Alexander Kalina

Alexander Kalina is a Russian-born engineer who left a high position in the Soviet Union and came to the United States, arriving in Houston, Texas. He invented the Kalina cycle, a power generation technology that uses a mix of water and ammonia rather than water alone in the heat recovery system of an electricity plant. Because ammonia has a much lower boiling point than water, turbines can operate at lower temperatures while still extracting additional energy from the condenser side of the system, which makes the cycle a development of the Rankine steam cycle. He formed Exergy Inc. to commercialize the technology.