Near-death experience gave Rod MacDonald the courage to become an inventor

February 2010 Issue No. 26

Rod MacDonald is known today for the patented technologies he has invented that are used in the oil and gas industry and by NASA. But the co-founder of Noise Solutions Inc. believes he would never have had the courage to become an inventor if he had not almost died by electrocution in 1974.

“Everything changed in my life when I had a near-death experience,” said the 60-year-old MacDonald, who is Canadian by birth, but whose ancestors are Scottish.

He was in his mid-20s and working as an electrician in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, when he was electrocuted on a 480-volt, three-phase system.

“The power came up through my right leg and out through my left arm – got my diaphragm and my heart,” MacDonald recalled. “I was assumed dead by co-workers at the site. Then I was brought back to life three times before I stayed conscious. After that experience, I determined that I was very fortunate to have this exciting life and knew I had met the biggest fear of my life, which was death. The biggest thing that happened after I had regained consciousness was I realized I was tangled up on worrying about how to just get by in life, instead of living life to its fullest. After that, I got past the fear of criticism and the fear of failure that used to hold me back. I started to play with my mind and developed products. If there’s a message in this it’s that if people can get past the fear of criticism and the fear of failure, there is unbelievable opportunity and a full and very exciting life to live. I also soon realized that I only learned when things were difficult. When things were easy, I was not growing. I learned to embrace failure to find the truth, the hidden secret.”

MacDonald created his first commercial invention, The MacIgnitor, in 1981in his garage on his family farm in Delburne, Alberta. The toxic vent electronic flare ignitor is now used by the oil and gas industry all over the world and by NASA. Although MacDonald is the sole inventor of The MacIgnitor, he is quick to point out that many of his other inventions have been team projects.

After completing high school, MacDonald had attended the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, where he trained as both a draftsman and then as an electrician. He was working as an electrical contractor in 1981 in the gas fields in Canada when he invented the MacIgnitor.

“I was asked to install an electronic flare ignitor that was built by another company and their equipment failed so often, it was very frustrating and embarrassing because I had installed one for another oil company,” MacDonald recalled. “I explained how poorly designed the current system was that they were intending to use. Then, revealing some theories I had about how a reliable flare igniter should be designed, I was challenged by the oil company to build one based on my theories. At first I refused, as I lacked research and development facilities and funding, but the oil company representative asked me if I did not really believe in my theories. His challenge stirred something inside of me because I did believe in my theories and, as the fear of failure or criticism was no longer a concern for me, I accepted his challenge. A challenge that changed the rest of my life! The MacIgnitor worked perfectly on the very first try.”

That first patent changed MacDonald’s life again. He established a new company, Mactronic Systems, and he soon was travelling all over the world in connection with his business. The MacIgnitor proved effective not only with flare stack ignitions, but also with flare pits and offshore operations and the product became a worldwide industry standard. MacDonald went on to invent a variety of other products – most for the oil and gas business. Those inventions included the Mini-MacIgnitor, which was used to light the Caldron for the [RM1] 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary and the Calgary Tower’s Special Events Flare.

“The Mini-MacIgnitor was inspired by the oil and gas industry continually asking me to develop a reliable ignition system like the original, big MacIgnitor, but for various smaller applications,” MacDonald explained. “The original MacIgnitor was designed for operating on a flare stack, whereas the Mini-MacIgnitor was needed to ignite line heaters, large furnaces and various small applications.”

In 1991, MacDonald was awarded the Innovative Award of Excellence by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board for his MacIgnitor. The Mini-MacIgnitor also became a major component in the reliable ignition of a subsequent invention, The Emergi-Flame, whch is used to ignite deadly “sour” (hydrogen sulfide) gas if a drilling rig experiences a blowout, MacDonald said. The Emergi-Flame uses the Mini-MacIgnitor to ignite a pressurized stream of fuel. The fuel is burned in the atmosphere while the Emergi-Flame produces about 60 timed shots directed at the mid-section of the drilling rig to maintain ignition during the unstable flows initially experienced after a blowout. This invention changed the laws of Alberta dealing with the drilling of critical sour gas wells, MacDonald said.

MacDonald recalled that development of the Mini-MacIgnitor was key to his inventing the Emergi-Flame. He was working in research and development in Clifton, N.J., with a company that produced silicone glass bonded mica used for the special insulators on the MacIgnitor.

