Building a research park

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Oct 25, 2009 - Page: 1F

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Fields of St. Augustine grass, pine and pecan trees, a pair of volleyball courts and a copse of 40-year-old buildings congregate on what’s known as the 214-acre LSU South Campus.

There are people here, too. Hundreds of them. But LSU wants to catapult their numbers into the thousands with ambitious plans for a 21st-century research park.

Already, dental students ply their future trade here, researchers build miniature products of new materials, workers test sports video games, trainers show emergency responders how to combat terrorism. Beyond one of the beige stone-and-glass buildings, orange pieces of heavy equipment move material on a 50-acre swath destined to become a critical Louisiana National Guard training center.

For the moment, that activity is mere distraction for Mayuri Murugesu and Jim Landry.

They’re examining an assembly of pipes that carry gas, water and air under pressure.

A vertical flame burns within the tubing and is surrounded by a cyclone of water that hugs the pipe and cools it while also providing a source of steam.

Within months, the research firm developing this system plans to deploy it in an oilfield and build the first of many mousetraps that could uncover trillions of barrels of heavy oil deposited in depths of 1,500 to 10,000 feet, trapped there because it’s too heavy for conventional drilling techniques to move it.

The steam, delivered in this patent-pending method, just might do the trick.

“It’s very similar to a rocket engine on a Space Shuttle,” said Landry, the vice president of business development for HydroFlame Production LLC. “It’s just a controlled explosion, no moving parts.”

But properly harnessed, the explosion can deliver steam that safely heats heavy oil and gets it to the surface.

Traditional drilling techniques remove 15 percent to 35 percent of oil from wells, Landry said. HydroFlame’s method could raise the extraction to 65 percent, at a time when the world is obsessed with finding new energy sources.

HydroFlame, just a year old, has its seeds in Canadian graduate research performed three decades ago by current LSU faculty member Dandina Rao.

Rao’s research could revolutionize oil exploration.