Los Alamos Wastewater Spinoff

Los Alamos National Laboratory spinoff IX Power Clean Water and specializes in the design and manufacturing of portable and on-site machines for scrubbing and filtering the wastewater that is pulled from oil and gas wells

A company started from technology generated at Los Alamos National Laboratory is poised to take its machines that clean water around the world.

The firm is called IX Power Clean Water and specializes in the design and manufacturing of portable and on-site machines for scrubbing and filtering the wastewater that is pulled from oil and gas wells.

The innovation comes at a time when the energy industry is generating trillions of gallons of contaminated water each year, some of it in California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and the Middle East, where drought and scarcity is taking its toll on groundwater.
The innovation also comes at a time when fracking technologies, which inject massive amounts of water and other liquids into oil wells to loosen and mine deposits, is taking hold around the United States.

“The timing is good right now,” said Randall Wilson, chief financial officer for the company, which has offices in Golden, Colo., Los Alamos, Albuquerque, Washington, D.C., London and China. “Water is becoming an issue in terms of access, it’s becoming more scarce. If we can clean the water and use it, we’ve started to address that concern.”

The company got a boost last week with the addition of former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, who joined the board of directors.
Domenici specialized in water and energy issues when he represented New Mexico in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009.

He called IX Power’s process for cleaning water on site “disruptive technology” that can substantially change the oil and gas industry. “Nobody thought this was possible, except for the scientists,” Domenici said.

The filtering, which effectively removes 99 percent of the contaminants, such as benzene, aluminum, iron and copper, does not currently meet the standards for drinking water, but what is processed can be used for industry and agriculture.

It also might be able to reduce the amount of water being trucked into well sites by tanker trucks. Domenici said the company is still learning and changing its technology as it goes forward. “Sometimes if you can’t go the last step, you’ll do nothing,” he said.
In related news, Recycled oil field wastewater is clean, Chevron test results show.

Founder and chief executive John R. Deal said IX Power Clean Water has orders pending in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Bolivia and Kazakhstan.

The company has 30 employees, but he expects to have around 250 in 18 months. “We’re ready for takeoff,” he said.

The technology itself took some seven years to develop as a partnership between LANL, the University of Texas and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Yet, the underlying concept is fairly simple.

“Sometimes I tell people we’re plumbers,” Deal said. “We spend a lot of time working to get water from point A to point B.”

When the company was created in 2011 as a technology-transfer spin-off, several groups helped with seed money, including Technology Ventures Corp. as well as private angel investors in New Mexico. The company also has a not-for-profit foundation that backs clean-water education initiatives and provides speakers.

The current technology can treat water for 26 to 48 cents per barrel. The success will depend on the company’s ability to customize each job site with the necessary processing and filtering. There is not one out-of-the-box solution to water treatment. “It depends on where it came from and how it’s used,” Deal said.

The basic machine can be towed behind a pickup, which was demonstrated last week at a preview event at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. On site it can be scaled up tenfold.

Deal has more than 20 years’ experience in technology commercialization and founded seven firms based on Department of Energy technologies. He has been a visiting entrepreneur at LANL, helping others with business development, and also teaches product development in Russia and Kazakhstan.

But the lesson he has learned in this startup and others is not necessarily about technology or funding.
“Persistence,” he said. “Plenty of times it didn’t work.”

Source: Bakken

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Taxonomy

• Industrial Wastewater Treatment
• Wastewater Treatment
• Wastewater Collection