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by Patrick Cox
May 9, 2017
About a billion people lack the water needed to meet basic health and agricultural needs. Water-borne diseases cause nearly half of hospitalizations globally and kill millions each year. And aquifers around the world are being depleted. The lack of clean water fuels regional conflicts and threatens economic growth from California to the Middle East.
As peak oil fears fade, water is emerging as the next resource crisis. While water supplies have always been huge, the cost of purifying water (including waste and sea water) is too high to help the areas of greatest need.
I’m convinced, though, that a solution has been found. And many experts at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation agree. The technology does not involve the standard polymeric membranes or even graphene. Rather, it comes from drug development biotechnologies honed by the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharmaceutical sciences approach water in a new way
Agua Via, the company that controls this technology, mimics super-efficient biological membranes found in your body using the same development technologies responsible for the drugs in your medicine cabinet. This biomimetic process could cut the cost of water purification by at least a factor of ten. In the long run, this could lower the price tag of desalinization to 1% of current costs.
Agua Via struggled initially to explain its breakthrough to conventional polymeric membrane chemists who have purified water using a technology that is almost 50-years old. Agua Via’s radically new approach utilizes science far outside the industry’s expertise (which is polymer filters that use more energy when used to remove smaller contaminants).
The chief scientist behind Agua Via’s breakthroughs, Martin Edelstein PhD, is an organic chemist with a long history in the pharmaceutical business. His approach to water purification was informed by an industry that makes molecularly precise materials using the same principles of organic chemistry that our bodies do.
Nanotechnology and water purification
The term “molecularly precise manufacturing” tends to be associated with nanotechnology. Scientists who work at this scale aspire to manipulate individual atoms. These scientists work “top down,” trying to make large structures ever smaller.
Drug makers, however, already do atomically precise manufacturing. In the drug business, a single out-of-place atom in a drug molecule is not just a mistake… it can be lethal. In the cut-throat world of drug companies, they’ve learned to be both precise and cost efficient. Nanotechnologists can only do so at much greater expense.
The building blocks of Agua Via’s technology are 150 atom “pores,” each the equivalent of a sophisticated pharmaceutical. The pores, floating in perfectly still water, are coaxed to self-assemble into precise molecular configurations to create a one atomic layer thick membrane. This is done by manipulating the covalent bonding forces that hold molecules together.
Moreover, it’s possible to design these configurations with attachment points on their sides and tops. Many of them tessellate. This means they self-assemble into stable geometric patterns like those seen in quilting and some M.C. Escher illustrations. The result is a durable, large single-molecule thick structure. It can then be integrated onto strong but porous polymer films, which makes it even stronger.
These molecularly precise films have one critical trait due to their molecular scale. The pores can be made with precise shapes, sizes, charges, and other chemical attributes. This creates membranes that precisely control what passes through them. So far, the company has patented over 20 million holes that occur in tessellating self-assembling nanomembranes.
The list of potential applications is immense. The most obvious, for financial as well as humanitarian reasons, is water purification. Edelstein and cofounder Gayle Pergamit (co-author with Eric Drexler of Unbounding the Future) began studying the water purification industry. They found that the industry’s approach ignored biomimetic advantages to solve problems.
Their vision was a nanomembrane that would let only those desirable molecules that are found in water pass through. This would occur no matter what was in the untreated source. While this may seem a fantastical goal, it’s happening right now in your body… in every membrane of every cell.
The human body provides a key to water filtration
Prior to 2003, it was thought that water in cells diffused through normal forces. But Peter Agre, PhD changed that. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of cellular water channels. He called them aquaporins. Agre described biological structures (channels comprising pores) that rapidly move water but not unwanted impurities. This process is so fast that some scientists have described it as “water teleportation.”
Clearly, this process happens in the body without multiple membranes or high energy expenditures. So the Agua Via team designed a nanomembrane that replicated only the critical part of aquaporins. Though they lacked the resources to scale up their design, small scale tests demonstrated the same sort of purification results found in our cells. Of course, almost no one with a conventional polymer chemistry background believed them.
One man who did not dismiss the idea was former secretary of state George Schultz, who has excelled in government, academia and business. Schultz has long thought that conflict over scarce water resources is a major cause of war and strife. So he took the company’s science to a biochemist friend Paul Berg PhD. Berg is the Nobel laureate who pioneered genetic engineering in 1970 and helped launch the biotech success story Genentech.
Berg was one of the few people with the background and vision to understand the science behind the project. It also helped that when he was younger he worked with the Office of Naval Research on desalinization technologies. He gave his endorsement to Schultz, who continues to be a strong supporter and is now an investor.
