Success Highlights:
In close cooperation with Russian scientists and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program, a Raton, New Mexico, company is finding new and better ways to see through the earth.
Until recently, sensors that can see through earth might have sounded like something from a Star Trek episode. Today, however, they are not only real but are providing substantial real-world benefits. Larry Stolarczyk and the company he founded — Stolar Horizon — are drawing on expertise both here and in the former Soviet Union to bring new and innovative products based on this technology to the market.
The results have been impressive. Not only is Stolar Horizon generating revenues and growing at a rapid pace, it is facilitating our national security interests by employing former Soviet weapons engineers who might otherwise be forced to turn to rogue nations or terrorists for work.
Stolar’s exciting state-of-the-art products began with the electromagnetic “Horizon Sensor” equipment originally designed to improve underground mining efficiency and safety. Located on the cutting edge of mining machines, the Horizon Sensor detects the boundaries of coal seams, allowing the machines to stay in veins longer and extract the most-desirable deposits, while creating less waste rock. This not only decreases the capital costs associated with extraction, it can also help to mine cleaner-burning coal that requires minimal additional processing. The Horizon Sensor also detects voids in coal seams, important because those voids, if accidentally breached, can lead to deadly accidents. Experts have testified that the deployment of Horizon Sensors may have been able to prevent the Quecreek Mine crisis of 2002, when nine miners were trapped deep in a Pennsylvania mine for almost 80 hours after they drilled into an abandoned mine shaft that was not marked on maps.
When coupled with advanced Russian radar, the Horizon Sensor became an even more powerful tool, and Stolar Horizon developed a variety of incredible new applications.
The company learned about the Russian technology during an exploratory visit to the newly-opened Russian Federation in the early 1990s. When the IPP program was launched in 1994, Stolar seized the opportunity to develop partnerships with the Institute for Measuring Systems Research (NIIIS) in Nizhny Novgorod and SPEKTR-Conversion in Snezhinsk. These cooperative agreements have since benefited all partners enormously.
Together with NIIIS and SPEKTR engineers, Stolar upgraded its Horizon Sensor with a new technology called an Electromagnetic wave Detection and Imaging Transceiver (EDIT). Based on EDIT, Stolar has developed a line of landmine detectors, some hand-held, some vehicle-mounted and others robotic. They are the first landmine detectors able to find plastic anti-personnel landmines, and they present a viable solution to reducing the constant threat posed by the estimated 100 million landmines in the world.
A modified version of this sensor array can help keep public utility lines, water pipes and fiber optic cables functional and intact during excavation and construction. This system can be affixed to construction equipment, for instance a backhoe blade, to warn of objects buried in soil about to be shoveled. A commercial version of this system, called a Smartbucket, will soon be widely available.
In further collaboration with the Russians, Stolar has created two additions to the Horizon Sensor product line — Drill String Radar and Borehole Radar — with applications in oil and gas drilling operations. Both are designed to substantially boost drilling efficiency by giving operators real-time data to gauge the position of their drill bit in the coal seam. Additionally, one type of drilling, coal bed methane extraction, can be far less environmentally intrusive if operators drill not just vertically, but horizontally. This reduces the number of well pads that operators need to place on the earth’s surface, minimizing the ecological footprint of the drilling operation. Using its Horizon-based sensor systems, Stolar is working to perfect this technique, known as directional drilling.
“No other product line can match our imaging capabilities,” says Larry Stolarczyk, “Largely because we have built on the power of partnership. At the very minimum, our Russian partnerships gave us a crucial competitive advantage by expediting the development of the software and technology on which our products are based.”
The research community has taken notice of Stolar Horizon’s accomplishments. Their technologies have received four prestigious R&D100 Awards from R&D Magazine, most recently in 2005 for Drill String Radar. The R&D100 Awards honor the most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace each year, and the frequent nods to Stolar Horizon indicate the value and the consistency of its contributions.
The company also recently entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with SIBNA, a subsidiary of the third-largest Russian oil company, Tyumen Oil and Gas. Under the agreement, Stolar will sell their power generator equipment which was developed to power the DSR, on a worldwide basis.
IPP partners on Stolar Horizon projects have included Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and the NNSA Kansas City Plant in Missouri.
Stolar Horizon is a shining example of technology innovation fostered by the collaborative spirit of the IPP program. The company’s willingness to pool its resources in this cost-sharing program has paid off in spades, not only for Stolar itself, but for its Russian partners . . . and for the world.
Stolar Horizon: www.stolarhorizon.com