The Strange Attractor
The Strange Attractor
From PFAS Removal to Sterile Surfaces, with Vignesh from PuriflOH | #9
Join us as we dive into a discussion with one of our long-time members, Vignesh from Purifloh. We explore the multitude of applications for purifying water, sterilising surfaces, destroying PFAS, and even improving how we preserve food. Tune in and discover the interplay of natural principles and human ingenuity that's shaping a cleaner, healthier world.
Water is life, and this episode delves into the complexities of safeguarding this precious resource. Vignesh provides an insider's view on the formidable task of eradicating PFAS, the notorious pollutants lurking in our waters. We dissect the commercial viability of current decontamination processes, highlighting the unsung heroes—microorganisms—that may hold the key to a cleaner tomorrow.
Our exploration doesn't stop at water; we also cast a lens on the implications of PuriflOH's technology for air quality and the medical field. From the sterility of surgical instruments to the freshness of the air we breathe, Vignesh and I discuss the potentially game-changing advancements on the horizon. The episode concludes with Vignesh sharing why he feels motivated to work on impact-oriented innovation, echoing a similar sentiment that many of our members share about leaving the world a little bit better than how we found it.
For more info on PuriflOH:
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Hello and welcome to the Strange Attractor, an experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation hub and biotechnology co-working lab based in Melbourne, australia. I'm your co-host, sam Wines, and alongside my co-founder, andrew Gray, we'll delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation, informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes, could help us catalyze a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Stranger Tractor. This week we caught up with one of our oldest members not oldest age-wise, but ones who've been around with us for the longest Vignesh from Pureflow by training, but has picked up quite a bit of knowledge in the biological chemistry, physics sort of space through the creation of this device, which makes for an interesting conversation that spans multiple different topics and domains, which is always exciting. Oh, and a couple of from Colab side of things.
Speaker 1:We oh my gosh, it's almost finished three months until our Furniture Business Park site is operational, so we've just been watching, I think this week the slab is getting poured for the mezzanine level, so that will be, yeah, available for lease pretty soon. So there'll be 660 square meters of lab space. There's four lab pods of 100 square which can be joined together, as well as our, I think, 55 lab benches that can be leased by the bench in the co-working lab space. It's going to be pretty awesome. The thing is going to be built with sort of biophilic, biomimetic design and architecture we're looking at using some nice timber finishes, some spotted gum. We'll probably try and squeeze some biomaterials in there as well. We've been chatting with some of the folks at zeoform and maybe even Funky Solutions, gosh, biomason. There's a whole bunch of people doing biomaterials for the built environment and we're going to see if there's any way we can squeeze them into this project, which would be really, really awesome.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if you're working on an impact-oriented innovation that is, bio-led, bio-inspired, bio-based bio-anything, really let us know. We'd love to find a way to be able to support you. If you're doing anything climate tech-related, anything deep tech-related, looking into the material palette of the future, looking to try and find more ways in which we can close the loop on our linear materials economy, you name it If it's a systemic intervention, then you've got my attention. Oh gosh, is that a dad joke? I guess it kind of is.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's wrap it here, wrap the intro at least. Anyway, somewhat annoyingly, we unintentionally did not record the start of this conversation, which was painful figuring it out 15 minutes later. So, yeah, apologies on our front. Let's just say recording, videoing and doing all the things as a one-person team is not as easy as I first thought, but hey, we got there eventually. Okay, take two, vignesh, thanks so much for joining us here. For the Strange Attractor You've actually been one of our longest running members at Colab and also the first member that we've had someone reach out and say, oh, can you please do a podcast with them? We really want to learn more about, um, the device and we heard that it might be able to be used to treat PFAS in water. So yeah, it's fascinating, um, just seeing how much people will talk about these sorts of things, just even through our little network, because we have no idea how people knew about, knew about that because you were saying it hasn't even necessarily been announced, like sort of publicly.
Speaker 2:Well, it is on. We are a listed company on the ASX and we do make regular announcements and I think the PFAS has been on many announcements over the past year. So it is out there, but I don't know. I am curious to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Whoever it was, feel free to reach out and let us know, because it was all anonymized. I was like oh, this is exciting. Anyway, could you give us a little bit of a background about your personal journey and then how that led into working at Pureflow and then how you, with Pureflow, have ended up working here at CoLabs?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:So I am originally from India and I did my bachelor's there in mechanical engineering, and then I've always been attracted to innovative technologies rather than working in a large company and doing a tiny thing that gets reflected only after five years after you've done the work, and so I ended up in the US doing my master's there, and from there I was working for a company in Michigan called Somnio Global and I helped to write the patent for a technology that we are calling the free radical generator, which is the core for the Pureflow products. And so the FRG technology was quite interesting to me right from the beginning, right out of school really, and it was my first job professionally and I've had a lot of fun finding the different applications for it, which you know have been quite varied, ranging from water treatment, air treatment, surface sterilization, even food preservation. You know we can get rid of food-ripening hormones and increase shelf life. So yeah, I've really enjoyed my time with both Somnio and Pureflow, you know, exploring all the different applications of the technology.
