Symbios Technologies LLCFort Collins, United States

Symbios Technologies has developed an unprecedented low-voltage aqueous plasma water treatment technology that can treat highly contaminated water at costs of at least an order of magnitude less than reverse osmosis and other systems. Symbios’ modular, continuous flow, energy-saving and portable technology efficiently eliminates pollutants in water without producing any secondary toxins and without the need for harmful chlorine. Our markets include RO pretreatment for the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries, industrial boiler feed water pretreatment, low-cost treatment of industrial wastewaters, Homeland Security and Department of Defense applications, drinking water, groundwater, biorefinery and anaerobic digestion wastewater treatment, Superfund site cleanup, and water purification during disaster recovery.

OUR COMPANY

Who We Are

Symbios Technologies is a privately-held startup technology company developing next-generation low-cost plasma water treatment technology. Our leadership team and Business & Scientific Advisory Board are seasoned experts with deep industry experience in water, wastewater, energy, finance, business, engineering, and plasma technology.

What We Do

Strengthened by initial technology development and vetting performed at a combination of institutions such as the University of Wisconsin, Colorado State University, and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and by its intellectual property portfolio, Symbios Technologies is developing the most scientifically-advanced low-cost aqueous plasma oxidation technology on the market today to clean water, preserve the environment, and protect human health.

Why We’re Different

The Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) utilizes a proprietary plasma-generating technology that employs nanotechnology and advanced engineering to produce plasma in water at voltages two to three orders of magnitude lower than was possible with previously developed plasma technologies. Symbios Technologies’s modular reactor is low in capital cost, reduces RO system O&M cost, and purifies difficult-to-treat and highly contaminated water at costs lower by orders of magnitude vs. competing technologies. Our systems are precisely what industry and governments demand: small, simple, low-cost, and performance-superior solutions that are flexible, robust, scalable, energy-saving, and most importantly, cost-effective.

The worldwide water treatment market is nearing a half trillion dollars annually, and the reverse osmosis (RO) market alone is over $3.5 billion per year and experiencing a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of 10%, despite the economic downturn. Symbios Technologies serves major segments of the worldwide water market with its advanced water treatment and purification technologies, including the RO market, the industrial input process water market, the industrial wastewater market, the defense and homeland security markets, oil and gas markets, disaster recovery markets, the drinking water treatment market, the groundwater treatment market, and the municipal wastewater treatment market.

We understand that industry faces a wide range of constant pressure from government regulations, environmental issues, and pressure to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint. Symbios Technologies enhances profitability by providing simple, effective solutions that require less energy, need less maintenance, and have the potential to outperform existing technologies in the outlined key markets. Symbios Technologies means the most effective water treatment with the lowest capital and maintenance costs possible.

While the food and beverage industry will be Symbios’ initial focus for RO pretreatment applications, the Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) has multiple commercial applications for new and/or retrofitted wastewater and potable water treatment plants as well as for a wide range of additional markets:

• Low-cost treatment of industrial wastewaters, including 
  pharmaceutical and other industrial plants
• Industrial boiler feed water pretreatment
• Department of Defense markets, including counter-terrorism, 
  counter-biowarfare, military bases and battlefield deployment
• Homeland Security efforts to protect domestic water supplies
• Water purification during disaster recovery such as after the 
  Haiti earthquakes, Katrina flooding, and Tennessee flooding
• EPA Superfund site cleanup
• Small and rural drinking water plants
• Municipal wastewater treatment plants
• Groundwater treatment
• Anaerobic digestion wastewater treatment
• Petroleum refineries and biorefineries including biodiesel 
  and ethanol plants
• Acid mine drainage sites
• On-site treatment of wastewater separated from oil and natural 
  gas production wells

TECHNOLOGY

The Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) features a continuous flow reactor (of significantly improved design) with patent-pending nanotechnology and advanced electrode improvements relative to the first-generation technology, previously proven by Symbios’ inventors to generate plasma and to treat organic pollutants and microorganisms effectively at 250 volts rather than the 20,000 to 30,000 volts required by other plasma technologies.

