How SkyNano turned trash-to-treasure technology into a leading Knoxville startup
SkyNano is not just a tech startup electrifying the worldwide push to offset carbon pollution.
It's also a major success story of a yearslong effort of Knoxville's three powerhouse institutions – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee – to turn lab research into viable tech companies that stay rooted to the local economy.
Anna Douglas was a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University developing trash-to-treasure science that turns carbon pollution into useful material. Her adviser asked a question: Why not turn the dissertation into a startup?
Douglas was accepted into the first cohort of Innovation Crossroads, a program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and TVA that gives entrepreneurs two years to develop their technology at ORNL, the largest science and technology national lab.
Seven years later, Douglas's company SkyNano has won multiple awards and millions of dollars in grant money to become the poster child of Knoxville's startup ecosystem, where scientific breakthroughs and economic development are stitched together.
Its ambitious vision for the future would place its technology at TVA power plants and other industrial sites to turn their carbon emissions into high tech materials.
Leaders from the DOE, ORNL, TVA and UT helped Douglas open SkyNano's new 20,000-square-foot facility in Louisville, Tennessee, on March 20.
"Our partners have facilitated knowledge sharing, resource access and networking opportunities enabling SkyNano to accelerate its development efforts," Douglas said. "I feel ongoing gratitude for the unwavering support and encouragement we have received."
The company's new space is a testament to its rapid growth. After leaving ORNL, the company outgrew lab space at the Spark Innovation Center at UT's Research Park at Cherokee Farm and another space on Papermill Drive.
Douglas, who attended Lee University in Cleveland for her undergraduate degree, called SkyNano "a Tennessee story."
Here's how the company's technology works and what its success says about support for local startups.
What is SkyNano's carbon technology?
SkyNano creates microscopic carbon nanotubes which are about 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Grouped together, they look like a black powder. When added to existing devices, the advanced material makes them stronger, more lightweight and more flexible.
The company has contracts with several other startups, including lithium ion battery manufacturer and fellow Innovation Crossroads alumnus Eonix, as well as the Department of Defense. Its nanotubes can make ideal tire, battery and construction material, source from planet-heating greenhouse gas.
Two things go into SkyNano's reactors: electricity and carbon dioxide in the form of gas. That gas can come from small and large sources, from your own nose as you exhale all the way to the chimneys of a TVA gas plant.
Two things come out: non-polluting oxygen and carbon nanotubes.
In a novel approach, SkyNano heats salt until it becomes what one company engineer described as "lava," a molten mixture that's about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the hot mixture, SkyNano uses an electrical current to turn carbon dioxide from the air or from industrial emissions into solid carbon material.
How SkyNano became a Knoxville company
SkyNano moved from academic project in Nashville to tech startup in Knoxville when Douglas was accepted into the first Innovation Crossroads class at ORNL.
Since 2017, the program has supported 38 startups, which have created 200 jobs and secured $176 million in funding. It has exemplified the lab's mission to turn research into private tech development.
The program is one of four entrepreneur programs embedded at national laboratories through the Department of Energy's Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office, directed by Chris Saldaña. It is a major way the department supports small businesses.
"When we look at the challenges we have in front of us, in terms of the clean energy economy, it's really innovation that will get us there, and that starts with companies like SkyNano," Saldaña told Knox News. "It's not just about large companies, it's really, what are the seedling ideas?"
Douglas and SkyNano became one of the first anchor tenants of the Spark Innovation Center at UT's Research Park at Cherokee Farm in 2020. The center was created in part to keep startups like SkyNano in Knoxville.
Shortly after it moved into the small UT lab space, SkyNano received $2.5 million from the Department of Energy to partner with TVA to reduce its carbon footprint. TVA is the nation's largest public power provider, generating electricity for 10 million people in Tennessee and six surrounding states.
In 2022, TVA produced 54 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions at its coal and natural gas plants and from power it purchased from other utilities. By recycling some emissions, SkyNano's technology could help lower that figure, even as TVA builds more natural gas plants.
The SkyNano team visited TVA's John Sevier gas plant in Rogersville, Tennessee, where they bottled up some flue gas – a carbon-heavy emissions product from gas plants. In 2022, it demonstrated that it could turn TVA pollution into useful carbon nanotubes.
That year, SkyNano moved into a lab on Papermill Drive, but quickly outgrew it. The company found its new facility in Louisville as little more than a concrete slab and some metal beams last summer. It built the new space and moved in last November.
The new SkyNano facility needed space for larger reactors and it had to be outfitted for high electricity demand, Douglas said.
Cary Pint, who advised Douglas at Vanderbilt and is a co-founder and chief technology officer at SkyNano, said the company's success is thanks to its team of about a dozen employees.
"We've attracted so many amazing people and everyone has stuck with us," Pint said. "I would argue this is as much about resilience, not just in terms of the technology that we're developing but the people to stick with it, and that's why were here."
What's next for SkyNano?
While SkyNano's partnership with TVA showed promise, the technology needs to be scaled way up to make a dent in the agency's emissions. Its new facility has room for more employees and more prototypes.
Joe Hoagland, TVA vice president of enterprise relations and innovation, said SkyNano answers both TVA's search for ways to offset its heavy carbon emissions that won't raise electricity costs and its goal to support local small businesses.
Still, the agency will need SkyNano's technology to be much larger.
"The challenge for them is to figure out, can you get to that scale, can you do it cost effectively, and then, can you make enough products to use all of that?" Hoagland told Knox News. "We're very interested in watching that, we're helping support them where it makes sense and we're advising them."
Douglas said SkyNano has gotten support from the DOE to build a mobile reactor to take to cement plants and capture some of their emissions.
"The grand vision is that we would actually co-locate with a source of emissions," Douglas told Knox News. "We would take the CO2 out of their waste stream, we would make nanotubes on site, and then flow out of the rest of the oxygen and nitrogen."
SkyNano's partners, which include the statewide nonprofit LaunchTN, described Douglas and the SkyNano team as supporters of other entrepreneurs, particularly women in tech startups.
"I am one of those women who has benefitted from conversations with Anna," Lindsey Cox, LaunchTN CEO, said. "You're hearing these ideas and seeing all this work that's happening and you know that there's going to be tremendous value that comes out of this company."
Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: SkyNano grows into Knoxville carbon tech startup with new facility
