Battelle has spun out a startup whose PFAS Annihilator system breaks down the so-called "forever" pollutant that's ubiquitous in drinking water, food, even household dust – and detectable in most humans' blood.
Revive Environmental Technology LLC already has a long waitlist of customers and could generate tens of millions in revenue this year, CEO David Trueba said. He was recruited to lead the startup from Pittsburgh-based Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE: AQUA).
"This is an area where I've got a personal passion, since my first job as a chemist," Trueba said in an interview.
"To be able to empower cities and communities to eliminate this (PFAS) problem – it's huge," he said. "We get to build a company from the ground up. We're going to be scaling across North America (over) the next two years."
Viking Global Investors, a Connecticut firm that focuses on healthcare and environmental technology, invested an undisclosed amount of cash in the joint venture with Battelle. The ownership breakdown also was not disclosed.
The startup expects to grow to about 20 jobs this year, mostly in Columbus, and each system creates five jobs where it's deployed.
The Columbus nonprofit research organization transferred the intellectual property to the startup and provides office and manufacturing space in Columbus; Revive also can contract with Battelle scientists an engineers at reduced rates for specific projects.
Viking also was one of two investors in Battelle's $200 million spinout of biotech research organization AmplifyBio LLC. The firm declined to comment. Unlike that deal, Battelle is not spinning out staff with Revive.
A partner such as Viking can get a product to market quickly at large scale once Battelle develops a technology to a form that can be commercialized, said Matt Vaughan, executive vice president of Battelle’s Applied Science & Technology group.
"Battelle would prefer to put its capital into the community in the form of its philanthropy," Vaughan said. "As part owner in the company, we would expect to have great return to Battelle, which of course allows us to fulfill our mission in the community."
How Revive treats handy but harmful chemicals
PFAS (trust us, you don't want it spelled out) comprise some 5,000 manufactured chemicals that since the 1940s have been used in things such as nonstick cookware coatings, food wrappers, stain repellents and waterproofing for carpet and fabric, personal and household cleaners, and the foam used in putting out fires.
More has been learned in the last two decades about harmful health effects of the chemicals, including links to infertility and some cancers. PFAS don't break down and thus build up in the environment.
Revive's "competition" is current methods to treat the waste: Incinerate it, which sends it into the air, or bury it in landfills or deep underground.
"It’s very, very hard to dispose of and get rid of – which is why Revive is so exciting," Trueba said. "We have technology where we can actually destroy PFAS and not just move it around."
Over the past five years, Battelle scientists and engineers worked with a decades-old process for accelerating chemical reactions – essentially a gigantic high-tech pressure cooker – and designed a way for it to work safely and economically to break the tough carbon-fluorine bonds in PFAS.
"Battelle makes things that look simple in retrospect that require a lot of complexity to get there," Vaughan said. "We look for problems that are really, really hard."
Two shipping containers, one an office and the other for the equipment, go to a site so contaminants aren't shipped cross-country. Revive plans to build five systems in the second half of this year, and would grow with demand, Trueba said.
Contaminated water goes in; deionized water and salts come out, including useful ones. If there are small amounts of sulfur-containing compounds or leftover PFAS, they can be extracted and treated, or re-treated in the system.
"No one can do what we do right now," Trueba said. "I would consider us a first mover in the space."
Revive also has a complementary Battelle-invented product that uses a solvent to extract PFAS from activated carbon filters. That means the filters can be re-used, such as at water treatment plants, and the extract treated in Annihilator.
The first target market is fire departments seeking to treat used fire suppression foam. A department in North Carolina was the beta tester. Next are landfills, which need to treat hundreds of thousands of gallons of leachate created when rainwater seeps through trash and picks up PFAS.
The federal infrastructure law passed last year incudes $10 billion for PFAS cleanup.
Trueba (pronounced TREY-bah) was most recently a vice president and general manager of the Pro-Act Environmental Solutions Division of Evoqua, which makes filtration, disinfection and other systems for water and wastewater treatment plants.
He previously worked at Adams Rite Aerospace, Entek International LLC and Celanese. He has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Texas A&M University and MBA from University of Texas-Dallas. Trueba plans to move to Central Ohio.
Battelle had about $11 billion revenue in 2022, the majority from managing federal research labs nationwide. The research giant has greatly increased its commercialization activity in recent years, which Vaughan attributed to focusing on promising markets and landing adequate capital to stand up companies.