Speaker 1:Just to clarify. So the free radical generator creates a cool plasma, right? Could you speak to that and how it's different to a hot plasma?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, sure, Okay, the cold plasma. So yeah, the FIG is a cold plasma generator, which means that we create an ionized environment in a controlled manner. A hot plasma is like on the sun, where just the temperatures convert matter into its fourth state, not solid, not liquid, not gas, but plasma. And cold plasma is a similar state that we achieve via electricity, high voltage rather than temperature, and so our technology is good at doing that and maintaining it and doing it at high energy efficiency.
Speaker 1:It's also quite robust and can handle high humidities, high and low temperatures and so on, which makes it quite versatile and opens up all of these applications that I just mentioned yeah, so, and when you came to us, so that was during covid, so you're one of you're exempt from, I guess, stopping doing work and innovation, because you were one of those. Let's say, one of that portfolio of potential solutions that you could do was actually removing airborne pathogens, yes, so yeah, maybe you could speak to how we ended up sort of working together at CoLabs on that.
Speaker 2:Sure, so yeah, we do have the. So the CoLabs technology. When you pass ambient air through it, it can destroy microbes, including viruses such as the COVID, and we wanted to test that and get some results on it, and we were looking for a lab space to do that more easily rather than setting up our own separate space here. And I think you guys were the only ones who were offering something like that and luckily you were in Melbourne, close to us, so we ended up. You know, it was meant to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it was great it was. It was really fun just when things like that pop up. So we obviously had yourself come to us. Um, then we were at that time we also had, I think, john from raditech working on rapid antigen tests. Um, there was some engineering groups that we were helping look at exploring ways to create 3D print masks to be able to provide to hospitals, as well as SteriBright, which is now Brightspace, which is another company looking at doing, I guess, air purification technology through a HVAC system, which it turns out there might actually be a little bit of a collaboration there that you guys are looking at working on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we explored the possibility. We found that adding the FIG to the air purification process there that you guys are looking at working on yeah, we explored the possibility. We found that adding the FRG to the air purification process in general with any HEPA-based air purifier increased the pace at which microbes were removed in a room. So, yeah, we are still exploring that possibility. Let's wait and see, although we have found that the market for air purifiers has sort of cooled down post-COVID.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants to talk about, you know, germs anymore. They're sick of, you know, just having the same conversation.
Speaker 1:So we might pick it up again in a bit, but I think that's also what's fascinating about this portfolio approach, of knowing that a device can be applied in multiple different contexts and, in a way, having something prepared in a shelf you're like, okay, cool, we've got that to like TRL 3 or 4. We know that we could push down on this and probably raise funds based on that, but it's also thinking what's the most appropriate use case now? And just to bring it back to something that we were sort of saying at the start, I know that one of the most interesting potential use cases that we're looking at with the Pureflow device is potential treatment of wastewater to potentially remove PFAS.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So PFAS, to just give you an introduction of what it is, it's poly and perfluoro acids, know acids uh, octanoic sulfanoic acids and uh. It's a family of compounds. It's I think the list goes to tens of thousands of similar compounds.
Speaker 2:I think at least 32 000 or something like that oh gosh and uh, it's basically the chemicals that that are usually used in firefighting form and also in applications such as household, you know, non-stick pans and things like that. Because, well, the reason that they came up with it was, you know, it was a cool chemical that couldn't be easily degraded in the environments. That that's great, but also it can't easily be degraded in the environment, which is now a problem after it's been discovered to be carcinogenic, and also it apparently follows the life cycle of animals through the ecosystem. It goes to.
Speaker 1:Bioaccumulates into like the apex predators. Yeah, all the way.
Speaker 2:So it goes from the water to the plants, to the animals, ends up in us as well, so even the fish, everything and more and more. I think countries around the globe are finding PFAS, contaminated water sources and soil as well. You know australia had a case of I think I forgot the exact numbers, but large areas of land that are contaminated with PFAS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially because of all the bushfires and when we're dropping them down the foam is completely filled with this stuff which, yeah, as you were saying, it turns out is toxic to life, which should not really come as a surprise given the fact that it's not existent in nature. But I guess this is the thing when people don't take like a green chemistry based approach, or don't think what's the second, third, and thought of consequences of of chemical x, um, which, yeah, obviously can pose a bit of a problem. But I guess, even then, thinking about that sort of that, that approach, um, how do we have you been running tests to see like, okay, cool, so this can break down pfas, but how do we know that it's breaking it down into something that's not just like the equivalent of a plastic being broken down to a microplastic, into a nanoplastic, which is still bad for you?
Speaker 1:is is there does it look like the?
Speaker 2:the preliminary reports are looking good in terms of what it's broken down into, yeah, that's interesting because one of the common uh problems with uh advanced oxidation process, which is which is basically when you produce hydroxyl radicals in water, either by a combination of ozone or hydrogen peroxide or uv light or something like that a problem they've observed with PFAS destruction commonly is that longer chained compounds end up breaking into potentially more harmful and more resistant to degradation, shorter chained compounds, but with our testing we found that that's quite low.
