Smart Sponge Taking Market by Storm

Interview with Abtech Founder, Chairman and CEO Glenn Rink, to Learn More About Their Technology and the Momentum of Their Strategic Growth

Stormwater runoff isaleading sourceof pollutantscarryinga mix of toxic chemicals, vehicle emissions, disease-causing pathogens, and more. It hasn't been until recently that the EPA and government bodies started addressing this crisis with more urgency.

Local municipalities across the USare now figuring out various ways to help fund proper stormwater treatment, investing anywhere from hundreds of millions to multi-billions of dollars to improve their infrastructure to meet environmental standards.

One company that's been ahead of the curve on this trend is AbTech Holdings, Inc. , whose Smart Sponge® technology provides a cost-effective and scalable solution that is easily integrated into existing infrastructure. The company has already announced multiple ongoing projects that could serve as an inflection point to its growth trajectory and market adoption. While the company has significant inroads into the stormwater space, it's also well positioned to capitalize on demands from the oil and gas market, especially with the growth in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), as well as industrial wastewater treatment.

equities.com had the opportunity to speak with Glenn Rink, Founder, Chairman and CEO of AbTech Holdings to learn more about their technology and the momentum of their strategic growth.

EQ: Can you provide us with a brief overview of AbTech Holdings and its operations?

Rink: AbTech stands for absorption technology, and AbTech Holdings is a company that has developed intellectual property that has leveragability in a number of different market segments and also has a subsidiary engineering firm called AEWS Engineering.

The core technology of AbTech Holdings is called Smart Sponge®, and it's smart because it has the ability to be chemically selective in drawing contaminants out of water. The Smart Sponge technology is highly useful in almost every type of water application other than drinking water. We apply the technology in the treatment of stormwater, produced water, oil and gas, fracking, industrial process water, and basically anywhere there's a flowing form of water that gets contaminated. We also have an amazing ability to draw-out hydrocarbons from water.

Our technology removes contaminants quickly and efficiently, which is the reason we call it Smart Sponge. Not only is this technology chemically selective, but once it draws the contaminants and hydrocarbons out, it turns it into a solid. And unlike a traditional sponge, regardless of any amount of pressure you apply to it, you cannot pull the oil back out. We do have a proprietary process to retrieve the oil, but in the field the captured oil will not wash off or leach off.

EQ: Is your technology and intellectual property protected?

Rink: We have 17 patents on this technology, and we've also modified the Smart Sponge so that we can go after bacteria in stormwater and industrial process water. The ability to remove bacteria out of the water without electricity or moving parts is unprecedented, and we have several patents on the anti-microbial version of the Smart Sponge. More recently, we secured a complimentary technology that allows us to remove heavy metals out of water and that is particularly important when addressing contaminants like Selenium, Arsenic, Cadmium to name a few, which can be very costly and difficult to remove from water.

EQ: How does AEWS Engineering fit into your business model?

Rink: AEWS is our engineering subsidiary firm. It is a specialized consulting and design engineering company focusing particularly on stormwater. The firm that will go into any kind of municipality or private facility, evaluate their stormwater issues and identify the best solutions. Depending on the need, those solutions could utilize a variety of technologies from many companies. If bacteria is a problem, AbTech's Smart Sponge Plus can be part of the solution. AEWS was recently awarded the stormwater engineering work in the Prince George's County project that is being run by Corvias Solutions - the biggest stormwater public-private partnership in the country. Also, the engineering firm has collaborated with North Carolina State University on developing best management practices and deployed many in the field that are undergoing monitoring or have completed tests and been published. It's a very exciting time for us.

EQ: As you stated, there are multiple markets that your Smart Sponge solutions can address. Each one of these areas can range from multimillion to potentially billions of dollars in terms of the market potential. Can you kind of give us a breakdown in terms of the scope of those target markets that you're addressing right now?

Rink: You're right. Each of these markets is huge and some have the capability to be billion-dollar market opportunities in the very near term, some of them are already in multi-millions of dollars. We know oil and gas is a massive market opportunity that is just beginning.

However, the market we've commercialized the most so far is stormwater, which is the water produced when rain hits the surface of the road and washes all the nasty stuff off. The contaminants can be made up of drippings from cars, animal fecal matter, but mostly it's a lot of emissions from cars and other vehicles. All that builds up and the longer it accumulates with no rain, the build-up increases even more. Then, when it does finally rain, the road gets very slippery and can even cause cars to hydroplane. Eventually, all of this stormwater ends up in our flood control devices which feed to our oceans, rivers and streams.

The rainwater that first washes off impervious surfaces into our oceans, rivers and streams, is what the EPA calls the first flush. Generally, the rule of thumb is that the first 10% of all rainfall from storms washes off 90% of the contaminants from the roads into our flood-control devices. Our technology is a highly cost-effective solution to help address that problem.

The EPA has considered that 40-60% of the pollution contaminating our waters comes from stormwater runoff. Some say it's an even higher percentage than that. So being able to treat it is a mandate that cities, towns, counties and even commercial and industrial customers have to deal with. There are numerous customers and entities throughout the country who are actually being charged various stormwater utility taxes or fees. The state of Maryland, for example, passed the first ever rain tax. It's about $39 per person per year to help pay for stormwater treatment. But this is an evolving marketplace that is growing rapidly. It's a problem that every community has, particularly those around bodies of water.

EQ: How does the technology work?

Rink: When we manufacture Smart Sponge, it comes out looking like popcorn. It's produced through an extrusion process where we can mold it into any shape or size. We know the ideal shapes that the molded popcorn works most effectively. For some application we use the Smart Pak® that happens to look very similar to a second base (baseball). It's a square with dimensions to fit in the filter designed for each specific application. It's also modular, so you stack 15, 20 or even hundreds of Smart Paks in a particular site.

The large majority of the drains you see in the streets feed into pipes that eventually lead to an ocean, river or stream. Very few pipes, except in some of the older cities, go into a wastewater treatment plant. Since our technology can be molded in various shapes and sizes we can actually put it in existing drains or, where we like using it most, at the end of the pipe where we can deploy Smart Sponge less expensively to filter the water just before it is discharged into rivers, lakes or oceans. We originally focused on hydrocarbon removal and also bacteria. Going forward we are adding the capability to address heavy metals which we hope to have available in the near future.

As I mentioned, our technology does not require electricity, and there are no moving parts. On average, in a residential neighborhood or an average site, you can anticipate the Smart Sponge life cycle lasting anywhere from three-to-seven years. We've got retail outlets and shopping centers that have had installations last for more than 10 years without the need to replace this filtration media. Conversely, we've had airports and military bases that have used the Smart Sponge to effectively clean up spills requiring yearly replacement of the Smart Sponge. Replacement cycle depends on the level of contamination.

The Smart Sponge is easily deployed and usually costs only a few hundred dollars per site for an average catch basin or end of pipe installation. Pricing varies significantly based on size and scope. It's a very effective technology and inexpensive. We've been ahead of the curve for a long time and we're finally gaining market traction. So we're very excited about the fact that we are so well positioned as this huge market is now coming to a head.

About AbTech

AbTech Industries Inc. (a subsidiary of Abtech Holdings Inc.) is a full-service environmental technologies and engineering firm dedicated to providing innovative solutions to communities, industry, and governments addressing issues of water pollution and contamination.

Source and full interview: Equities.com

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• Solutions & Services
• Technology
• Stormwater