Will double size of manufacturing facility in Seattle & hire 10 additional employees in next three months
SEATTLE, Sept. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Membrion, a manufacturer of ceramic desalination membranes, today announced it has added $3 million in follow-on investments to its oversubscribed $6 million Series A round which closed in March, 2020. The company will use the proceeds to double the size of its manufacturing facility, hire 10 people and focus efforts on the $2 billion “harsh” wastewater treatment industry.
Membrion’s membranes are well suited to treat wastewater from extremely toxic manufacturing processes. This is water that will burn skin when touched, has toxic heavy metals and leaves sticky films behind. It is so expensive and complicated to treat on-site, that it’s commonplace for Fortune 500 manufacturing companies to pump their wastewater into a tank truck, drive it around on the freeway and unload it at a third party facility.
Membrion’s membranes separate and remove the salt and heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic and copper), allowing wastewater to be discharged to the sewers and ultimately purified by public water treatment systems.
In addition, many of Membrion’s intial customers are semiconductor manufacturers that are large consumers of water. Each new semiconductor fab can consume twice as much water as the population of an average city, so stewardship and recycling of water in these facilities is a high priority. Membrion’s technology offers an alternative to the current, more primitive, thermal methods (i.e., boiling) and can enable the recovery and reuse of industrial water. Given that the amount of water used by industry is almost identical to what is used by the public, savings at these massive facilities can potentially reduce water demand and mitigate drought issues.
“We are now manufacturing membrane roll-to-roll at our facility in Seattle via an automated production line to meet the demanding needs of our large-scale customers,” said Greg Newbloom, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Membrion. “We are shipping membrane modules to a dozen of the largest, household brands in the world to purify otherwise ‘untreatable’ wastewater. We're teeing the company up for significant growth in 2022 and beyond.”
Leading efforts in this new market for Membrion is Scott Heffner, its new Chief Revenue Officer. Heffner has more than 35 years experience in water treatment, irrigation, electronics manufacturing and the oil and gas industries. He has refined the go-to-market strategy for Membrion and is leveraging his significant network to drive interest and adoption.
Other recent highlights include: being awarded $490,000 of new research & development (R&D) grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the US Bureau of Reclamation; being named one of three "hottest new technologies in 2021" by Global Water Intelligence; being accepted into the competitive Imagine H2O program; and being named a finalist in the More Water, Less Concentrate Challenge.
Membrion leverages silica gel – an inexpensive, non-toxic and earth-abundant material that is often packaged with new shoes, beef jerky and many other consumer products – to produce a novel class of commercial ceramic membranes. Membrion’s technology converts the highly absorbent, small-pore silica gel into durable ceramic membranes that can affordably remove salts, minerals and heavy metals from water under extreme conditions.
About Membrion
Membrion has developed breakthrough Molecular Self Assembly (MSA) technology that uses readily available, non-toxic and low-cost materials to produce advanced ceramic desalination membranes which can treat water under conditions that are impossible for existing desalination membranes. Membrion is currently deploying this versatile technology to the rapidly growing industrial wastewater market, helping to address the global water crisis. More information is available at www.membrion.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f1ff6e03-edc5-4a0e-a3b2-b0ceafd449ac