Speaker 2:Whenever it does exist.
Speaker 2:We've not found a lot of cases where, for example, an eight carbon chain longer PFAS compound breaks down into a six carbon PFAS compound.
Speaker 2:So hopefully we do have a solution there. It is different from other advanced oxidation processes, and currently what's the accepted, I guess, standard in the industry is to either just store the water until we find another solution, or to run it through activated carbon, which captures around 90% when it's fresh, and then eventually it's going to get saturated and then you incinerate all of that carbon. Or there are newer methods coming around now, but we believe that we have a technology that's quite close to commercialization and that's also standing out in terms of energy consumption. We think that our process is quite efficient in terms of energy consumption because of the core technology that we have, and now we're in the process of running repeated tests to prove that we can do this. And then we have a partner in Adelaide called Osmoflow, and they are a reverse osmosis company and the collaboration is based around the concept of well, let's go through a reverse osmosis cycle from the source water to concentrate the contaminants, including PFAS, and then run it through the flow system and get rid of that PFAS.
Speaker 1:So we are working towards a commercial solution based on this and so obviously, I was very excited by this as soon as I found out about it and spoke to quite a lot, quite a lot of people in our network, so I'm sure you're familiar with uh, the regen melbourne crew and how one of their sort of key goals is to make the birrarung river swimmable, um, and so naturally, um, you know this sort of technology is a fascinating concept to be able to help treat all of the uh the rivers systems which have a lot of pollutants in them.
Speaker 1:Is there anything? So I know that we made some potential introductions. I don't necessarily want to name LCAs or water authorities, but you know we did have some initial discussions there. Have they picked up or is there any potential field testing that might be happening?
Speaker 2:There is some potential field testing that's happening via our partners, uh, you know, the osmo flow has a few connections with south australian uh councils and they have a plant running in the us, in new mexico, which we want to potentially collaborate on installing a pilot. So there is uh, there is work towards that. Nothing. Nothing has happened here yet, I guess because we don't have commercial technology yet. We don't have the product yet I think people will get more excited once we get to that stage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see how, because of the nature of how the device works, it has to be in very close proximity to break down the pfas. Am I correct? Like it's not like you could um kind of shine it like a flashlight on water or on soil to treat it? You would need to be yeah, we don't.
Speaker 2:Uh, so there is. I mean, what you're talking about is exposing the water directly to cold plasma, which is also something we are exploring, but it's not at a TRL that's high enough to be commercial. So what we have been successful at is extracting the gases from the device, even if it's running with ambient air, and then mix that with water to get good results as well, so that's something that's more commonly used.
Speaker 2:It's been around for hundreds of years already now maybe not hundreds, maybe quite a few years. Definitely, where gases have been mixed with water, particularly ozone has been mixed with water at least for 80 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that's how the wastewater treatment plants use a similar sort of technology right. Yeah, they do. Yeah, okay, it would be interesting to know whether or not there is any like biological um collaboration, like, is there a bio-led technology or um, literally just a microorganism that you could partner with downstream to process some of what's left over as a food source? I'd be curious to know have you delved into or looked into whether or not that's a potential possibility?
Speaker 2:Well, believe it or not, it actually definitely exists already with wastewater treatment.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So there are certain I mean water has everything all kinds of contamination. There's some kinds of contamination that are biodegradable and some that are not and some that are not. So the contamination that's in the water, it's gauged by a metric called chemical oxygen demand, which is basically the amount of oxygen that would be required to completely oxidize all the chemicals down to carbon dioxide water. But there's also a biological oxygen demand, which talks about the biodegradable chemical part of that total cod. And when there is a wastewater situation where the water has a lot of biodegradable chemicals, it is usually subjected to a membrane bioreactor or a bioreactor of some sort where, you know, bacteria interact with the water and convert a lot of the complex carbohydrates or other nutrient or contaminant into simpler or even carbon dioxide water level. So it does happen. It is part of most sewage treatment plans okay.
Speaker 1:So is that? I guess the direction that you'd be looking at going for this is going well. The sewage treatment plants are a really obvious potential candidate, but is this something that could be factored into waterways in some way, shape or form? Like what? What I guess is the is the vision for being able to, at least with this part of the portfolio, like what would. How would you see this playing out ideally in, say, like five or ten years time?
Speaker 2:what we would want to do is, uh, I mean for the pfas.
Speaker 2:For areas where pfas is the main issue, we would like to provide a custom, customized solution and where they can use the technology to bring the PFAS down to acceptable levels, or overall with all wastewater treatment. What we want to do, like you said exactly what you said is what we want to do is basically be a pre-treatment step. Convert a lot of the non biodegradable chemicals, such as PFAS, into biodegradable versions which then can be destroyed easily with the MBR or any bioreactor.
