Southern IL company wins Popular Mechanics award for skimmer tech | Business

On Monday morning's Today Show on 14WFIE and NBC, POPULAR MECHANICS awarded Elastec/American Marine of White County a 2012 Breakthrough Award for their patented Grooved Disc oil skimmer technology. The POPULAR MECHANICS Breakthrough Awards, now in their eighth year, recognize the innovators and products that have dramatically advanced the fields of technology, medicine, space exploration, automotive design, environmental engineering and more.

Elastec/American Marine and other winners will be honored at an invitation-only conference and gala awards ceremony in New York City on October 4, and in the November issue of POPULAR MECHANICS, available on newsstands October 16. 

Donnie Wilson, CEO of  Elastec/American Marine, will participate in a panel discussion titled, The Innovation Economy. The panel will cover topics such as: How does innovation work in America today? Is it an entrepreneurial phenomenon, where individuals with smart ideas create new and useful things? Is it a corporate function, where companies invest in R&D to gain competitive advantage? Does it require the large-scale resources of the federal government? The panel consists of intelligent and creative people who come from different parts of the U.S. innovation economy. The panel will explore the American innovation gene and what it will take for the country to remain competitive in the 21st century.

Elastec/American Marine manufactures pollution control equipment to clean up the world’s environmental accidents and disasters. Its fire boom systems successfully corralled and burned the highest volume of oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010, preventing masses of crude from coming ashore. In 2011 the company won the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE for its innovative mechanical Grooved Disc oil skimmer, the same technology winning the POPULAR MECHANICS Breakthrough Award.

“We are once again excited to recognize this year’s list of incredible honorees for their role in shaping the future,” says James B. Meigs, editor-in-chief of POPULAR MECHANICS. “From a featherweight metal to the world’s fastest and most electrically efficient supercomputer, this year’s winners embody the creative spirit that the Breakthrough Awards were founded upon.”

A full list of winners and the feature on Elastec/American Marine can be found here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/10-world-cha...

Past recipients of the Breakthrough Awards include movie director, James Cameron, genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, efficiency expert Amory Lovins, inventor and FIRST Robotics founder Dean Kamen, and humanitarian engineer Amy Smith.

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