An Oberlin startup company is plying local connections, including the Cleveland Water Alliance, to land a share of the multibillion-dollar market to remove “forever chemicals” from the nation’s drinking water.
Three generations of the Flood family – Dennis J., Dennis M., and Cody – are principals at CoreWater Technologies, Inc., which has drawn $2.9 million in private investment so far. The company formed in 2019 to launch and license a chemical coating process that captures PFAS – poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances – and isolates them for destruction during water treatment.
Thousands of the “forever chemicals” are a public health threat because of their long-lasting and widespread nature. Nearly everyone has at least traces of the synthetic chemicals in their bodies due to their use in a familiar array of water-resistant, stain-resistant and non-stick products, including carpeting, clothing, cookware, cosmetics, electronics and packaging.
Earlier this year, an Ideastream special report detailed why and how PFAS taint Ohio and the Great Lakes. Studies suggest PFAS are linked to increased cholesterol levels, increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer, decreases in infant birth weights, decreased vaccine response in children and increased risk of high blood pressure or preeclampsia in pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued stringent limits for six PFAS in drinking water. The low parts-per-trillion standards, equivalent to just drops of water in 20 olympic-sized swimming pools, will reduce PFAS exposure for approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses, according to the EPA.
Water utilities must complete initial monitoring for PFAS by 2027. If they detect PFAS above the new EPA standards, utilities must have PFAS-removal systems in place by 2029. The American Water Works Association, representing water utilities nationwide, said its members will need to spend several billion dollars a year to meet the standards. Locally, the Akron water system has estimated that treatment for PFAS could cost up to $40 million to install and $7 million yearly to operate, according to an Ideastream story last April.
The AWWA and others sued the EPA over the new regulations in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Washington, D.C., Circuit. While the lawsuits play out, the new standards and deadlines have sparked innovation and investment in a variety of technologies and companies that aim to treat and destroy PFAS in the nation’s drinking water.
Core of the PFAS problem
CoreWater is testing its patented process as it expands office space and adds pricey laboratory equipment in Oberlin Industrial Park. CoreWater’s process calls for multiple chemical coatings of granular activated carbon, or GAC. Large basins or vessels of GAC are widely used at water treatment plants to filter contaminants from drinking water but are not foolproof in removing PFAS, testing shows.
The thin coatings applied to GAC create a patented composite material that CoreWater calls Core+. Filtering water through beds of Core+ at the tail end of a utility’s water treatment would capture, or adsorb, PFAS at levels that meet the new EPA standards, CoreWater officials said. The beds are rinsed with a specialized solution so that the PFAS are isolated in wastewater, which can be treated in a variety of ways to destroy the PFAS. Importantly, the beds of Core+ composite material can be reused.
CoreWater calls its process ARID, an acronym for adsorb, rinse/remove, isolate and destroy. The startup company was developing a technology to destroy PFAS but dropped those plans in favor of teaming up with destruction-technology companies.
“We looked at the landscape of things in PFAS destruction,” President and CEO Dennis M. Flood said. “There are already several technologies that were well ahead of where we were.”
CoreWater is in discussion with several PFAS-destruction companies as potential partners to do pilot testing of the CoreWater process. That includes Enspired Solutions, a Lansing, Michigan, company introduced to CoreWater by Cleveland Water Alliance, a nonprofit promoting the region’s water-based economy. CWA has been a key partner, paying for CoreWater to attend a statewide venture capital event in 2023 that led to CoreWater landing $1.3 million in private investment.
CWA is “particularly excited” about CoreWater because of its use of GAC to create a composite material that can be reused, said Emily Hamilton, CWA’s Innovation Advocate/Deal Flow Analyst.
GAC “is such a ubiquitous filtration media in the drinking water world,’’ Hamilton said. “Having a solution for PFAS concentration that can be used so widely is really powerful.”
CoreWater is among more than two dozen companies worldwide engaged in the detection, removal and destruction of PFAS that CWA is tracking for a potential economic impact in Northeast Ohio, Hamilton said.
“There is significant market opportunity, globally, around the management of PFAS,” she said.