Speaker 1:So you studied engineering. Yes, right, you have a pretty good grip on physics, chemistry and biology. Was that self-taught or like taught in the context of what you're doing? How did you, I guess, develop or learn these skills? Was it on the job? And would you kind of consider yourself or consider this sort of innovation as being, you know, not just, I guess, an engineering feat, but maybe a little bit more transdisciplinary, right, because you're drawing on? So many different domains of knowledge and understanding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think because of the experience in the startup sort of sector, where everybody wears all hats at some point or the other, we had to sort of all of us learn microbiology and more chemistry than we're used to, not just engineering. So I and I think you know, any technology really at the core is interdisciplinary. You can't do anything without knowing at least a bit about lots of other things as well. So, yeah, I think it's a natural process and what is your like?
Speaker 1:so if you're having to find a way to, let's say, forage for this information or figure out what's like, useful, like, do you? I'm curious to know what your process is for learning this, do you just? Is it a Google situation? Are you reaching out to like members of our network? Are you reaching out to members of your network Like? How does that process unfold?
Speaker 2:It's a bit of everything I guess you know pretty pretty much. Try to learn from whatever sources at hand. Definitely, being able to speak to some of the members in the network is definitely quite useful. Lets us bridge the gap quite a bit. Especially, we've had a lot of help with the microbiology side of things because of having so many biotech-related startups here, and apart from that, just literature surveys are the first step to any scientific approach, so that's where we start.
Speaker 1:Nice. Is there any, I guess, significant milestones? So obviously we're talking about the PFAS category. If we take that step back and look at it from the platform of Pureflow as a whole, are there any significant milestones coming up for you? Or yeah, what's the current lay of the land? Like, looking like.
Speaker 2:Currently, the focus has been a bit more on the PFAS side, just because it's something that we believe the market will take on a bit easier, and we are also exploring food preservation, using the technology to increase shelf life, and we're exploring partnerships there. In terms of milestones, well, just being able to commercialize the PFAS technologies, the PFAS removal technology, is the first thing we're looking for currently, along with hopefully getting into the R&D side of the food preservation, to the point where we can approach somebody like a large grocer to extend the food shelf life of their crops.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, you know that we have the fridges that we over in unit 20 to be able to have we have we done anything?
Speaker 2:yet. No, I haven't.
Speaker 1:Uh, I would love to, though yeah, we should probably have a chat about that. That would definitely be positive. I'm just hearing, hearing you talk, talk about that. I'm like, oh well, we could probably yeah no, uh, pilot testing. I thought they were being used by cortical no, so I, oh I don't think cortical were using oh, you mean the big ones out the back right, because they are the commercial ones. I reckon we could probably get our hands on one of them that would be awesome yeah, yeah, so it's a bit of a random side note.
Speaker 1:Um, cool, okay, so that's happening and the food preservation is happening, so could you speak to? So I'm assuming that when you're saying it? Um, it breaks down ripening hormones as ethylene right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:What so if it's, if it's running in the air um, I'm assuming you're going to have to be running at like a fan or like. How would the process work in that application? It sounds like it's going to be similar but different. Right, because you're not pumping the free radicals into a, into a liquid medium? Yeah, it's going.
Speaker 2:You're running the air through and filtering it out yeah, so there's two approaches that we can take to that, and the objective really is to extend food life by two methods. One is by removing ethylene, and that especially applies to produce that ripens after, after it's harvested, such as bananas or avocados. They ripen afterwards, but there's many, for example, berries, that don't ripen but rather, you know, get decay after right.
Speaker 1:So it's not just the ethylene, but you're also saying we can um potentially remove a substantial amount of microorganisms that might begin to break that food down and decompose it exactly okay, so again.
Speaker 2:So there's two modes of operation, potentially so, in when, in environments that are going to be closed up for a long time, and just transportation, for example, or cold storage for several weeks or several months, what we can do is we can have a small amount of free radicals escaping into the room from the device along with treating everything that passes through the device. And there's an alternative approach in, for example, a walk-in fridge, where we don't want potential exposure to ozone.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, yeah, how does that work in that context? But you've already been into it.
Speaker 2:We are able to also easily filter out ozone and other harmful things and in that case all the work happens within the reactor. So we have increased airflow, so that it recirculates the air from within the fridge and gets rid of all ambient you know, everything that's in the air, including ethylene and then leaves the area quite safe okay, cool.
Speaker 1:What are some of the other applications you? We've gone through a few, because I just find this fascinating, because obviously you've been here at the space for so long and we've been seeing you come in and working on certain applications. I mean, I even was helping early on with some of the testing protocols for the removal of certain bacteria, so I know the tech and I'm familiar with what it looks like in that form. We've gone through the PFAS. We've gone through the food preservation. Is there anything else?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, air purification, for sure, again similar to the food preservation we can do either engaging it in a way that it sterilizes the space slightly with some free radicals or just filter out everything. And we also have a device that produces zero ozone, so it's perfectly safe but still manages to bring down the bacterial levels, and that was what we were talking about in the context of SteriBright BrightSpace improve the filtration efficiency without uh producing any ozone at all. So that's something we do with the air and uh, and apart from that, what we have come up with, which is quite unique, is a system for treating air conditioning coils, which is what I think you were helping us with, yeah, in the beginning. So, uh, so what that uh does is you can uh any.
