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Monday, July 05, 2010
Success Flows From Innovation
By Michael Hartranft
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal Journal Staff Writer
It's called the world's most precious resource, but in too many places around the world, it can't be trusted.
In fact, unsanitary drinking water contributes to more deaths than AIDS and a host of other diseases.
But an Albuquerque company has been building an international reputation behind its innovative, cost-effective technology to do something about it — and opening doors, in the process, to a multitude of business opportunities.
From miniaturized water purifiers for soldiers, campers and hikers to portable, disinfectant generators that can treat millions of gallons of water, MIOX Corp. products can already be found across the U.S. and in more than 30 countries.
Just this April, the local government of Chiapas, Mexico, selected MIOX to supply 175 water systems with its disinfection technology, which will ultimately benefit thousands of residents in the poor Mexican state. Three months earlier, the company delivered eight portable purification systems to Haiti, providing thousands of gallons of virus and bacteria-free water to areas devastated by the earthquake. Similar support was provided in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.
The applications go beyond drinking water.
MIOX products are also in use for commercial swimming pools, military and cruise ships, food processing and the beverage industry, or like in the case of Cloudcroft, N.M., an indirect potable water reuse system.
'... by doing good'
"Doing well by doing good," is how MIOX chief executive officer — and Albuquerque native — Carlos Perea describes the company's successes so far.
Headquartered on Balloon Fiesta Park Loop in north Albuquerque, MIOX employs about 65 people. Its sales and marketing staff of eight has offices in Philadelphia.
"We've managed to get really good traction with our public drinking water systems," Perea said. "The next step is to find a much larger partner who can dominate that market and then move ourselves into other markets."
That could come soon. Perea said the company may be just weeks away from announcing a partnership with a major multinational distributor.
"Right, wrong or indifferent, there's no Fortune 1000 companies in New Mexico," Perea said. "There's a couple that have tried, but we think we're the best-positioned company to emerge as a large, not only national, but international-scale company in the water and environmental sector.
"We know we have a great technology... it's been around a while, but it's proven. But more importantly, we've attracted world class investors — very successful investors from the Silicon Valley as well as New Mexico — which has allowed us to attract a group of world class executives."
MIOX actually was conceived about 15 years ago inside another company, the New Mexico-based Los Alamos Technical Associates.
"The original concept was the military was looking to replace chlorine gas from water treatment," Perea said.
Removing the chlorine
The traditional chlorination process — the "gold standard" in water treatment —was introduced in the U.S. more than a century ago and rid public water supplies of some of the most dangerous water-borne diseases, such as typhoid and cholera.
But it has some major drawbacks, Perea said, starting with the safety risks of transporting and storing the chlorine gas and bulk bleach used in the process.
"The problem with having gas chlorine in a military application is if you have a leak, by accident or by deliberate means, it's really toxic," Perea said.
The company's answer: A far safer purification process that involves a "twist on electrolysis," mixing water with salt and then shooting it with an electric current.
"We convert the salt into a safe, but powerful, disinfection solution," Perea said.
The solution is then injected into the water at an appropriate treatment level to destroy all the pathogenic microorganisms.
Perea joined MIOX in 2005 after assembling a group of investors that acquired a controlling interest in the company to focus on commercializing its technologies. He previously was president of the alternative energy technology firm, Qynergy, and chief financial officer for Novalux, a semiconductor laser company. He also worked for years with Intel, holding a variety of operations management and marketing roles.
Today, MIOX has better than 18 patents and another 20 or so pending.
Scalable purifiers
Its smallest purifier — the MIOX Purifier — is a flashlight-size device intended for soldiers or individuals who camp or hike. The pen, as it is called, uses two 3-volt lithium camera batteries, common salt and a small electrolytic cell to create a solution that can treat up to four gallons of water with a single dose. Nearly 100,000 devices, which can be used over and over again, have been made, mostly for the military. It retails for about $140.
MIOX's on-site disinfection generators can achieve the same results on a much larger scale with the same basic technology. Built into stainless steel enclosures, the systems combine salt, water and electrolysis to generate thousands of gallons of purification solution on site as needed, which can then be injected into a large water system to make it EPA safe.
"The key is what goes on inside that is really complicated," Perea said. "There's an inlet and outlet and a titanium plate that has precious metal coatings. There's a lot of science into how we flow and control the system. All of the technological development and know-how originates here."
Perea said creating disinfectant on site is not only safer than transporting and storing chlorine, but is also cost-effective: A return on investment typically is realized in a year to three years.
MIOX has deployed about 1,700 of the on-site generators, which can treat from 10,000 gallons a day to upwards of 100 million gallons a day and range in price from $500,000 to well over $1 million. A system in Florida is treating more than 20 million gallons a day, another in South Carolina more than 60 million. A number of New Mexico communities also employ MIOX systems, including Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Rio Rancho.
Municipalities remain part of the MIOX customer mix, he said.
Unexpected uses
"But what we've found as we've deployed our systems is a lot of applications we didn't anticipate," he said.
A cruise ship with the Celebrity line, for example, was using MIOX for its drinking water and swimming pools.
"Then they started asking, well, what about if we used it to disinfect or wipe down our surface to sterilize them?" Perea said.
He said a test done with Reckett Benckiser, the international company behind Lysol, showed the MIOX disinfectant to be 10 more powerful than Lysol and other household disinfectants.
"Imagine this as a concept: Take a bottle filled with tap water, fill it with ordinary salt, press a button and in a couple of minutes you have a spray solution," Perea said.
One of its customer targets is hospitals, which wage a constant battle against hospital-acquired infections.
"We're going through the regulatory approval right now for hospital settings in Europe and the U.S.," Perea said.
The list of customers continues to grow: Coca-Cola in Colombia employs a MIOX system to purify the water for its overall processes, while its bottler in Mexico followed suit with a MIOX system to sterilize its bottle-washing process. Systems can also be found in China and Japan.
More locally, MIOX products are in use at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort at Santa Ana Pueblo, the Radisson Hotel and Water Park-Albuquerque and the pool at Perea's high school alma mater, Albuquerque Academy.
Perea foresees the trajectory for MIOX continuing to move upward.
"I expect us to be a pretty solid employer," Perea said. "Maybe not thousands, but you will see us grown from 60-70 to several hundred over the next couple of years."
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