The high cost and ineffectiveness of current water treatment technologies present increasing technical and economic challenges to the food and beverage industry. Reverse osmosis (RO) technology was originally developed for desalination, but rapid developments have brought large price drops for RO systems over the past 15 years. Consequently, RO systems are now being considered as treatment systems for food and beverage plants, pharmaceutical plants, and boiler feed water for many industrial facilities because of their economic viability and ability to treat a wide range of contaminants. However, RO systems are plagued by high operations and maintenance costs due to persistent biofouling and clogging of their membranes.

The operation and maintenance of RO systems is not straightforward. The membranes in RO systems will easily foul (or plug) because of (1) biofilm growth; (2) aggregation of organic compounds; and (3) aggregation of inorganic particulates in the water. Biofilm growth and organic fouling are the most difficult problems to prevent in an RO system. If fouling problems are not continually monitored and attended to, the life of the RO system will be significantly shortened. Hence, an appropriate pre-treatment system should be installed ahead of the RO system. The complexity (and therefore the cost) of the pre-treatment system is dependent on the incoming water quality. Consequently, this pre-treatment can be as simple as a standard 5-μm filter, or as complex as a conventional flocculation/coagulation system or a microfiltration membrane system. In nearly all cases, chlorine is added to disinfect and control microbial growth in the system, but the water must then be de-chlorinated prior to reaching the RO membrane (normally with bisulfate or an activated carbon filter), thereby adding additional cost. Symbios’ Plasma Reactor provides a solution to these problems at minimal cost without the addition of hazardous disinfectants such as chlorine.

Symbios Technologies has developed a unique, cost-effective solution to the pre-treatment challenges encountered when using RO systems, and is set to take advantage of the $3.5 billion per year RO market that continues to grow at 10% per year. The Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) will disinfect water and destroy most organic compounds present in the water. Conventional plasma treatment systems have been shown to be highly effective at destroying organic compounds and at killing microorganisms in water, but these treatment systems have required high voltages. Symbios Technologies’s patent-pending reactor will treat water in a continuous-flow environment by generating a plasma using low power, while retaining the high disinfectant and oxidizing capability of oxygen plasmas. Symbios Technologies’s current design is for a modular reactor capable of treating up to 15,000 gallons per day at low cost even for highly contaminated and variable input water, with ready scalability to significantly higher flow rates by adding modules in parallel to treat 100,000 gallons per day or more.

Thus, installing the Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) immediately prior to the RO membrane unit will ensure that the water fed to the RO membranes is free of microorganisms, as well as having many nutrients and other organic compounds greatly reduced. This eliminates the cost and operating challenges of chlorination/dechlorination modules, reduces the amount of total organic carbon (TOC) reduction required for the RO system, and reduces the high maintenance costs associated with RO systems.

Food and beverage industry input water solutions

The Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR) provides an RO pretreatment solution for the food and beverage industry with the following advantages:

Features and Benefits

• Compatible with existing RO systems
• Treatment of organics and pathogens at lower cost
• Eliminates clogging and biofouling of RO membranes
• Significant reduction in RO maintenance costs
• Lowest-cost plasma technology on the market
• Unaffected by changing influent water conditions
• Expected to treat even difficult-to-treat pesticides and pharmaceuticals
• Small reactor size and small foot print leading to low O&M costs
• Environmentally sustainable treatments
• Capable of co-treating variety of contaminants simultaneously
• Elimination of major pre-treatment and reducing the O&M costs
• No reject or brine waste stream
• Industrial wastewater solutions

From nearly 90,000 industrial plants in the United States alone, trillions of gallons of wastewater are being discharged every day with only 10% of them being treated. This includes industries as diverse as the paper and pulp mill, food and beverage, textile, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries.

Symbios Technologies’s groundbreaking low-voltage plasma reactor can quickly and cost-effectively remove recalcitrant compounds, including everything from fuel additives to solvents to pesticides to even pharmaceutical microcontaminants. Our technology is modular, has a small footprint, low capital cost, low operating cost, and can treat even high-strength high-BOD water such as methanol- and formaldehyde-contaminated wastewater from pharmaceutical plants.

Features and Benefits

• Competitive O&M costs with UV and oxidation technologies
• Capable of handling high levels of organics and nutrients
• Oxidizes complex organics with a reduction in equipment and space
• Modular and scalable
• Continuous flow
• Cost-effective and compact system with small footprint
• Highly efficient under changing environmental
• and operational conditions
• No reject or brine waste stream