VRTX bursting into new markets with cavitation tech

Schertz, Texas-based VRTX Technologies is re-purposing a process often associated with damaging a ship’s propeller or a water pump, and harnessing it in a non-destructive way.

The company’s CEO David Nicholas told the Cleantech Group that his company is using controlled hydrodynamic cavitation to change the chemical properties of water.

“Cavitation is a vacuum bubble created in the water, and when it implodes it’s a very violent event,” he said.

The process is where microscopic bubbles are created in liquids, which are suddenly formed and then collapse, resulting in temperature and pressure changes, he said.

Cavitation is often used to control problems associated with water used in cooling towers in buildings and in refrigerators, he said. Such problems include minerals in the water that can reduce efficiencies, bacteria growth and corrosion.

“Traditionally, two to three chemicals are used to control those problems,” he said.

However, VRTX’s chamber device uses cavitation in a filtration process that doesn’t require any chemicals, while allowing the system to operate in a more energy efficient manner and saving water, he said. VRTX is servicing big name customers including Wal-Mart and Yahoo with its technology.

“Cavitation action initiates a precipitation of the calcium carbonate as a solid, and then we filter that out of the water,” Nicholas said.

With bacteria growth, he said cavitation destroys the organisms.

“We are blowing the cell walls,” he said.

The technology has been around for the past 10 years. But he said in the last three years the market has turned in the company’s favor, due to water savings requirements, water availability, chemical costs and regulatory requirements.

With a cooling tower, for example, he said the system needs to be serviced once a month. His company provides its equipment and installation, and then charges a monthly fee on a five-year contract. However, VRTX partners with chemical water treatment companies to distribute its products.

“We have partnered with our competition,” he said.

The company’s end customers include Wal-Mart's refrigerated distribution centers, and cooling towers for property management companies including CB Richard Ellis and Yahoo's data centers.

Wal-Mart has been actively pursuing sustainable technology solutions to save money and add profit to its bottom line (see Wal-Mart: cleantech solutions wanted).

Since the early 1990s, VRTX has sold more than 600 of its chemical-free cooling water treatment systems in North America and Europe. Nicholas said European companies are becoming a larger portion of VRTX's business due to chemical regulations and water costs that are three to five times higher than the United States (see A new market for advanced water technologies and California's drought could mean water boom, say experts).

His company is currently seeking $4 million to put more of its devices into the marketplace. But it’s not startup funding, he said.

The company expects to have $4 million to $5 million in revenue for 2009 and plans to double its revenue next year.

VRTX Technologies is one of 11 new clean technology companies the Cleantech Group added to its innovation pipeline this week, available exclusively to members of its Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the database.

Interested in emerging cleantech innovations? Here are two new companies added to the Cleantech Group's database this week also looking for funding:

• Cork, Ireland-based SCFI Group is seeking €10 million ($14.6 million) in Series B financing to continue developing a waste disposal technology it says generates electricity from sewage sludge. The company’s AquaCritox technology has been around since the 1980s, but the company says it now has a proven, economical process for the destruction of organic materials and the recovery of inorganic materials.
• Ireland-based Superior Electronic Lighting Controllers is seeking $7.3 million to continue developing efficient public lighting that it says reduces carbon dioxide emission by up to 40 percent. The company’s monitoring platform allows the control, command and tracking of lighting, including an option to dim street lights when there isn’t traffic. Approximately 6,000 of its light controllers have been installed in the United States and the UK.

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