Speaker 2:You know, for example, hotel rooms are a big source of cross infection and uh, we are all familiar with the popular stories that came out of. You know how hotel rooms were the cause for australia's uh, you know, becoming quite expansive, and so what we can do there is, apart from purifying the air, we can offer, potentially, a product that can be handled by janitors and just hung on the air conditioning vents and then it runs for around 10, 15 minutes gets rid of 90 plus percent of microbes that are usually deposited on the air conditioning. Because you know, uh, when in any in any hotel room, uh, the ac coils are the best place for germs to hide in, because all of the air literally gets recirculated through that circuit and also a lot of the water gets condensed there. So it's very natural for germs to deposit on the ac coils. And we have a potential combination solution of let's treat your air and let's treat your air conditioning coil as well, on a daily basis or whenever the room is cleaned. So that's something we've. I mean, that's again.
Speaker 1:It's, it's a trl, uh, seven, eight, uh, pretty much ready to go, but just waiting for market reception and so when you say that combination there, um, are you also referring to the um, because there was also like a, a coating that could be used to help. So is that an additional thing, um, or you? Is that something that you were referring to in that piece there?
Speaker 2:yeah, that coating was mainly to, uh, improve the effectiveness, so that, uh, you know, ac coils can corrode over time, and not a lot, a lot. A lot of hotels will replace it on time. And so this coating was supposed to just, you know, remove some of the and just improve the overall efficiency of the Pureflow system.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's ancillary. It's another thing, but it could potentially fit within the wider ecosystem. I guess, that you have of the product being applied.
Speaker 2:And apart from all of that, we've also explored sterilization in terms of instruments or hospital environments. That's again another major source of infection Hospital-acquired infections is a huge problem across the world and we've also worked towards either forming an autoclave-type device which doesn't use steam or heat but still managed to sell nice things.
Speaker 1:I can imagine, I can. My head is just going wild thinking about because there's so much waste plastic waste specifically that happens in a lab environment yeah and I'd love to hear from your perspective.
Speaker 1:Do you think that could then potentially mean that you might be able to use a device like Pureflow's device to essentially sterilize a pipette tip or something of the likes and allow it to be reused? Or is that device a little bit tricky because it's you know you'd be having to get in and around and all over, or is that something that you think is is is feasible? Um, from, I guess, your perspective?
Speaker 2:yeah, so there's different uh levels of uh sterilization that's required for hospitals, typically uh something that's a surgical tool. Uh has to have, you know, the best, uh a surgical tool has to have the best the minimum number of germs possible, and really they don't spare any expense in getting it to that point.
Speaker 2:Hospitals have massive rooms where there's very specific processes by which instruments get sterilized on a daily basis, and that includes washing them and then putting them in packages that allow these sterilizers to get in, and then uh so that's how they do it.
Speaker 2:I was always wondering, because I'm in my mind, I'm like I'm gonna sterilize it and then wrap it in a package that must then just contaminate it so the wrapping has to allow for the sterilant to enter but not the germs to enter, so it's so it's like a like, almost like a porous membrane yeah, yeah but is it paper or is it poly?
Speaker 1:what is the?
Speaker 2:usually a mixture of uh, you know, depending on the specific sterilization process. So, for example, if it's heat, then it has to be something that can tolerate the heat. If it's oxidizers, again has to tolerate oxidizers. Uh.
Speaker 1:Apart from that, there's some toxic chemicals that are used, like formaldehyde, sometimes, uh I'm just trying to think what could be like I can, I can see in my head the, the use of, like pure flows device to sterilize, coupled with a bio-based um, uh, let's say, petrochemical replacement for some of that packaging, and I'm wondering, like that would be a very interesting, I guess, collaboration effort to have a think about, because this is something that we think about almost daily is just, you know, every time there's a single-use piece of plastic that you're taking off of this every time you use the pipette.
Speaker 1:So it's like there's all of this stuff that it feels like it actually wouldn't be that hard of a design challenge to fix. But the issue always seems to come from the side of like, well, we can't just run that through an autoclave, cause you'll melt the plastic, cause it's too high a temperature. So this I would love to know so if you were going to be sterilizing something multiple times using this device, would that actually impact the robustness of a plastic over time? So if it was constantly exposed to the free radicals, is that going to then start to strip layers of the plastic off?
Speaker 2:Again, it depends on the type of plastic, like, for example, there's a lot of uh, the medical instruments or tubing is can be silicone or something like that, that doesn't really get impacted by our treatment, but if it's like polyethylene or something, it is going to degrade eventually.
