Our Mission
Accelerate The Energy Transition by developing systems, using our innovative gerotor machines to convert various types of energy like pressure, heat and others into low carbon electricity.
StarRotor Corporation was born at Texas A&M University, where aspiring engineers and agriculturalists learn about energy and environment. To feed, clothe, and house over seven billion people, the world must harness massive amounts of energy. That energy must be converted into fertilizer, fuels, and electricity, and be delivered to many points of use. Almost every industrial process involves multiple transformations between heat, pressure, shaft power, and electricity. The productivity of an economy, and its environmental footprint, are greatly influenced by the efficiency with which those transformations and transfers occur.
To reduce our impact on the environment, the greatest single lever we have is to make the essential transformations between those fundamental forms of energy more efficient.
Our History
The founder of StarRotor Corporation, Dr. Mark Holtzapple and collaborators were seeking a compact, highly efficient compressor to handle large volumes of low-density water vapor. Gerotors, which have been used to pump lubricating oil for almost a century, offered the potential to deliver the necessary performance characteristics. However, traditional gerotor machines could not be used as compressors because of metal-to-metal contact between the rotors. Adapting gerotors for gas compression and expansion was challenging, but the results have the potential to enable fundamental improvements in an extremely wide range of applications, from gas gathering, to waste heat recovery, to desalination, to engines.
For over a decade, StarRotor operated as a research and development company funded primarily by angel investors who believe in our potential to transform industry while protecting the environment. Many investors are engineers who recognize the elegance of the technology and how it addresses fundamental problems they have encountered in their professional lives. Our path to develop solutions to our engineering challenges has not been easy. Thanks to the faithful work and support of our employees and investors, we believe we have a technology that is ready to move into commercial applications.