Emergency/Military Applications
Ration packaging, portable cooking devices and other survival equipment utilizing GHT's technology is safe, lightweight and easy to use. Military applications of our flameless catalytic converter heat system abound, and GHT is dedicated to finding response solutions for cold-weather combat and more. The ability to easily access portable heating and chilling solutions and even portable power decreases emergency response times and accessibility to tools and resources. In addition to homeland security, GHT has many applications for fire and rescue, as well, and is seeking partners interested in developing emergency solutions for people, volunteers and trained rescue personnel in disaster zones. Access to flameless, safe heat, power and additional necessities during emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes and terrorist attacks is vital not only for rescue, but also for the affected region's recovery.
In depth: A personal disaster recovery unit comprising heating, cooling and electric power generation aids civilians and rescue workers in emergency situations
The Product
GHT's technology can assist partners in developing a portable personal disaster recovery field system, perhaps including: a camp stove or space heater combined with a storage container capable of keeping critical products hot or cold indefinitely—the latter by using an absorption chiller—and also an electric power source capable of providing current for lighting and/or recharging mobile phones or other battery-powered devices. In future designs, GHT may add capability to run these and other appliances directly.
Such a GHT system, creating no toxic by-products, can be invaluable to maintaining the health of people who have been dislocated from their homes by natural or man-made disasters.
Heater Background
GHT owns and is further developing a scalable flameless membrane catalytic heater system addressing concerns of weight, efficiency, safe storage, transportation and operational/logistical complexities often encountered with conventional catalytic, electrical and/or chemical heaters.
Tragically, it was reported that a number of survivors of Hurricane Katrina were subsequently poisoned by carbon monoxide from their portable electric generators. GHT's methanol fueled heater catalytically combusts its fuel without a flame to generate only heat, carbon dioxide and water. The system is inherently free of toxic emissions such as carbon monoxide.
Chiller Background
Heat-driven absorption cooling is a mature technology in its natural gas—or LPG-fired form, but still undergoing refinement. According to the Advanced Guidelines of the Southern California Gas Company and New Buildings Institute, there are efficiencies to be gained by utilizing this technology versus electrically driven systems.
As a building block of GHT's hybrid systems, it is noted that absorption cooling has an ample following for large scale refrigeration and air conditioning, and value can be added by a GHT heating system to provide fully mobile systems in which the flameless membrane catalytic heater is dedicated entirely for chilling, or in which a chiller is driven by "waste" heat.
Electrical Fuel Cells and Thermopiles
GHT looks forward to the future and soliciting orders for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC). Compact and lightweight systems have been shown elsewhere to be capable of powering or recharging mobile phones and laptop computers.
The DMFC utilizes the same fuel as GHT's flameless membrane catalytic heater. It can benefit from GHT's fuel delivery technology and/or in a hybrid system it can gain efficiency from being in thermal contact with a source of heat.
Thermopiles represent a technology discovered in the 19th century, now available in highly updated form. They are widely scalable and sold into a wide variety of remote power applications where a heat source is available to drive them. Thermal energy conversion efficiency is temperature dependent and can be low. However, an inherently robust mode of construction may enable placement of the hot side junction assembly in proximity to the burner or as a pass-through in heating applications.
