NREL:

I worked at the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) in Golden, CO from 1998 to 2001. NREL is part of the Department of Energy. It was one of the best jobs I have ever had. I was basically a mechanical engineer in charge of designing and building various equipment for the Hydrogen production program. The focus of the Hydrogen program was to convert gaseous waste products, mainly CO2, (e.g. smoke stack waste) to hydrogen via bacteria. The bacteria use CO2 and water to produce the hydrogen. My major project at NREL was designing and building a steam reformer that would produce CO2 and a few other gasses from a tank of propane and a boiller. Pictures below.

Photo: The FTLB, Field Test Lab Building, the place I worked. Hills in the bacground are right near I-70.

Photo: The steam reformer. The blue box is the boiler. The silvery wrap covers insulation and the cracking tube which heats up to 1000 deg. C. The yellow cage surrounds a heat exchanger. The two grey cabinets are for electrical and data acquisition. The cart with the computer was also built from scratch and is used for data acquisition. It houses the National Instruments Field Point hardware, UPS, and Lab View computer program.