Speaker 2:But so again, I was talking about different levels of sterilization. There are certain instruments that uh that are not surgical tools. Uh, for example, uh it can be an ultrasound, uh you know the, the device, or it can be something that uh used for colonoscopy or something like that. That doesn't have to be a hundred percent sterile, it just shouldn't uh have you know, pathogens.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly, and there are instruments out there which are present, usually in clinicians' offices, that they can pop it into a quick cycle in sort of a massive autoclave and then use it for the next patient. So we have also been exploring an option of that sort. But, like I said, there's so many different applications that, uh, you know we get pulled in all these different directions. So we we're trying to just focus on a couple of issues at the moment and see what else the market says is important yeah, that I mean.
Speaker 1:To me that makes sense right and I and I think I can, as I said, I can also see multiple collaborations popping up to be able to try and support this from a challenge-led perspective.
Speaker 1:I can imagine that you were saying before, getting that market interest or market demand is something that you're currently trying to figure out with the PFAS, and I can see how, with this sort of device, looking at doing the medical device sterilization and treatment, obviously circularity and waste is a big thing in that space and everyone knows it and people might be willing to explore it. So I can imagine or see something where, like a whole group of you know, hospitals come together and say, yeah, we're happy to be able to fund the research, to pilot, see if this works, because if it does, that helps them be way less bad in terms of yeah, apart from waste as well, you know, energy consumption is the other massive thing, because anything that you sterilize with steam, you're not only just increasing the temperature, you're also boiling water right which you you know you're expanding the latent heat of converting all of that liquid water into a gas and then using that to sterilize something.
Speaker 2:So all of that energy is where we think we can do better.
Speaker 1:Right. So can you actually speak to that? Because when my non-physics I shouldn't say that I'm into physics, but I'm definitely not as switched on with it as you are when I hear you say cold plasma, to me the energy required to get something to a cold plasma seems like more than the energy to get something to go from a liquid to a gas. Could you explain, I guess, maybe, how you can have those energy efficiencies and affordances when which mean that it actually is better than turning water into steam, because I can't quite square that in my head, how that would work. So I'm really curious to know.
Speaker 2:Well, so what happens inside the reactor of our device is we have two electrodes positive, negative electrodes and then we're trying to establish a large potential difference between them, so we form ions.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then we also have a. You know, the patent talks about cutting it off at the right time, so that most of the ionization actually is just an electron stream rather than a pathway of ions. So we never form an electrical pathway, because that would form then an arc.
Speaker 1:That would be an arc. I was going to say it sounds like the text sounds like an arc lighter but, instead of it, it cuts off just before the arc is formed.
Speaker 2:Interesting and the arc is usually that's high resistance and it's an electrical pathway, whereas we maintain it in sort of a capacitor and just generate those ions, push them on, generate new ions, push them on and that way. So the environment is quite oxidative, gets rid of the chemical and microbial contaminants, but we don't form that electric arc each time. So we are better with energy efficiency because of that, hugely better, because you know, we never really expend too much current.
Speaker 1:I understand a little bit more, but I'm still so fascinated by how not closing the circuit uses less energy. I'm going to have to double-click on that with you another time because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can get back on that, yeah, yeah yeah, no, I would love to.
Speaker 1:I would love to. I find this sort of being able to think like this and have you here talking about the technology and I can instantly see how many how can be applied in so many different ways to what you were saying before. I can imagine that that is can be quite a painful thing. Um, if you don't have a crazy big team to be able to explore and iterate on each of these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you know, having that crazy big team means massive expenses, which needs to be supported. Yeah, it's just. I mean we just need to hit the right market at the right time to be able to expand to that level.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Well, we have to follow up with those water authorities locally and see if we can make some things happen, because I know there was a lot of interest with the device, so I'd be so happy to be able to support the other thing that we are having trouble with and that ends up being one of our major expenses, is all the samples that we generate with the water treatment, especially PFAS, need to be analyzed because we need to know what happened to PFAS before and after, and we need to know that a thousand times to be analyzed because we need to know what happened to PFAS before and after, and we need to know that a thousand times to be able to establish the technology's effectiveness.
Speaker 2:And we're finding that both the time taken to get the results back and the expenses per sample are quite high. And you know there's no commercial technology for now that will instantaneously tell us what the PFAS level of, because there's, like again, thousands of compounds and there's no single, for example, convenient electrode similar to a pH meter that can tell us exactly how much PFAS is in the water.
Speaker 1:So what device is currently used to be able to track this?
Speaker 2:Well, currently LC-MS, hplc, so it's analyzed completely, yeah, and then that's how we know what all the contaminants are. And, uh, yeah, that process is quite expensive, as you can imagine yeah, no, definitely I'm.
Speaker 1:Just I wish we had some of that kit here. It'll happen eventually, but um, yeah, I can imagine that would help bring sort of the cost down, having like easy, accessible access to these pieces of kit.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, interesting. Interestingly, our partner osmoflow is exploring uh, you know, using fluoride uh, which is the f part of pfas and that's what makes the carbon chain more stable. How you know, they're trying to track those levels to get to the results faster right.
Speaker 1:So like a, like a heuristic, that's quick and dirty, so to speak. But it would probably give you maybe like a 70 accuracy or confidence interval or something of the likes and I was.
