Members in ME Professor Hayden Taylor’s group, Liam Berryman and Lance Brockway, have won the “Berkeley Cleantech University Prize CUP“” – a competition put on by the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute BECI and Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative BERC, and sponsored by the Department of Energy DOE. After four months of mentorship and training from the competition’s dedicated mentors and educators, the team won the $100,000 Berkeley CUP for their company, Nelumbo, which will be awarded in conjunction with the annual BECI Philomathia Forum and BERC Energy Summit. The team will also advance to the DOE’s Cleantech University Prize National Conference hosted by Spark Clean Energy.
 
What is Nelumbo?
“”Nelumbo has developed an omniphobic nanocoating which accelerates water shedding and reduces contaminant build-up on surfaces. We are using our OMNIPHOBETM coating in air conditioning systems to raise efficiency by up to 25%. Our coating is 200X thinner than a human hair, conducts heat, and adds less than 2% to the manufacturing cost of an AC unit, allowing for cost-effective universal application on any scale or geometry. By applying OMNIPHOBETM, we can reduce maintenance costs, decrease energy consumption, and improve air quality for the next generation of air conditioning.””
 
The research that led to the invention of the technology was supported by the Singapore-Berkeley Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics SinBerBEST program, part of the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore BEARS, which is funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation NRF.
 
Check out their prize-winning concept in action on our YouTube page!
 
Congratulations, Nelumbo!