There are a “scary number� of pollutants in our water supply, said Gayle Pergamit, the CEO and founder of Agua Via. These pollutants include “natural� poisons like boron and arsenic, nitrogenous wastes from humans and farm animals, and “other goodies� like hydrocodone and estrogen disruptors. “There can be any of 500,000 different interesting and entertaining chemicals in the water supply,� she said.
“Nanotechnology-based water �ltration could deliver completely pure water from any source at vastly reduced energy usage and lower total costs,� said Pergamit.
This process could end the world water crisis and provide abundant pure water at costs the developing world could afford. Abundant clean water could eliminate water-borne disease, improve farming productivity and remediate polluted bodies of water. It could lower the cost of desalination into the realm of affordability, even for developing nations.
Pergamit’s early-stage startup, Agua Via, is working on what she calls a “molecular toolkit� with the ability to build a “smart membrane� one atomic layer thick that is capable of both purifying water and the desalination of water (desalination today can cost up to 10 times more than water puri�cation).
Agua Via’s purification system uses a membrane with nanometer-sized pores compared to the micron-sized pores in most purification systems. She compared these size ranges to the size of an ant versus the size of a whale. Ten years in development, Agua Via’s membranes are looking to achieve the “holy grail� of water filtration. In Pergamit’s words they are: “high selectivity at low cost, low complexity and low energy.�
According to Pergamit, “At one molecule thick, you’re in a very low-energy regime.� Because of the pore size the filtration can be achieved at low pressures of 1 psi versus the large amount of pressure it takes “push a water molecule through a conventional membrane.�
The firm looks to nature in its material design. Said Pergamit: "How does nature filter water?� There is a lot of bio-mimicry going in Agua Via’s technology with the firm studying aquaporin, a cellular protein that shuttles water in and out of cells and the science of kidneys.
The same technology for filtering urea and other bad stuff out of water in Agua Via’s technology is used by another Pergamit company, Biophiltre, in renal or kidney science. The basic unit of the kidney, the nephron, is a small miracle moving water and salts back and forth against osmotic gradients. “We are transferring information from kidney science to water science,� said the CEO.
Others working on aquaporin membranes include the industrial plumbing giant Danfoss, while Novozymes and a startup called Aquaporin are doing similar work. These companies have produced samples and hope to be in the market by 2010 or 2011. The challenge, said Aquaporin CEO Peter Jensen to Greentech Media, isn't so much in creating artificial proteins. It is making the membrane durable.
Agua Via wants to build the membrane like a pharmaceutical, with incredible specificity and precision. The nature of the membrane’s construction means that they “are not stuck just playing with the size of the filtered solutes but can play with charge and electrical properties. These pores give you a whole deck of cards and different strategies to apply.�
Agua Via is a product company aiming to sell large-scale water purification systems and filtration cartridges that scale to handling hundreds of thousands of gallons of pure water per day. “Smaller systems down to point-of-use size will follow. Large scale water is first,� Pergamit said.
There is a sort of VC lore that “you can’t make money in water.� (This is really not true – there’s been some decent M&A in the water market).
�The discouraging thing about this is that [VCs] really don't understand that we (the U.S.) are entering an era of water scarcity (as opposed to large chunks of the rest of the world who are already in the midst of water scarcity),� said Pergamit in an email. “Maybe they don't buy the concept of climate change – anthropogenic or otherwise. But it also means that they don't understand aquifer exhaustion and the fact that even if there wasn't one whit of climate change, we are still going to run out of water. There's some very basic information that hasn't sunk in yet.�
Pergamit claims that the firm is soon to close a single digit million dollar Round A of funding from a U.K. investor consortium for this potentially disruptive and enabling technology.
Gayle Pergamit will be speaking at the Always On Going Green event in Sausalito on Wednesday Sept 17, 2008 during the Green Nanotech & Synthetic Genomics panel. The agenda for the event is here.
