the region's quality of life -- the reason the company relocated here, Surma said -- thanks to its high-paying jobs and the promise of growth.

"That's why we're so excited for InEnTec and their announcement," said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon. "Because of all the strategic partnerships they bring in different sectors, developing technology that has huge applications worldwide, if we can concentrate that brain power here, that's going to have lots of spinoff things with it, including this recent announcement. It's exactly what we had hoped to come out of this one company relocating."

Surma first encountered plasma technology in the 1980s at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, where he found work after earning a chemistry degree from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University.

Plasma technology then was primarily being researched for its feasibility in processing radioactive waste, Surma said. His work there led to a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

One night after work in a pizza restaurant near the lab, Surma said he and his research partner started sketching out ideas on a napkin about using plasma technology to process other kinds of waste. A company was born.

"It takes 30 to 50 years for garbage in a landfill to degrade to produce methane. Our process essentially does something equivalent in a matter of seconds," Surma said. "We can capture the energy value in waste in seconds rather than years."

Surma returned to Richland, where several patents were filed for the technology and the processes they created. The company initially focused on converting medical waste and other chemical waste streams that were considered high-value because of the cost of traditional disposal.

Several of the devices were installed in Japan and Taiwan. Those initial units can handle up to 25 tons of garbage a day.

As the company grew and Surma realized its potential, he said he wanted to relocate to a place where it would be easier to attract new employees. He settled on Bend.

InEnTec currently employs 24, but the bulk remain in Richland, where InEnTec maintains its research facility.

Surma said the deal with Waste Management is the next step in InEnTec's evolution. Surma said he didn't want to sell InEnTec but instead partner with a company that has the resources to scale up the technology.

At first, Surma said S4 will build smaller Plasma Enhanced Melters for Waste Management that can process high-value waste streams like medical waste, but the goal is to eventually process municipal waste. To be economically efficient, PEM units for municipal waste would need to process 125 tons of garbage a day.

Additionally, Surma said the PEM units can be placed side by side to handle more capacity.

S4 will be responsible for building the units and designing the processes to handle the material input and output. That means the company is likely to create hundreds of jobs, from design and construction to operation.

"We view this as a real boon to the overall economy," Surma said.

Joe Vaillancourt, of Houston, is S4's new senior vice president and a former managing director at Waste Management. He said Waste Management has been researching waste-to-energy technologies for years. Vaillancourt couldn't say whether InEnTec's PEM technology will revolutionize the garbage industry, but he said it has incredible economic potential.

"Some waste, like electronic waste and auto waste, isn't treated in a very efficient economic way, but there is lots of energy value in some of this waste that hasn't been captured historically," Vaillancourt said. "So from an energy-independence perspective, there's a difference that can made in disposing of certain waste streams and this technology hits that sweet spot."

Andrew Moore can be reached at 541-617-7820 or amoore@bendbulletin.com.

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