Interesting Bozeman Company Featured at UAE Climate Summit

Regardless of what you think of the "climate change" debate, I thought this Bozeman business was pitching a very interesting concept at the global climate summit in Dubai recently. (We chatted with the CEO after the summit)

Evelyn Pyburn first reported this news for the Big Sky Business Journal back in late November. According to Pyburn, "a company in Bozeman, MagDrive Technologies, has revealed that oil and gas refineries can reduce their emission footprint by 62% through the adoption of magnetically actuated valves. MagDrive claims the technology will bring true zero emission components to industries like oil and gas, energy, nuclear, aerospace, and cryogenics."

MagDrive CEO, Nick Runyon, presented the team’s findings at the Conference of the Parties in Dubai back in December. As the Big Sky Business Journal reported, "MagDrive is licensing its patented valve designs to qualified manufacturers, which will facilitate widespread availability of zero-emission valves to the oil and gas industry."

We caught up with Nick Runyon recently to hear more about his business and how the trip to Dubai went. I started by letting him know how we have 3 refineries right outside of our windows in downtown Billings.

Nick Runyon: For those refineries outside your window, 50% of the fugitive emissions that are coming off of those plants are coming from the valve, and the majority of that from the valve stem. That's the problem that we solve. And so we think it's a great technology for energy transition, keeping these plants operating- just doing it more clearly.

 

Runyon says they actually got their start working on a project for NASA, and that their technology could also still apply to aerospace- or any valve in any industry really.

Nick Runyon: We got started on a project with NASA containing cryogenic helium years ago. But a lot of our - my co founders and members of our team come out of the oil and gas industry. So we've been trying to tackle this problem of fugitive emissions in oil and gas. And that's really our focus today.

Here's the full audio of our chat last week: (2nd half of the below podcast hour)