Speaker 2:I know I was talking about the non-biodegradable versus biodegradable nature, and pfas is the non-biodegradable part of it. And the other idea to explore is to see if we can measure these two components, cod and BOD, and see if a variation in the sample between these two can tell us what happened to the PFAS. So, for example, if we convert 90% of the non-biodegradable part into biodegradable things, that probably means 90 of at least at least 90 of the pfs was converted as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, this is the interesting thing about going from zero to one is that you have to kind of make these things up as you go um which is always interesting. Um, is there anything out there for, like, are there any standards or anything for pfas? Or how is there like iso standards that you're comparing these things to like? I have to be really curious to know how you measure and observe I think so, the lab that we are approaching now.
Speaker 2:They make their own uh standards uh because, like I said, it's highly variable and even the labs just go through, like I think, 50 compounds. They don't go through all of the 32 000 possibilities, but the 50 ones are the most common. Uh, you know they're like, there's like perfluoroactanoic acid, perfluoroheptanoic acid and a whole range of different perfluoro names I wonder if there's a?
Speaker 1:there's a use case for, like an ai mixed with a lcms sort of thing to be able to track and monitor those? I'll have to have a chat with the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure that the first company that comes up with this you know PFAS tracking technology is going to be you know it's going to be a winner technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's just people don't realize how everywhere it is. I mean, we were kind of touching on it before, but I've come across so many people who, um, who have been doing research in this field and they're always so much more um on edge than most other humans because of it um, yeah, like even more than, uh, any other pollutant that I'm aware of. People are like, oh, this is wild, we don't realize how, but how dangerous this is due to the you know, things like bioaccumulation in the liver and all of these other sort of major organs, I think the kidneys as well. So it can cause organ failure in humans, which happened quite a lot with the firefighters.
Speaker 2:That's how they found out that it was not good for you, which is wild yeah. And I think the safe levels keep dropping with more and more research. I think right now the US EPA has put it at something like PPTs, like a few parts per trillion is the safest level of PFAS.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh. Well, that said, it's still exciting that this is something that is being worked on to try and address that, because it is only gonna. The problem is not going away, it's only gonna increase with the constant dispersal of these things and, from what I'm made aware of and this is this is the fascinating thing about problems like this is that it's a systemic issue that is not just the physical, but it's also the regulatory.
Speaker 1:So that social structure of saying well, you know, if you're building a couch has to be fire retardant yeah, if you're building, you know you know that joke, you know your.
Speaker 2:Your grandparents dealt with lead. Your parents dealt with asbestos and we're now dealing with microplastics and pfs and all of these other things. So hopefully, yeah, we'll get to the point that they're no longer used and we find something new that's helpful and stop using that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, when I think about it, I feel like nature has all of the solutions there, and this is something we kind of come back to. Quite a lot is that from a biomimetic perspective or a bio-based or bio-inspired design perspective. There's probably all of these things out there and we just need to learn how to see these solutions that nature has come up with and learn how to work with those living systems to be able to bring them into fruition in our current ways of doing. But a lot of our current ways of doing where you know I know that a lot of our current ways of doing where you know I know a lot of people talk to it as like the heat, beat and treat sort of economy. You know that's kind of how we, how we work with things, rather than a circular bio-based one.
Speaker 1:But I do feel like you know what you're doing is a is a great idea or a great way of showing how you can have something that's that's technical and, you know, using the technical nutrient cycle to be able to break these sort of things down, and then you can still marry that up with the biological cycle and maybe eventually we can start going okay, cool, to replace pfas. We could use these sort of coatings that plants use to create a waxy outer layer, which could then be more flame retardant, or you know. So I feel like there is going to be solutions there that are just latent, that we will find out because we have to. But yeah, I do hope that the regulation comes around to this because, from what I can tell, still there hasn't been any cracking down on it like what we've had with like oh this is BPA free, this is that free. I don't think there has been any crackdown on the use.
Speaker 2:It's still a fairly new contaminant to the world. I think the us has uh gotten to the point that it's recognized the dangers of it, but also the us is where a lot of the manufacturing of this has happened over the last 50 years or more. And I think if you look at australia's pfas tracking, it still talks about we don't, I mean there's not enough substantiated research that shows exactly how contaminated you know harmful it is, at exactly what levels.
Speaker 1:So get there this is a pattern and a process that you see popping up all the time. It's the same with climate change. It's like, oh, you know, a bit more evidence would be useful, and then that then is used as a tactic to then delay having to do any changes that are significant and it might cost it is understandable in the sense that these things are tough to change quickly until there's solid alternatives that are also commercially viable and you know work better and prove to be better.
Speaker 2:It's just tough to systematically change it across every use case.
Speaker 1:As you said, it's like the physical, there's the social, there's the cultural, there's the behavioral. There's so many different layers that will need to be, I guess, systematically addressed to be able to make that change happen. Systematically addressed to be able to make that change happen. Um so, in an ideal world, how would you, how would you bring a portfolio like pureflow to life? So maybe, if you could talk us through so you've got the wastewater treatment side of things, then you've got a device up here, like, like what would be the ideal office building that has everything integrated. Like what could that look like? What do you think?