Agua Via: Water, Water Everywhere
Eric Wesoff: September 12, 2008, 4:00 AM
There is a water crisis in developing nations and in some not-so-developing nations. Additionally, there is a looming water crisis for everyone else on the globe as populations rise, as pollution increases and as climate and weather patterns change.
There are a “scary number� of pollutants in our water supply, said Gayle Pergamit, the CEO and founder of Agua Via. These pollutants include “natural� poisons like boron and arsenic, nitrogenous wastes from humans and farm animals, and “other goodies� like hydrocodone and estrogen disruptors. “There can be any of 500,000 different interesting and entertaining chemicals in the water supply,� she said.
“Nanotechnology-based water �ltration could deliver completely pure water from any source at vastly reduced energy usage and lower total costs,� said Pergamit.
This process could end the world water crisis and provide abundant pure water at costs the developing world could afford. Abundant clean water could eliminate water-borne disease, improve farming productivity and remediate polluted bodies of water. It could lower the cost of desalination into the realm of affordability, even for developing nations.
Pergamit’s early-stage startup, Agua Via, is working on what she calls a “molecular toolkit� with the ability to build a “smart membrane� one atomic layer thick that is capable of both purifying water and the desalination of water (desalination today can cost up to 10 times more than water puri�cation).
Agua Via’s purification system uses a membrane with nanometer-sized pores compared to the micron-sized pores in most purification systems. She compared these size ranges to the size of an ant versus the size of a whale. Ten years in development, Agua Via’s membranes are looking to achieve the “holy grail� of water filtration. In Pergamit’s words they are: “high selectivity at low cost, low complexity and low energy.�
According to Pergamit, “At one molecule thick, you’re in a very low-energy regime.� Because of the pore size the filtration can be achieved at low pressures of 1 psi versus the large amount of pressure it takes “push a water molecule through a conventional membrane.�
The firm looks to nature in its material design. Said Pergamit: "How does nature filter water?� There is a lot of bio-mimicry going in Agua Via’s technology with the firm studying aquaporin, a cellular protein that shuttles water in and out of cells and the science of kidneys.
The same technology for filtering urea and other bad stuff out of water in Agua Via’s technology is used by another Pergamit company, Biophiltre, in renal or kidney science. The basic unit of the kidney, the nephron, is a small miracle moving water and salts back and forth against osmotic gradients. “We are transferring information from kidney science to water science,� said the CEO.
Others working on aquaporin membranes include the industrial plumbing giant Danfoss, while Novozymes and a startup called Aquaporin are doing similar work. These companies have produced samples and hope to be in the market by 2010 or 2011. The challenge, said Aquaporin CEO Peter Jensen to Greentech Media, isn't so much in creating artificial proteins. It is making the membrane durable.
Agua Via wants to build the membrane like a pharmaceutical, with incredible specificity and precision. The nature of the membrane’s construction means that they “are not stuck just playing with the size of the filtered solutes but can play with charge and electrical properties. These pores give you a whole deck of cards and different strategies to apply.�
Agua Via is a product company aiming to sell large-scale water purification systems and filtration cartridges that scale to handling hundreds of thousands of gallons of pure water per day. “Smaller systems down to point-of-use size will follow. Large scale water is first,� Pergamit said.
There is a sort of VC lore that “you can’t make money in water.� (This is really not true – there’s been some decent M&A in the water market).
�The discouraging thing about this is that [VCs] really don't understand that we (the U.S.) are entering an era of water scarcity (as opposed to large chunks of the rest of the world who are already in the midst of water scarcity),� said Pergamit in an email. “Maybe they don't buy the concept of climate change – anthropogenic or otherwise. But it also means that they don't understand aquifer exhaustion and the fact that even if there wasn't one whit of climate change, we are still going to run out of water. There's some very basic information that hasn't sunk in yet.�
Pergamit claims that the firm is soon to close a single digit million dollar Round A of funding from a U.K. investor consortium for this potentially disruptive and enabling technology.
Gayle Pergamit will be speaking at the Always On Going Green event in Sausalito on Wednesday Sept 17, 2008 during the Green Nanotech & Synthetic Genomics panel. The agenda for the event is here.
