Over 20 years in the making, Redhill Scientific's patented process creates nitrate fertilizer on-site and on-demand with a simple combination of air, water, and electricity, replicating the natural nitrate creation process found in thunderstorms. Their non-thermal plasma nitrogen fixation system uses zero fossil fuels, releases zero carbon, is more fully utilized by plants, and reduces the chance of evaporation or nitrogen run-off. Growers can directly apply the fertilizer to plants via spray or irrigation. But that's not all, Noel Munson, CEO of Redhill Scientific, tells us how their thin-film plasma reactor can change not only our planet, but Mars as well.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: 0:38

Welcome to Radio Cade. I'm your host James Di Virgilio. Today we're going to talk about a triple bottom line innovation an innovation where the potential for societal environmental and profitability becomes a reality. It's something that's wide ranging. It's something that's complicated, but it's something that's very, very powerful. My guest today, Noel Munson . The CEO of Redhill Scientific is going to walk us through what he's creating and how it's been created. Noel, welcome to the program.

Noel Munson: 1:05

Hi James. Thank you for having me.

James Di Virgilio: 1:07

So we've spent a lot of time in the pre-show just to get me to sort of understand what this application is, where it's going, but let's start at the 30,000 foot view. Tell us what you have created and why it's needed.

Noel Munson: 1:19

We have created a very small, very robust, very cheap to manufacture plasma reactor. And the core of the technology was developed over several decades at Florida State University with a mix of National Science Foundation and institutional money. And since we have licensed seven patents from FSU, we have added our own private equity into commercializing that technology.

James Di Virgilio: 1:51

Now, this technology involves plasma plasma reactor, right? When I think of a reactor, I'm thinking of something I've seen in a nuclear film, or I've been to Chernobyl. So I've seen something there, but walk us through what this reactor is like and why it's such a great innovation.

Noel Munson: 2:04

Sure. Thanks for asking. These reactors are single pieces. They are very small, approximately three millimeters in size, a millimeter not centimeter, and they are very similar to a fluorescent light bulb. When you see a fluorescent tube bulb in your office, you are looking at a plasma reaction. It's called a cold plasma reaction where you are exciting electrons off of a molecule. And then in the case of that light bulb, they are then fluorescent gas. In the case of our plasma reactors, we are introducing water into the reaction inside the chamber, and we are creating chemical reactions with that water. Most specifically, we are creating large amounts of hydroxyl and the hydroxyl, which is O H the hydroxyl, if are then also feeding the air into the reactor will create nitrate, which can be used as fertilizer, as well as nitrite and perox