“I was walking down the streets of New York when all the sudden it flashed through my mind how to construct a Mini-MacIgnitor,” MacDonald recalled. “I’ve learned to pay attention when I get a flash in my mind. So I rushed into a restaurant, took a napkin and drew up the Mini-MacIgnitor, which to this day has never been changed. People can be very creative once they let go of this fear of criticism and the fear of failure, then get into the power of the mind when it’s just free to think.”

MacDonald said his ability to brainstorm and to tap into the power of his creativity was enhanced by working with Tapani Savolainen, Ph.D., a Finnish expert in research and creativity who is now a partner and vice president of research at CAC (Computer Aided Creativity)-Research Ltd. In the early 1990s, Savolainen and the company invented computer aided creativity, or brainstorming software, called Idegen, short for Idea Generation.

MacDonald was returning home from a business trip to Moscow for MacIgnitor sales when he met Savolainen by chance on a connecting flight to Helsinki. The two men soon discovered their mutual interested in creativity and MacDonald ended up working with Savolainen’s company, facilitating use of Idegen for brainstorming with companies and individuals.

It is so powerful to get into really authentic brainstorming, and the solutions that can come can blow people away,” MacDonald said. “I love to encourage people or help them in any way to be inspired, to be entrepreneurs and creative. For some time I facilitated Idegen Computer Aided Brainstorming sessions. I soon came to realize that team building is the foundation to successful brainstorming, as cynicism of your fellow brainstormers suffocates inspirational thought. However, harmony and encouragement foster creativity and brilliant solutions.”

Although the Idegen software is no longer on the market and MacDonald has moved on to other things, he and Savolainen still think highly of each other.

“Dr. Savolainen became a great friend of mine,” MacDonald said. “He taught me so much about the science of the mind and creativity, most importantly that there is a process for teams or individual brainstorming that brings the genius out in people.”

“We really appreciate very much the creativity and enthusiasm of Rod MacDonald,” Savolainen responded by e-mail recently while on a trip through Bangladesh. “He is a great personality to work with. We first met him in a plane between Moscow and Helsinki. We made the agreement of him selling our software in Canada and the U.S. His great work was very important for the development of our company and the software.”

So how did MacDonald get from flare ignitors and creativity software to the noise mitigation businesses?

“I had got to the point with Mactronic that I thought there was nothing left to invent in that flare industry,” MacDonald explained. “I was looking for an industry, preferably in the oil and gas industry, that had not been developed. I discovered that noise regulations were just starting to grow at that time around the world – about 1996. People did not have answers and virtually all of these products needed to be developed. There was an entire science to be discovered and multiple products that needed to be invented.”

Thus, Noise Solutions Inc. was born in 1997 to develop and commercialize the “science of silence” for industrial noise control and for analysis of noise, including many applications in the oil and gas industry, such as gas well compressor noise. MacDonald partnered with his son, Scott MacDonald, and acoustical engineer Cliff Faszer, who is now the principle member of FFA Consultants in Acoustics and Noise Control, also located in Calgary.

“Cliff Faszer taught me everything I know about acoustical engineering,” MacDonald said. Cliff said to me, ‘we need somebody with the engineering science like me and somebody crazy enough to figure out how to build these products, like you.’ ”

The two still partner on many projects worldwide, although they have separate companies. Faszer’s son, Andrew Faszer, now also works at Noise Solutions Inc. in the capacity of engineering team leader.

Noise Solutions is a general acoustical contractor providing turn-key services with guaranteed noise levels and specializing in industrial noise analysis and noise suppression. The company’s manufacturing plant is located in MacDonald’s hometown of Delburne, Alberta, with sales offices in Denver, Colo. MacDonald is passionate about this technology and the science of noise mitigation. He gets especially loquacious when discussing the ineffectiveness of simply putting a wall around something to control noise.

“Noise is so challenging and the regulations are getting so tight,” MacDonald explained. “On some of these facilities, people must have a zero net noise impact, and you cannot do zero noise impact with just walls. Noise is omni-directional, it flows. It is not uni-directional, like light. To manage noise properly, it must be trapped and attenuated at its source. It’s like a disease, if you let it get out into the atmosphere, it goes everywhere. It goes around corners, over hills, through stands of trees.”

One of the most challenging types of noise to mitigate is low frequency noise, such as is often associated with a natural gas compressor station, MacDonald said.

“Low noise frequencies are what are so annoying to people,” he continued. “It has such dynamic energy. It’s like a kid with that low boom from his car – you can hear it for blocks before you even see him. Low frequency is the hardest noise to suppress, the most costly to suppress, and it takes the most science to silence it.”

