‘The future is happening in our town’

MOSES LAKE — A group of about 60 people – including a number of state legislators and Lt. Gov. Denny Heck – got a first-hand look at the future Wednesday, on a tour that included stops at Big Bend Community College, Boeing and other businesses at the Port of Moses Lake, as well as presentations by three local cutting-edge companies.

“A lot of people don't understand what's happening in Moses Lake,” said Don Kersey, executive director for the Port of Moses Lake. “During the presentation phase, we showed three companies in Moses Lake that are doing things that are not being done in the entire world. And it's all happening here.”

“Aviation is my career, and I'm a big advocate for aviation and aerospace in the state,” said state Rep. Tom Dent, who headed the tour. “I've lived here in the Columbia Basin most of my life and actually learned how to fly in Grant County International Airport in 1975. So I'm very well aware of what's happening and how that facility has changed. We are lucky to have that asset in our community, what it can do for us … There’s probably not another community in the United States that has an asset like this in their backyard.”

The day began with a meeting of the state legislature’s Aviation Caucus in the airport’s conference room that Dent said was well and enthusiastically attended.

“I think we had 22 or 23 people in the conference room. It was full,” Dent said. “Plus we had people out in the hallway; we had 22 people (attending remotely). Then we came downstairs and I counted 50-plus people that had shown up just before we got in the buses, and I'm thinking, this is a big tour.”

The attendees were treated to a look at commercial and military test flight operations at the port, the flight training and aerospace programs at Big Bend and the U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Tanker Base, before touring AeroTEC, Greenpoint Technologies, ATS and Boeing’s facilities. Then they returned to the airport terminal for presentations from rocket engine developer Stoke Space Technologies, aviation fuel company Twelve, and Sila Nanotechnologies, which makes materials for electric vehicle batteries.

Sila Vice President of Operations Chris Dougher discussed his company’s work toward locally-sourced clean energy. Sila manufactures a powder that replaces graphite in a lithium battery anode, the part of the battery that holds the charge. Most graphite comes from China, Dougher said, but Sila’s material is produced in Moses Lake.

“That is not only more sustainable, it is not only a cleaner material to produce, but it also drives a significant improvement in how much energy you can store in that battery,” he said. “Just by swapping our material for graphite, up to 40% more energy. So it makes that battery more efficient, more cost-effective.”

Sila is planning on breaking ground in September on its Moses Lake facility, Dougher said, which will be the company’s flagship plant. The company will invest more than $400 million in the site, he said, and employ more than 200 people in the initial phases.

“Then we also would like to expand out beyond that,” he said. “We purposely bought a larger building and land than we needed, because we wanted to really make this our flagship plant for automotive silicon anode. We've got enough land and building to get to what we say is the million-car mark, which is about 120 gigawatt-hours worth of production.”

Twelve, which broke ground for its Moses Lake facility in July, makes aviation fuel using carbon dioxide, making for a cleaner and more efficient fuel, said Andy Stevenson, vice president for product development.

“Our core technology is called CO2 electrolysis. It converts CO2 into carbon monoxide as one of the intermediate products that we make from our electrolyzer. The innovative thing about that is we do it at a low temperature, so it can be powered completely with electricity. That's really the secret sauce that we've developed is that CO2-to-CO conversion step. And there's a lot of things we can do with that, not just making jet fuel. There's applications in other chemicals industries and plastics manufacturing because CO itself is a major intermediate chemical input to a variety of big chemical industry applications.”

The final presentation came from Katherine Cruz, an engineer with Stoke Space Technologies, which makes reusable rocket engines.

“We provide delivery to and from space, using 100% reusable rockets designed to fly daily,” Cruz said. “Any orbit anytime, 20 times over the cost. If you're not familiar with anything related to space, you might not realize that no one is reusing their second-stage vehicle right now. You usually have multiple rocket vehicles to get yourself (into space): first stage, second stage. A few companies are reusing their first stage; no one is reusing their second stages as of today.”

All three speakers cited Moses Lake’s clean, abundant electricity as a factor in their companies’ decision to locate here.

“We've got about 15 megawatts of electrical capacity demand at the site,” Stevenson said. “That's one of the big reasons we chose that site is because it did have a lot of really good existing electrical infrastructure, with no major upgrades needed for this phase of our process.”

The tour was a resounding success, Dent said.

“The attendance was incredible, the attention was incredible,” he said. “It was just a tour that you walked away from feeling good about. I've been on some tours when you just can't wait for them to get over.”

“The future is happening in our town right now,” Kersey said. “Moses Lake is a great place to dream big, and all these dreams are becoming realities.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.