Industry perspectives: Startups and niche markets

Silica-necting the dots to clean water

A conversation with Greg Newbloom, founder and CEO of Membrion

“Electroceramic desalination for harsh industrial wastewater” is the sort of phrase that would not exactly have drawn a crowd at a party a generation ago. But in today’s sustainability-savvy world, Greg Newbloom and his team have a hot topic in play.

Newbloom is founder and CEO of Membrion, a Seattle-based startup focused on the reclamation of industrial wastewater. Their patented filtration and reclamation systems aim to eliminate unnecessary pre-treatment stages, offering a simplified and tailored solution for wastewater treatment.

A fresh perspective, a new opportunity

Newbloom says the Membrion team invented their solution for industrial wastewater treatment while pursuing a solution for a different application.

“Initially, we were trying to develop a membrane for use within redox flow batteries,” Newbloom says. “The membranes they use have to be in these really harsh environments with lots of acids and oxidizers. Most materials break down, and we were trying to find an alternative material that could withstand these really challenging applications.”

That path led to silica gel materials such as those used to maintain freshness in packaging and that are very good at absorbing water.

“They have molecular-size pores,” Newbloom says. “So instead of having those little silica gel beads, we made full sheets of it. We control the size of the pores and the surface chemistry, and that optimization made the sheets able to withstand these really harsh environments.”

These silica sheets became a solution in search of an alternate problem.

“While these new batteries are unique and interesting, they’re still very young in their commercialization cycle,” Newbloom says. “So as a business, we really needed to look at other applications that could benefit from those same use cases. That’s how we made our way into the water sector. We basically will remove anything that is ionic from the water stream.”

Membrion’s first full commercial system is now in operation, being used to treat wastewater for a microelectronics manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon. The solution is deployed under a “water treatment as a service” model, which means that in exchange for a fee-per-treated-gallon rate, Membrion handles water treatment operations for its customers.

Two more systems are expected to go online during the third quarter of 2024. For now, the company is focused on the North American market, but it is seeing demand for the product in Europe and Asia and may begin exploring those markets in the next year or two.

Tapping AI for data-driven performance

Like most companies, Membrion generates a high volume of data related to its processes and results monitoring. Newbloom notes that facilities do not always have a firm grasp on what their wastewater contains. With that in mind, the team is in the early stages of building datasets that can, via artificial intelligence and machine learning, increase customers’ usage and waste predictability to optimize the system’s performance. The long-term vision also includes enabling circularity of critical materials.

“In a lot of cases, we’re working with valuable metals in these wastewater streams—things like copper, cobalt, nickel—so there is value in being able to recover the water and those metals and return both back to the value chain,” Newbloom says. “That’s where our customers get their cost savings and their return on investment for leveraging our system today. And in the long run, we will partner with existing technologies to valorize these metals and return those back to the supply chain as well.”

Aiming for growth (talent pool permitting)

Newbloom says that Membrion has the production capacity in play to scale as demand grows and that “nothing outside of labor prevents us from producing more of these.”

“Our membranes are produced roll in our facility, which is a high-volume production method, so from a production rate standpoint, we’re not limited in the amount we can produce,” he says. “But as we grow and scale, getting access to incredible people is always hard. They’re in high demand for good reason.”
Newbloom anticipates that sales and field services will be the two biggest growth areas in the coming 12–18 months, and he believes the company’s sustainability strength will be a lure for people who want to “have a bigger impact—that’s something that we certainly lean into as we recruit people.”

Learn more about Membrion’s current projects and future goals at https://membrion.com.

---

Additive advances and ambitions

A conversation with Ryan Bock, vice president of research and development at SINTX Technologies

SINTX Technologies (Salt Lake City, Utah) develops ceramic materials, components, and technologies that historically have been marketed to the medical sector; the company notes that “its products have been implanted in humans since 2008.”

A leader in silicon nitride research and development, it has in recent years moved into additional lines of business by way of a series of acquisitions and partnerships. Today, its research facilities in Utah and Maryland are concentrated on three areas of focus: additive manufacturing of advanced ceramics and composites; traditional production of high-performance silicon nitride, biomedical, and aerospace components; and development of complex thermal barrier coatings for aerospace and energy applications.

Additive technology multiplies R&D options

“The potential with printing ceramics is a huge focus. We’re investing quite a bit in advancing our capabilities in that area in particular,” says Ryan Bock, vice president of research and development at SINTX.

Currently, the company can print alumina, zirconia, and silica ceramics. But SINTX is working to advance the capabilities to print other ceramics, such as silicon nitride.

“We subtractively manufacture silicon nitride parts today. That’s really the foundation of our company. We have traditionally done that with biomedical parts, in particular spine implants—more than 40,000 worldwide,” says Bock.

As SINTX seeks new market opportunities for its silicon nitride, it is zeroing in on what Bock calls “quality-stringent areas or industries, such as aerospace.” Areas of expanded investment and R&D activity include complex thermal barrier coatings and ceramic matrix composites. The company has been pursuing collaborations with other companies and government entities in support of its expansion plans.
Like many companies targeting substantial growth, SINTX has encountered challenges in recruiting and retaining the talent it needs.

“There are not enough people to go around, and there are no magic bullets,” Bock says.

Although the company does not recruit from specific schools, Bock says SINTX holds schools with a special focus on ceramic engineering “in high esteem,” and staff members in R&D and operations “are charged to stay in close contact with programs and key professors” at their alma maters.

Results begin with customer collaboration

Another common challenge is balancing the time demands of new solution development on one hand and post-launch customer support on the other. SINTX has adopted the strategy of bringing customers into the R&D process “as far along as they can get on the front end and bring them as far along as possible” to minimize restarts, Bock says.

That customer orientation extends to the company’s approach to sustainability, and customer requirements regarding sustainability often reflect existing and emerging industry or regulatory requirements.

“We do the testing that the customers require of us, whether it be in that area or another,” Bock says. “And we want to do what we can to make a positive impact right at a grand scale level. The great thing about our ceramic materials is that they have inherent benefits versus nonceramic materials, such as metals and polymers.”

On June 18, 2024, SINTX announced that its board of directors had “initiated a process to explore potential strategic options” and had retained Ascendiant Capital Markets, LLC as “exclusive strategic advisor” to the board in this process.¹

On Aug. 6, 2024, SINTX announced the retirement of B. Sonny Bal as president and chief executive officer.² He is succeeded in both roles by Eric K. Olson, who is described in the announcement as having been a “serial founder and entrepreneur in a broad range of medical device, diagnostic, biologic, and biomaterial companies” for more than 30 years. Bal remains chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Learn more about SINTX’s capabilities and plans for the future at https://sintx.com.

Return to main article: “United States of America: Market giant with great expectations“