Inventor on the Road to Success With Ceramic Patent : Innovation: The university dropout has developed a process that could make the material suitable for use in automobile engines. Industry experts have taken notice.

In his pin-striped suit and horned rim glasses, Thomas Sullivan does not fit the stereotype of the wild-eyed, driven researcher.

Buttoned-down appearances notwithstanding, Sullivan’s inventing career recently passed a major milestone, earning him a major dose of legitimacy. Early last month, the 36-year-old San Diego State University dropout received a U.S. patent for a ceramics manufacturing process that could make the material suitable for use as automotive engine components.

Sullivan’s invention has caught the eye of Chrysler Corp., Ford Motor Co., the U.S. Department of Energy and industry experts. Although they caution that Sullivan has yet to prove that he can produce acceptable ceramic parts in large quantities, car company officials described Sullivan’s process as a breakthrough, saying they are interested in incorporating his technology in their cars.

For years, automotive designers have seen ceramics as the ideal materials for certain car engine parts because they are strong, heat-resistant and lightweight compared to metal. But their negative aspects--brittleness and high finishing costs--have made practical use of ceramics unfeasible up to now.

Sullivan’s invention, which involves a unique way to make silicon nitride, is based on his ability to make ceramics by combining chemical liquids, rather than by melting a mix of powders. The liquids, which are heated and then hardened under intense pressure, have fewer impurities and are more easily manufactured near “net shape,” meaning they require a minimum of machining and finishing before actually being put into cars.

Walt Winterbottom, a researcher who manages the materials systems reliability department at Ford in Dearborn, Mich., said Sullivan’s ceramics manufacturing process is “one of the two or three most interesting developments” recently in ceramics technology as it pertains to engine design.

“The problems with ceramics have always been, how do you make a reliable, low-cost material? and how do you avoid the brittleness problem?” Winterbottom said. “Sullivan’s product speaks to both those issues.”

Describing the Sullivan process as “very promising,” Stewart Harman, a product engineer in Chrysler’s advanced inorganic materials technology group in Highland Park, Mich., said Sullivan’s invention “will definitely help along the commercialization of ceramics for automotive applications.”

But Harman warns that Sullivan’s technology has a long way to go before it is accepted by major car manufacturers, including passing more durability tests. “There are still some things that need to be proved out. The onus is on him to scale up to become a manufacturing company,” Harman said.

Despite those cautionary words, Chrysler officials were clearly pleased that prototypes of ceramic cam rollers made by Sullivan breezed through a six-month, 50,000-mile test, suffering no more wear than is typically exhibited by steel cam rollers after similar wear. Cam rollers are parts that are connected to an engine’s camshaft, the apparatus that opens and closes the valves of an engine cylinder.

The advantage in using ceramic rather than steel cam rollers is that they are lighter than the metal parts and less vulnerable to what the car companies call “customer abuse”: engine damage that results from low or infrequently changed motor oil. That kind of damage leads to costly car repairs for consumers and warranty costs for the manufacturers.

Chrysler was encouraged enough by the results of the test to agree to enter into a second stage of product testing with Sullivan. Chrysler will use Sullivan’s cam rollers in an experimental set of Chrysler fleet vehicles. If that test is successful, and, if Sullivan can demonstrate that he can produce the parts in quantity, Chrysler could begin ordering the part in bulk.

The precise dollar value of Sullivan’s technology, if adopted by car makers, is difficult to estimate. But there is little doubt that the technology could be very lucrative for his San Diego-based company, Sullivan Mining Corp. Millions of cam rollers--from eight to 32 per car--are manufactured every year.

But the real value could be in “follow-on” uses of the technology. If the next stage of Chrysler tests are successful, the manufacturer said it would consider using Sullivan’s ceramics in a host of other engine parts, Harman said.

That’s a lot of ifs in an industry that scrutinizes new product technology for years before adopting changes, but there are several industry officials who say Sullivan may indeed have something significant to offer.

“We are intrigued by the fact that Sullivan developed this in a 9-by-12-foot shop on a shoestring budget, compared with hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on this by large corporations,” said Robert Brooks, a correspondent for Ward’s Engine Update and Vehicle Technology, an influential auto technology trade newsletter published in Detroit.

Sullivan, who in recent months has moved to a larger, 2,300-square foot research and development facility in the Sorrento Mesa area of San Diego, has also received a $1-million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to set up a large-scale ceramics manufacturing operation.

“If his research and development is successful and his process does the things he says it can do, I think he has a real winner there,” said Albert A. Chesnes, deputy assistant U.S. secretary of energy who is in charge of the department’s transportation technologies. If successful, “it would be very difficult (for other ceramics technologies) to compete with a process like his.”

Chesnes said his department, which is particularly interested in Sullivan’s process for use in an advanced, superheated turbine engine, made the $1-million grant after evaluating samples of Sullivan’s products and finding they indeed exhibited the properties Sullivan said they had.

“The process that Sullivan came up with does not start with powder, and that kind of eliminates an awful lot of problems resulting from the conventional way you make ceramics today,” Chesnes said.