CWA acts to attract new business with assets such as its Lake Erie watershed test bed, a network of buoy-mounted sensors that can be used to test new technologies in real time.
“On top of that, we can connect you to manufacturers here,” said Ebie Holst, CWA’s director of Innovation & Clusters. Adding jobs and growing the local economy while addressing global water challenges like PFAS aligns with CWA’s mission, she said.
CWA is also a networking hub for companies tackling different aspects of PFAS removal. In that vein, it was CWA Executive Director and President Bryan Stubbs who met Enspired Solutions executives at a London water-technology conference in December 2023 and put them in touch with CoreWater, Hamilton said.
Testing the concept
CoreWater officials hope to test a prototype of their chemical process at a water-treatment plant within the year. Right now, CoreWater is working with APV Engineered Coatings in Akron to apply the chemical coatings to GAC and make ever-larger amounts of Core+.
“We’ve gone from making a few ounces in the lab … to where now APV is doing 10-pound batches for us and we’re moving into 100 pounds or more,” Flood said. CoreWater
must show companies that make granular activated carbon that producing Core+ in bulk is an “easy add-on” to their manufacturing processes, Flood said.
“The idea is that we would license our technology to the large (GAC) companies who are already servicing water utilities,” Flood said. “We are not looking to be a full-scale manufacturer.”
CoreWater is “column testing” Core+ by packing it in the center section of three, 2 1/2-foot-long quartz tubes and running PFAS-laden water through them. CoreWater officials will look to see how well PFAS is removed and how long it takes the Core+ material to be completely adsorbed with PFAS, which is called the “breakthrough time.” At a water treatment plant, that time would signal when the Core+ material should be rinsed and readied for reuse.
“We’re under a pretty tight timeline to get our technology developed and scaled to the point where we are talking to large (GAC) producers about license deals,” Flood said.
CoreWater has four employees – three of them are related – and wants to double that by next summer. Dennis M. Flood, co-founder and president, is an Oberlin College grad with 20 years experience in high-tech startups. Dennis J. Flood, Dennis M.’s father, is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer whose career includes a stint as chief of the Photovoltaics and Space Environments Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center. Cody Flood, Dennis M.’s nephew and Dennis J.’s grandson, is Director of Research and has more than 10 years experience in analytical chemistry and materials science.
The Floods are aiming for more than just startup growth and success.
“One of the things that my father has always strived for in his career … is to do what's right for the environment,” Dennis M. said. “So we have adopted that kind of outlook. We are involved in the company not for the sole reason of making money … but we're doing something that is the right thing to do for the environment in trying to remediate PFAS.”
Raising money, rising competition
CoreWater is among PFAS-focused startups drawing millions of dollars in venture investment. Battelle, an applied science and technology nonprofit in Columbus, partnered with a global investment firm last year to launch Revive Environmental, a company offering an array of technologies and services to treat PFAS-tainted water. Terms were not disclosed. Aclarity, a Massachusetts-based startup, has secured more than $19 million to develop its PFAS-destruction technology. Puraffinity, based overseas in London, has raised $13.9 million for its PFAS-removal technology. Flood noted that CoreWater is in talks with Revive Environmental and Aclarity, as well as Enspired Solutions, about collaborations involving their destruction technologies.
Flood also named several competitors already in the water-treatment market with specialized resins or adsorbents that capture PFAS and, like Core+, can be reused. But CoreWater is not manufacturing a product, an advantage over those companies, Flood said. The chemical coatings of GAC can be done at plants that make GAC.
“We have access to the large-scale production,” Flood said. “It already exists. It’s a simple add-on of our … process to an activated-carbon plant.”
CoreWater officials are confident they can grab a piece of a huge market. Up to 6,700 public water systems serving 150 million people will be required to take action to address PFAS standards, according to the EPA. The agency estimates costs to meet the standards at more than $1.5 billion a year, though the AWWA says costs will be closer to $4 billion. CoreWater officials believe costs will go several times higher.
“Even at $4 billion a year in the U.S. alone,’’ Flood said, “that’s a big enough market. Not one company, not one technology is going to service that market.”
