Lumber Liquidators Founder Buys Hydrogen Firm

Toano, VA, June 8, 2009--The founder of Lumber Liquidators has entered the hydrogen generation business, according to the Boston Herald.

Tom Sullivan, the Boston native who turned a scrap-wood business in Stoughton into a nationwide hardwood flooring company, has purchased Proton Energy Systems Inc. of Connecticut at a bankruptcy auction and has plans to expand the company.

If all goes well, there might one day be hydrogen-fuel stations at his Lumber Liquidators store in Braintree and other sites across the region.

Founded in 1996, Proton Energy makes on-site equipment that basically extracts hydrogen protons from water.

Proton Energy sells hydrogen-extraction equipment to commercial laboratories, food processing companies, electric utilities and others that use hydrogen in research or industrial settings. Some of its customers are United Technologies, NASA and the Pentagon.

But company got into trouble last year when its parent company, Distributed Energy Systems, filed for bankruptcy. Proton Energy was put on the auction block last summer.