Experienced Professional Development
The proprietors are chemical engineers with 31 years of experience developing and commercializing chemical, energy and bio-based technologies. We bring results to help you solve development challenges and avoid commercialization pitfalls. We are highly innovative and energetic, with 152 issued US patents supporting past commercialized products. We maintain confidentiality for your work.
Tonkomo works with you to identify and solve technology, scale-up, product, and commercialization related problems. Finding solutions may require new ideas, concepts, approaches, or methods. We are problem solvers.
When needed, we use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) or a suite of reaction engineering tools with coupled kinetics, heat transfer, and internal pore diffusion to understand your problem and test practical solutions to save time and money. Are you stuck? Can’t figure out why your system isn’t working? Our expertise helps uncover the problem root cause and find solutions through creative design, detailed analysis, and experimental support.
We also help VC and strategic investors reduce risk and improve returns by thorough technology vetting followed by post-investment problem solving to protect your capital. Techno-economic due diligence finds the right opportunities.
We advance the plant-based food movement with techno-economic assessments, due diligence and market insight.
Get in touch with us to understand whether our services are right for you.
What we offer
Capabilities & EXPERIENCE
Heat transfer, mass transfer, reaction engineering, CFD, fluid flow, hardware design, prototype development, testing support, microchannel reactors, Fischer Tropsch, microfluidics, manufacturing development, process intensification, bioprocessing, algae production, fermentation, mixing, extraction, multi-phase processes, scale-up, catalysis, cost estimates, feasibility studies, cost models, new products & markets, competitive intelligence, risk analysis, due diligence reviews, and engineering support for Intellectual Property development, review and strategy.
Tools
CFD: OpenFOAM, SU2, RapidCFD
Chemistry: DETCHEM DUO, Cantera, NASA-CEA
Optimization: DAKOTA
CAD: SolidWorks, Salome
Analysis: SAS JMP
Programming: C++, Python
Visualization: ParaView, Virtual Reality, Blender
Prototypes: 3D printing
Problem Solving
We help you solve your tough problems. Contact us at info@tonkomo.com
product Development
Developing new products is expensive and time consuming. We have experience developing and commercializing new technology and products, including scaling up from promising lab-scale results to pilot and commercial demonstration plants and on-going operations.
3D printed parts enable visualizing larger solutions and quickly deploy lab-scale prototypes.
Tonkomo works with you to solve technology and product related problems at every step of the development process.
PROCESS INTENSIFICATION
Compact processes, including microchannel reactors, reduce footprint, by-product formation, and cost for the right chemistry. We help you understand if this approach is right for your technology and develop solutions to harness the benefits of intensification.
REACTION ENGINEERING
Chemical reactors operate at the nexus of kinetics, mass transport, heat transport, fluid dynamics, and economics.
We can help develop or tune reaction kinetics from your data. When appropriate, apparent reaction kinetics or intrinsic rate mechanisms can be used from the literature. We use a suite of reaction engineering tools including pore diffusion models coupled with kinetics and packed bed heat transfer. Single phase or multiphase reactions benefit from integration of reaction kinetics with hydrodynamics and heat transfer. Analyze and optimize to accelerate development.
We have developed machine learning tools to optimize kinetic parameters from experimental reaction data.
We work with catalyst developers to provide new insights for optimization and overcome limitations (heat transfer, mass transfer, side reactions deep inside pores, pressure drop, coking, local hot spots or cold regions, and so on).
Unusual performance? Insufficient productivity? Scale-up issues? We solve reactor problems.
CFD
Find and fix underlying problems to create solutions. Computational Fluid Dynamics can help "see" problems inside your system.
150+ cores are in-house and can be applied to either reactive and non-reactive flow problems.
Our value is knowing how and when to use CFD tools and interpret results. We use CFD as a tool to find and vet solutions for vexing problems, to design hardware for specific products, and to initiate discovery.
We specialize in optimization of design or operating conditions using DAKOTA with built-in genetic algorithms coupled with CFD. Optimization projects can improve yields and productivity, reduce reactor temperatures, eliminate recirculation zones, and other custom requirements.
Bioprocessing
Biotech reactors are enhanced with better mixing. Improved mass transfer and reduced dead zones increases performance. Tonkomo designs and optimizes algal or bioreactors including ponds with turning vanes, tubular, airlift, bubble column, bag-in-cage reactor systems, and fermenters.
We optimize and troubleshoot downstream processing, including the conversion of dilute solutions to finished products. From feasibility studies to exploring new products from synthetic biology or wild strains to improving performance of existing systems, Tonkomo can assist with your bioprocessing needs.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”