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Planet-Profit Report, reporting on sustainable development in the Western United States.

Oregon water purification startup takes home the Cleantech prize

Utah company wins Rocky Mountain regional honors

Last week’s Cleantech Open — the nation’s Academy Awards for sustainability-focused startups — spotlighted dozens of young companies from across the country involved in green building, clean transportation, smart power and renewable energy. 

But it was Puralytics, an Oregon company that uses LED light to remove impurities from water, that beat out 17 other finalists to win the prestigious business competition’s top national prize at an awards ceremony held on Nov. 17 in San Jose, Calif. For the three-year-old Beaverton-based firm, the award translates to a package of cash and professional services worth about $290,000.

The Cleantech Open was founded in 2005 to “find, fund and foster” the next generation of green technologies. This year, 300 companies entered the competition, while about 2,000 people attended the all day technology expo and business networking event.

“This is an important day for many, many reasons,” Rex Northen, executive director of the Cleantech Open, told the crowd. “But most of all, it’s a celebration of the technologies and technologists that we helped bring to the stage today.” 

During the past several months, the startups have worked with Cleantech Open mentors to tweak their business plans, make professional connections and seek funding. 

A team of judges assembled from the clean technology business community  selected the winners. The Grand Prize winner received $250,000, which includes donated legal services and marketing, public relations and management advice. The 18 regional finalists each took home $30,000 in cash and services, while the five regional winners were each awarded $10,000 in cash and services. 

At first, Puralytics’ founder and CEO Mark Owen said he was skeptical about his company competing against better-known green technologies such as renewable power.  “My perception of clean technology was clean energy,” not water purification, Owen explained.

However, at the urging of a venture capitalist in his region, he entered anyway and found great interest in his technology, which purifies water by using two different wavelengths of LED light to cause a chemical reaction that destroys contaminants ranging from pesticides, medication residue, bacteria and lead.

Owen anticipates the device — which costs $8,000 and is about the size of an airplane carry-on suitcase — will resonate with the $3.2 billion light industrial water purification market. The company also developed a clear “solar bag” that uses the sun’s rays to purify four liters of water in about two hours, a technology Owen said could provide safe drinking water in the developing world.

“Yes, we have gotten some investors out of it and some customers out of the process, Owen said. “We’ve had some great coaching by law firms and accounting firms and marketing firms along the way.”

Puralytics also won the top prize for the Pacific Northwest Region.

The California region winner was Pure Solar, an Oakland firm that created a laser-processing tool to increase efficiency for photovoltaic solar cell makers, paving the way for cheaper solar electricity. “One of the key highlights as a contestant was that ‘aha!’ moment when our mentor suggested a very simple change to our business model and it just all clicked,” said company co-founder Francisco Machuca.

Water purification is also the focus of Utah-based INOTEC, which won the Rocky Mountain Region’s top prize. The company’s process uses minute bits of electricity to remove contaminants from wastewater. “This is our first year and we have $300,000 in current contracts,” said Jack Adams, INOTEC’s president.

At its start, the Cleantech Open included only firms in California, but quickly added the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain states, followed by the Minnesota and Massachusetts regions. Northen said two new areas will soon be added: the Washington-DC-based South Atlantic region and South Central area covering Texas.