The US government endorses this breakthrough
For years, I’ve watched this technology languish. But the right connections have now been made… some through George Shultz and some through US and international leaders in the field of water. Scientists at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have studied the process and see its great potential. Here are a few quotes from their published reviews:
“Such a technology can make the polluted feed stocks which are now off limits as impossible or too costly to clean usable.” —US National Science Foundation, SBIR Award Review
“The broader impact of this technology is, of course, astounding.” —US National Science Foundation, SBIR Award Review
“Transformative technology that can revolutionize the water applications across all market segments. This nanotechnology-based membrane which offers a long list of key benefits which would be compelling under normal business circumstances, e.g., small footprint, higher yield, and reduced fouling.” —US Department of Energy, SBIR Phase II Award Review 2016
“By creating a one-atomic-layer-thick nanomembrane, (the) technology moves to the lowest filtration energy possible under the laws of physics, and transforms the relationship. By combining low energy with tremendous specificity in filtration, the membranes achieve the long-sought goal of separation science.” —US Department of Energy, SBIR Phase II Award
“These membranes are a better alternative to much-publicized graphene.” —US National Science Foundation, SBIR Award Review
The technology has been given a phase 2 Department of Energy award to develop massively parallel nanomembrane manufacturing. It also earned a National Science Foundation phase 1 award for prototyping a real-time quality control system on the manufacturing line. The company has already signed contracts with major water suppliers. And I expect there will soon be other grants and awards.
Many water industry professionals have now reviewed Agua Via’s technology. They want to help the company turn the technology into a reality. If things go well, the global water crisis may join peak oil as a former problem in as little as five years. For more information, click on this link.
— Biotech Has a Solution for the Clean Water Crisis originally appeared at Mauldin Economics.
Rod is one of our nation’s leading minds. He’s smart, original, and very committed—a combination that one rarely finds.
Rod Martin is a Reaganite-Thatcherite conservative…[and] a man who has spent much of his life ministering to and working for the benefit of others. I know Rod as an advocate for freedom, a leader who understands the real changes we need in Washington, and who has the drive and ability to make those changes happen.
Rod Martin is the kind of dynamic leader who has the knowledge, ability and experience to lead us successfully into the 21st Century. His vision for America is compelling.
Rod Martin literally wrote the book on excellence. Humble yet brilliant, a man of love and compassion, with penetrating clarity he illuminates the world around us, and we are both stirred and enlightened.
Rod Martin is a born leader and an outstanding political mind. Anyone who takes him on is going to have a serious fight on their hands.
Rod Martin is a man of uncommon vision and character. Ever since I first worked alongside Rod in the early days of PayPal, I’ve been struck by his powerful vision for the future. Rod understands the intersection of technology, politics and culture in a way that few others do.
Rod Martin wears with uncommon grace an uncanny ability to link his vigorous faith to the practical challenges of both the business world and the political arena. Yet the respect he shows for others carries a warmth and modesty that are both too rare among those who are strong advocates of feisty positions.
America badly needs more leaders who really get the future. We need more Rod Martins.
Rod Martin is a modern day philosopher-statesman. He is a capitalist intellectual, a conservative iconoclast, a gentle adversary and a kind prophet. He inspires us towards a fresh national vision built upon the original founding principles.
Rod Martin is not only effective and efficient, but he is also perceptive, wise and gracious. He gets things done. He is a great friend and a great ally.
Rod is one of the sharpest, most gracious men I know, and one of the most gifted political thinkers today. His ability to analyze issues and communicate thoughtful insights on them have earned him the respect of people across the political spectrum.
I am proud to have been Rod Martin’s friend for a quarter century, and I can tell you that he is one of the finest men and most outstanding leaders in our church and in our country today. He has a knack for turning everything he touches to success.
Rod Martin is a cornucopian entrepreneur and eutropic thinker whose influence radiates through an array of companies, institutions, movements and churches. A renaissance American, he is also a prolific friend of freedom and faith around the globe.
If Rod Martin represents the next generation of leaders, America has nothing to worry about.
A leader and a servant, in public life and in private, Rod Martin strides at the top of his profession, and has nowhere to go but up. He is in the truest sense of the word ‘outstanding’.
Rod Martin is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished thought leaders today. He is a wonderful mentor, a humble role model, and a deep inspiration for the next generation of scientific innovators and entrepreneurs.
Rod’s achievements pale beside his character and his brilliance. He sees what others can’t. He leads when others won’t.
Rod Martin is one of America’s finest young minds.
The future of technology is the future of America. Rod Martin sees that future clearly, and also sees how to shape it for the betterment of all. He is firmly rooted in the traditions of faith and patriotism that have made America great. That’s why he has made, and will make, so many outstanding contributions in so many areas.
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