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Every year in the U.S., the equivalent of 170,000 Mississippi Rivers' worth of untreated sewage gets dumped into lakes and rivers due to aging infrastructure and unpredictable storms.
That's according to Rapid Radicals Technology (RRT), a Milwaukee water startup that's working to change that statistic.
The company was founded by Paige Peters and came out of a project she worked on as a Marquette University civil engineering graduate student. Through that research, Peters established proof of concept for the high-rate wastewater treatment technology she's now working to commercialize through Rapid Radicals.
Once that critical proof came in 2016, showing that the university's technology could effectively treat wastewater in less than 30 minutes compared with the hours it typically takes, her adviser encouraged her to start a company around it — something Peters had never previously considered.
"I got into engineering because I wanted to have a skill to contribute to society," Peters said. "I had no idea my life would look like this."
Peters is motivated by her recognition that the problem of sewer overflows and related basement backups is more than a business opportunity or an engineering challenge, or even an environmental threat. It's a socio-economic issue, too, she said.
"Everyone's downstream is someone else's upstream," Peters said. "I'm an engineer by training, but this is the reason we do it."
The technology: A decentralized wastewater treatment system that will provide a reliable and cost-effective solution for eliminating sewer overflows during intense storms, RRT said. It combines rapid solids removal and an advanced oxidation process to remove organics and disinfect harmful bacteria and viruses, achieving 90% pollutant removal in less than 30 minutes.
How it makes money: RRT said it will manufacture, implement, commission and operate pilot-scale units, generating service-based revenue. Upon identifying a sublicensing equipment manufacturer, key revenue streams will be a flat-rate sublicensing fee, royalties on the sale of the systems, and subcontracted consulting work on the design, build and implementation.
Size of the market: The company said its target customers are the 850 U.S. municipalities that have a combined sewer system, where stormwater and sanitary wastewater is conveyed in the same pipe. It's initially targeting Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Seattle, representing a beachhead market of $84 million.
There is a future opportunity for RRT to target industrial customers, particularly in the pharmaceutical, brewing and food processing industries, the company added.
Competitive advantage: The Rapid Radicals system maintains the quality and reliability of conventional biological treatment at a faster rate and for a lower price than its high-rate treatment competition, the company said.
RRT's technology fits into a smaller unit that reduces tank costs and fits into constrained urban and industrial footprints. It's also modular and can be implemented at a treatment plant to provide additional treatment capacity or remotely in the sewer service area to treat discharge at sewer outfalls.
Competition: Existing high-rate treatment technologies (direct competitors) and wastewater storage solutions (indirect competitors). Other high-rate treatment technologies only accomplish 50-75% pollutant removal, and storage solutions are more expensive, require up to 14 hours of treatment and have a finite capacity, Rapid Radicals said.
Technology it could disrupt: The conventional municipal wastewater management approach of treating stormwater and sewage at large, centralized treatment plants using a biological treatment process.
Key company leaders: Founder and CEO Paige Peters, chief operating officer Will Schanen, part-time business development strategist Dylan Waldhuetter
Advisers: Lead technical adviser Daniel Zitomer of Marquette University, technical adviser Leon Downing of Black & Veatch and legal counsel Joseph Miotke of DeWitt LLP
Investors: None
Capital raised: About $1.34 million in grant funding from sources including the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs through the National Science Foundation, and the Wisconsin Center for Technology Commercialization. The company said it has a cash runway through the end of 2023.
Ideal exit: Rapid Radicals said it doesn't intend to exit the market in the near future. If it took on venture capital, its ideal exit strategy would be a technology license acquisition by its sublicensed equipment manufacturer, the company said.
Company name: Rapid Radicals Technology LLC
Headquarters: Milwaukee
Year founded: 2016
CEO: Paige Peters
No. of employees: 2
Website: rapidradicals.com
