In the summer of 2013, Damian Beauchamp, a chemistry graduate student, attended the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry and Renewable Energy Summer School at the Colorado School of Mines. While there, he heard an entrepreneur speak about taking discoveries from the lab to the world through business and got inspired.

When he got back to Ohio State, Beauchamp co-founded KAir Battery LLC with PhD advisor and inventor Chemistry Professor Yiying Wu and co-inventor Xiaodi Ren, also a chemistry graduate student.

KAir, pronounced care, was founded based on the lab's recently invented potassium-air battery. In addition to Wu, Beauchamp and Ren, other team members include chemistry graduate students Mingfu Hu, Xuanxuan Bi, Zhongjie Huang and Kate Fisher, who is in the WPMBA program at Fisher College of Business. “She has been instrumental to the KAir team's success as she is the only business brain on the team,” said Beauchamp.

“KAir Battery LLC produces highly energy-efficient and cost-effective potassium-air batteries for the Electrical Stationary Storage Systems and Uninterrupted Power Supply markets,” Beauchamp explained. KAir's cost to produce is half of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) long-term target of $150 per 1 kWh battery and has an unprecedented energy efficiency of 98 percent.

“It gets better, at the end of these batteries’ lifetimes the by-products are non-toxic and recyclable,” Beauchamp said.

“The team has had quite a bit of success in a very short period,” Beauchamp said. “KAir took 1st place at Fisher School of Business's Business Plan Competition." An award that came with a cash prize of $15,000 and one year of free office space at TechColumbus.

Then, the KAir team was accepted to the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC)—the world's largest and richest business plan competition. More than 500 teams from around the globe applied; only 42 were accepted.

Last week, the KAir team traveled to Houston, Texas, to compete in the RBPC. They proceeded to take 2nd place in the elevator pitch component, winning a $750 cash prize; then 3rd place in the semi-finals and another $2,000; last but not least, they won the DOE Clean Energy Prize of $100,000.

The icing-on-the-cake? The DOE prize came with an invitation to Washington D.C. to compete in their 2014 Clean Energy Business Plan Competition in June. The Clean Energy Challenge is one of the nation’s most important clean energy business events. Finalists from the past three Challenge events have raised more than $40 million in outside investment, created 280 jobs and registered 40 patents and disclosures.

“We never really expected to win,” Beauchamp said. “But we were interested in learning and we worked very hard to learn as much as possible. In the process we developed a business plan that has fared well thus far.

“With every win our team became more surprised and excited. Now, we are thinking that we may really have something."

- Sandi Rutkowski, Arts and Sciences Communications