Energy And Environmental Research Corp

Inside a nondescript office building in Irvine, Energy and Environmental Research Corp. engineers putter about a cavernous laboratory, fiddling with an angular, tube-filled, 10-foot-high plexiglass model. They watch closely as smoke- and helium-filled bubbles swirl through the structure, mimicking the behavior of gases inside a power-plant boiler and yielding valuable clues to the mysteries of pollution formation. Similar work is under way in office parks across Southern California.

Inside a nondescript office building in Irvine, Energy and Environmental Research Corp. engineers putter about a cavernous laboratory, fiddling with an angular, tube-filled, 10-foot-high plexiglass model. They watch closely as smoke- and helium-filled bubbles swirl through the structure, mimicking the behavior of gases inside a power-plant boiler and yielding valuable clues to the mysteries of pollution formation. Similar work is under way in office parks across Southern California.

The Energy Department said it will award government money to nine "clean coal" projects, including one sponsored by an Irvine company, judged to be the most promising methods of reducing harmful air pollutants released by burning coal. The department said the projects, picked from 51 proposals submitted in April, were chosen because they were considered most likely to successfully demonstrate technologies that could be widely used in power plants and industrial boilers.

President Reagan's commitment to a $5-billion five-year program to reduce industrial emissions could advance anti-pollution projects being undertaken by several Orange County companies. "We'll certainly see an influence," said Steve Bortz, a consulting engineer with KVB Inc., an Irvine engineering and consulting company that also makes equipment that monitors and controls emissions from industrial boilers.