There are a “scary number� of pollutants in our water supply, said Gayle Pergamit, the CEO and founder of Agua Via. These pollutants include “natural� poisons like boron and arsenic, nitrogenous wastes from humans and farm animals, and “other goodies� like hydrocodone and estrogen disruptors. “There can be any of 500,000 different interesting and entertaining chemicals in the water supply,� she said.
“Nanotechnology-based water �ltration could deliver completely pure water from any source at vastly reduced energy usage and lower total costs,� said Pergamit.
This process could end the world water crisis and provide abundant pure water at costs the developing world could afford. Abundant clean water could eliminate water-borne disease, improve farming productivity and remediate polluted bodies of water. It could lower the cost of desalination into the realm of affordability, even for developing nations.
Pergamit’s early-stage startup, Agua Via, is working on what she calls a “molecular toolkit� with the ability to build a “smart membrane� one atomic layer thick that is capable of both purifying water and the desalination of water (desalination today can cost up to 10 times more than water puri�cation).
Agua Via’s purification system uses a membrane with nanometer-sized pores compared to the micron-sized pores in most purification systems. She compared these size ranges to the size of an ant versus the size of a whale. Ten years in development, Agua Via’s membranes are looking to achieve the “holy grail� of water filtration. In Pergamit’s words they are: “high selectivity at low cost, low complexity and low energy.�
According to Pergamit, “At one molecule thick, you’re in a very low-energy regime.� Because of the pore size the filtration can be achieved at low pressures of 1 psi versus the large amount of pressure it takes “push a water molecule through a conventional membrane.�
The firm looks to nature in its material design. Said Pergamit: "How does nature filter water?� There is a lot of bio-mimicry going in Agua Via’s technology with the firm studying aquaporin, a cellular protein that shuttles water in and out of cells and the science of kidneys.
The same technology for filtering urea and other bad stuff out of water in Agua Via’s technology is used by another Pergamit company, Biophiltre, in renal or kidney science. The basic unit of the kidney, the nephron, is a small miracle moving water and salts back and forth against osmotic gradients. “We are transferring information from kidney science to water science,� said the CEO.
Others working on aquaporin membranes include the industrial plumbing giant Danfoss, while Novozymes and a startup called Aquaporin are doing similar work. These companies have produced samples and hope to be in the market by 2010 or 2011. The challenge, said Aquaporin CEO Peter Jensen to Greentech Media, isn't so much in creating artificial proteins. It is making the membrane durable.
Agua Via wants to build the membrane like a pharmaceutical, with incredible specificity and precision. The nature of the membrane’s construction means that they “are not stuck just playing with the size of the filtered solutes but can play with charge and electrical properties. These pores give you a whole deck of cards and different strategies to apply.�
Agua Via is a product company aiming to sell large-scale water purification systems and filtration cartridges that scale to handling hundreds of thousands of gallons of pure water per day. “Smaller systems down to point-of-use size will follow. Large scale water is first,� Pergamit said.
There is a sort of VC lore that “you can’t make money in water.� (This is really not true – there’s been some decent M&A in the water market).
�The discouraging thing about this is that [VCs] really don't understand that we (the U.S.) are entering an era of water scarcity (as opposed to large chunks of the rest of the world who are already in the midst of water scarcity),� said Pergamit in an email. “Maybe they don't buy the concept of climate change – anthropogenic or otherwise. But it also means that they don't understand aquifer exhaustion and the fact that even if there wasn't one whit of climate change, we are still going to run out of water. There's some very basic information that hasn't sunk in yet.�
Pergamit claims that the firm is soon to close a single digit million dollar Round A of funding from a U.K. investor consortium for this potentially disruptive and enabling technology.
Gayle Pergamit will be speaking at the Always On Going Green event in Sausalito on Wednesday Sept 17, 2008 during the Green Nanotech & Synthetic Genomics panel. The agenda for the event is here.
