DBI began in June 1965 as Dauvergne Brothers Inc. by founder Hector A. D’Auvergne. DBI was to promote Mr. D’Auvergne’s early research in energy, along with transportation and aerospace projects.

Stanley Hiller Sr. awarded DBI its first contract in 1966: assisting Hiller Industries in developing a method for cleaning the Florida inland waterways. The Army Corps of Engineers operated the finished product.

In 1968 the company initiated research on the packaging of thorium in order to produce hydrogen as an energy carrier, and thus create a new commodity in thorium as an energy source. DBI has continued advancing its thorium program, beginning its ongoing concentrations on nuclear vessels and biomass to produce a commodity for the replacement of gasoline.

DBI approached Ford Motor Company in 1972 with propulsion research on a hydrogen turbine engine. The final prototype of DBI’s design was a hydrogen-powered turbine engine in a Ford product, later displayed during an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) symposium at the Hilton Inn in Oakland, California.

DBI made a major research proposal to NASA in the late 1970s regarding a thorium-based hydrogen propulsion program for the analytical aspects of horizontal launching of space payloads. DBI is currently advancing the design.

The company produced a major breakthrough in the power recovery area of boiler technology. The ASME-stamped “Free Expansion Boilers” had significantly more mechanical stability than contemporary state-of-the-art design, and their application was part of DBI’s Republic of China program begun in 1984. Later that year, the company initiated commercialization of the CP100 Biomass-to-Energy Power Plant, in collaboration with Dewpoint Inc., and personnel associated with Bechtel of San Francisco and American Technical Services in Atlanta. As a result of these commercialization efforts, the CP100 system is now spread among engineering enterprises in the U.S. and abroad. One major application of Free Expansion Boilers is in the nuclear industry, where they allow safe power recovery from a reactor by conduction, unprecedented in nuclear power. This paved the way for DBI to create its more-advanced heat transfer designs.