Speaker 2:well, I've thought about this, I mean, I mean because of the versatility. I've always thought of it like a technology that could be used, uh, completely inside an environment, uh, like a yacht, for example, where it's sort of independent of the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:It has its own systems and we could potentially integrate into every part of it, starting from, you know, cleaning the air, cleaning the water being part of the food preservation system to make sure the produce lasts longer, or even sterilizing surfaces. So, across the board, in an environment like that, would be really great for us.
Speaker 1:I feel like this is you just being like I kind of want a yacht and I want to find a way to put it on a business expense. But hey, that's cool Because I've obviously thought about how that could happen. It's exciting to hear that you actually have sort of thought about this as a process. That is a research project waiting to happen.
Speaker 2:I wonder if we could convince, like csiro or one of the groups that have the, the marine ships or something like that I think as we develop uh, hopefully as we develop over the next 20 years or so each of these technologies into their maximum potential, hopefully they'll find their fit into the markets, and I mean personally. I've been always passionate about helping all of the environment really to be cleaner, be safer for us, but also not hurt the ecosystems that already exist, and I would be. One of the reasons that I've stuck with this technology and with Pureflow for this long is to see some of this out there, some of the work that I've contributed into making the world around us at least a bit better, and I would love to see some of our products out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what I love about so many of the projects that are happening in our space is that you can really feel like the tangible element of every individual person's I guess own vision and mission for how they want to show up in the world, but also the product and the organization that they're relating to. And everyone is coming in and going exactly to that point, like I just want to find a way to contribute to helping make the world a slightly better place or at least less bad. And again, it's always with this leaning towards supporting social or environmental causes. And a lot more we're seeing now is that it's moving away from that human-centered design towards more planet-centric design or like ecosystem-centered design on how can we support life as a whole so that it can thrive, and devices like this, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, we've kind of spoken to the negative impacts on humans for the most part, but there's so much in terms of how this could impact the rest of the ecosystem that you know you know we're saying it's under research with humans I don't think anyone would have done any research on how the rest of the animal kingdom, let alone insects and all these other things, would probably um deal with this sort of thing. But it's kind of like you could say, from a quick and dirty perspective, if it's negative to one form of life, it's probably going to be negatively impacting multiple other forms of life, because we all run off similar patterns and processes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly just like bleach is bad for bacteria, it's also bad for us, exactly the same yeah, so uh, I, uh, I hope that we see this sort of tech take off.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else that you would like to share with us about Pureflow or about yourself?
Speaker 2:Can't particularly think of anything. But yeah, I've really enjoyed working in the Coal Labs environment the past three, four years and I hope you guys expand more and bring in more new startups to the Australian business ecosystem and I hope we can be part of the journey with you together.
Speaker 1:Definitely We'll have to look at getting you some. Once we get them up to a good TRO, we'll have to pilot them in the CoLabs spaces. Yeah. So let us know if that's something that could potentially happen, because we'd love to love to support however we can absolutely awesome. Well, thanks so much for carving out some time for a chat. Apologies about the uh, the initial kerfuffle we recorded for a good 15 minutes and it was a cracker of a conversation, um, and it turned out that it was not recording.
Speaker 2:I think we did all right the second time around yeah, yeah, we've made it work, so that's was not recording. I think we did it all right the second time around. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:We've made it work, so that's the main thing. Awesome. And so where could people go online to find out about Pureflow? Is there like a?
Speaker 2:Well, we have the website pureflowcom and we're listed on the ASX as well, so we have regular announcements that people can follow, and the website gets updated regularly as well.
Speaker 1:So awesome and for yourself like it. How can people find you and get in contact like? I know that you have a wealth of knowledge in this space, um with like the, the wastewater treatment by aerosol testing and all this sort of stuff, and I know that you're um open to supporting people. Is there anywhere that's good for people to get in contact with you?
Speaker 2:Well, the website email will get to me as well. So info at pureflowcom I think is the website and my personal email as well is vignes at pureflowcom. Vignes at pureflowcom. I'm happy to receive any messages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you've been really helpful in helping a lot of other people with similar sort of projects in our space. And, um, yeah, I know that that's a, that's an offering that you can kind of do as well for others, so just thought we'd give that a cheeky plug as well yeah sure happy to perfect all right. Thanks so much, and uh look forward to our next conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah me too perfect.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in again for another episode of the strange attractor. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with vignesh and we look forward to seeing you here sometime soon. Uh yeah, if you like what we're doing, drop us a line, come and say g'day. We'd love to hear from you. Um, everything we do is about supporting the community and trying to make space for the bright minds and warm hearts as jason fox would say to come together to collectively coordinate and come into coherence around what matters most. So if that sounds like you, you know what to do, and I guess what to do is come and hang out at CoLabs. Come and hang out at CoLabs. Anyway, that's me done.
