High-Tech Water Purification Firm Grows in Colorado

Known simply as The Water Company, LLC, the company has about 30 employees and operates in a small industrial building near the Pueblo airport. With today's announcement, the company will be moving to a larger facility and growing its workforce to at least 140 by 2012.

"These are clearly difficult economic times around the world, around the country and around Colorado. Pueblo itself is no stranger to tough times," Governor Ritter said at a news conference with officials from The Water Company, LLC; the Pueblo Economic Development Corp., the Pueblo City Council and the County Board of Commissioners.

"But even now, even as people are struggling, something exciting is happening here in Pueblo," he said.

"The Water Company is part of a clean-tech industry of the future," the governor said. "It's part of the knowledge-based economy we're building all across Colorado. The new jobs and the expansion being announced today are another example of how we are leading Colorado forward by re-positioning and re-tooling Colorado's economy for long-term sustainable growth."

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter addresses the news conference announcing The Water Company's decision to grow in Pueblo. March 23, 2009 (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)

"I'm very pleased that this home-grown company is growing even more right here in Pueblo."

The Water Company uses an electrical separation system for reducing contaminants and impurities from water known as capacitive deionization, that does not require chemicals and generates no secondary waste stream.

Capacitive deionization involves the use of porous electrodes to remove dissolved ions through application of an electrostatic field.

In the electrostatic removal system, a contaminated water stream flows between pairs of high surface area carbon electrodes. Ions and other charged particles, such as microorganisms, are attracted to and held on the electrode of opposite charge.

The negative electrode attracts positively charged ions such as calcium, magnesium, and sodium, while the positively charged electrode attracts negative ions such as chloride, nitrate, and silica.

Eventually, the electrodes become saturated with contaminants and must be regenerated. The voltage is removed, and the ions are released and flushed from the system, leaving purified water.

Capacitive deionization is adaptable for use in a wide variety of commercial applications, including domestic water softening, industrial water softening, waste water purification, sea water desalination, treatment of nuclear and aqueous wastes, treatment of boiler water in nuclear and fossil power plants, production of high-purity water for semiconductor processing, and removal of salt from water for agricultural irrigation.

The Water Company aims to sell its technology to oil refineries and other industrial facilities that must decontaminate their discharged water to meet federal regulations.

The Pueblo City Council is considering giving the company an existing but unfinished building, a $1.4 million grant and a no-interest $1.4 million loan for five years.

Officials say the company would have to return the building and repay the grant if it fails to meet job targets.

A city of about 100,000, Pueblo is one of the largest steel-producing cities in the United States. The economic hub of southeastern Colorado, the city hosts a number of electronics and aviation companies and also is becoming the region's renewable and nuclear energy capital.

The Danish company Vestas announced last August that it will build the world's largest wind tower manufacturing plant in Pueblo.

In September, Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc., along with other companies, signed an agreement to build a 21,000 acre $10 billion energy park east of Pueblo that would be the largest of its kind in the United States. It will include multiple large advanced nuclear reactors, solar, natural gas, wind turbines and hydroelectric power plants as well as manufacturing companies that want to be located next to major sources of power.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2009. All rights reserved.