The Midwest has some major water quality issues, and it’s spreading. Nitrogen and phosphorus used to fertilize farms runs off into rivers, resulting in a record “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in massive toxic algae blooms that feed on the chemicals.
Gross-Wen Technologies, an Ames, Iowa, startup, wants to use algae to clear the nitrogen and phosphorus out of wastewater before it gets to the gulf.
How Gross-Wen Technologies works
Gross-Wen founders Martin Gross and Zhiyou Wen patented a new, more cost-effective way to grow microalgae, with the original intention of using it to create biofuels. But when the city of Chicago came looking for a way to innovate its wastewater treatment system, Gross and Wen decided to pivot with its Revolving Algal Biofilm system (RAB).
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“The way nature deals with too much nitrogen and phosphorus is to grow algae,” Gross said. “We control that in our system, so when the wastewater leaves, the algae has removed all the nitrogen and phosphorus from it. What we’re really doing is industrializing what nature already does to nitrogen and phosphorus.”
Gross-Wen’s RAB system can be added on to the existing systems cities already have in place, allowing them to keep their infrastructure while complying with stricter EPA regulations covering nitrogen and phosphorus in the water. The biomass in RAB can also be used to help create biofuels, plastics and fertilizers that are less damaging to the environment.
Blooming opportunities
Gross-Wen Technologies was part of the inaugural cohort for the ISU Startup Factory in Ames, which Gross said helped him and Wen learn how to run a company.
Since then, the company has raised $2 million to deploy its tech, including $800,000 in SBIR grants. Gross-Wen also won the Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition in 2017.
Cities are thinking green
Gross-Wen has a demonstration facility underway in Chicago, and another in the northern Iowa town of Cresco. Gross-Wen’s hometown of Ames will also be a pilot city.
“To actually sell a wastewater treatment system requires a lot of regulatory approval, which we recently got from the Iowa DNR,” Gross said. “We should have our first commercial installation in spring 2019, which will be in a small town in Iowa.”
Gross said the company will focus on Iowa locations first, then expand regionally. He sees RAB wastewater treatment system as something that can be expanded nationally over time.
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Joe Lawler is a freelance reporter based in Des Moines.