In fact, it was the suppression of low frequency noise that got MacDonald, Faszer and Noise Solutions closely involved with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It seems NASA needed to solve noise problems with the giant crawler transporter used to move the space shuttle out to the launch pad, all 18 million pounds of it. MacDonald and his team were invited to observe the situation first-hand for a “fully-loaded roll-out” of the Space Shuttle Atlantis to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“We did a noise intensity study with the shuttle on there, then wrote a report which identified that they not only had exhaust noise problems, but they had ventilation problems with noise from the engine pump room getting out, and they also had noise from the hydraulics. On the crawler, the hydraulic noise was so bad it could actually harm the metal. But these hydraulics support 12 million pounds, with the mobile launch pad that supports the shuttle during transport, along with the fully-loaded solid rocket boosters. This mobile launch pad has to stay perfectly level while they’re travelling to keep the shuttle perfectly vertical. The two most critical sound waves were actually from the hydraulic pumps inside the hydraulic fluid. There were no hydraulic silencers in the world market that would keep the shuttle perfectly plumb and isolate specific frequencies and flat line them, but we did that in a joint research and development project with NASA.”

Today, two crawler transporters at NASA have hydraulic noise suppression devices, or mufflers for hydraulic noise, designed by the Noise Solutions team. And by coincidence, the Kennedy Space Center also uses MacDonald’s MacIgnitor electronic flare ignition equipment.

“So I’ve got equipment that I developed in two totally different industries at the Kennedy Space Center,” MacDonald said proudly.

He was also proud to share some testimonials from NASA about his team’s work there.

“I’ve been wanting to say ‘thanks’ for the excellent work your Noise Solutions team did in reducing the sound levels throughout the Shuttle Crawler Transporters,” stated Perry L. Becker, chief, Shuttle Ground Structural Systems Branch, Mechanical Division, Engineering Directorate, NASA Kennedy Space Center. “I had the opportunity to experience first-hand the reduced noise levels due to your new mufflers and acoustical ventilation systems. … Plus, what a huge difference the jacking equalization and leveling ‘hydraulic silencers’ modifications made! The difference in the control room alone is very impressive!”

The Noise Solutions team continues to work with NASA today, this time on the new Constellation space program, which is developing the Orion spacecraft, the Altair lunar lander and the Ares rockets that will take humans to the moon to build a lunar outpost where humans will live and work on the moon’s surface. MacDonald said his team is already working on the preliminary engineering for noise mitigation for this new project.

Noise Solutions also has a new integrated heat and noise management patent for compressors that MacDonald is very excited about taking to the oil and gas industry in the near future.

“It is going to change the way a multi-billion dollar business is managed, change the way they build gas compression equipment, and change the way that people see the equipment because the cosmetics are going to improve,” MacDonald said. “The big, bulky methods of compression and noise suppression that are used today will become more compact with the new, patented Integrated Heat & Noise Management design with zero noise capabilities and landscape-friendly building designs.”

MacDonald now makes his home in Denver, where Noise Solutions has a sales office. His son, Scott, stepped up in June 2009 to become president of the company and take over the day-to-day management.

“Part of my goal when I partnered with Scott was to groom him to become the CEO and the president,” the elder MacDonald said. “It was basically timing, and just my freedom to take and introduce the company more broadly. I’m more involved now in the teaching and the innovation. There’s a continuous flow of new products being developed all the time, most for the oil and gas and mining industries.”

MacDonald continues to travel around the world, mainly to teach people in the oil and gas industry about noise and noise suppression technology. In December, he journeyed to Australia to lead training for two oil and gas companies’ engineering teams.

“We teach people how to understand the science behind industrial noise analysis and noise suppression, how to record noise, how to read noise impact assessments, how to know when they get a quote for different noise abatement equipment, how to understand the dynamic insertion loss tables (DIL), and to know the pitfalls of guessing at costly noise control,” MacDonald explained. “Noise is so very complicated and engineers are so busy with their other work. Our purpose is to teach them so they are empowered.”

The training is free and MacDonald admits that the service provides an opportunity to advance his business.

“People are so impressed that someone will step out and give before you try to ask for a contract,” he said. “Of course, the sales just follow because the buyers then know the complicated facts of the science of silence and that Noise Solutions has mastered industrial noise analysis and suppression in order to guarantee the resulting noise levels.”

One of his next training gigs will be at the annual conference of the Gas Compressor Association in Galveston, Texas March 7-10. He’ll speak on “The Science of Gas Compressor Silence.” More information about the conference is available online at www.gascompressor.org. By Pamela Percival, Editor.

[RM1]of which the Mini-MacIgnitor also lit the large caldron for the commencement of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Games.