Institute for Water and Watersheds

Oregon BEST has awarded a commercialization grant to an industry-university team developing a floating, solar-activated stormwater treatment device that could be deployed in retaining ponds or ditches along roadways and parking lots to keep contaminants from reaching streams.

The technology could also be used to pre-treat stormwater, helping reduce overflow situations at municipal treatment facilities during severe weather events.

Beaverton, Ore. startup Puralytics is building on the success of its SolarBag portable drinking water purification system, which uses a nanotechnology-coated mesh activated by sunlight to purify 3-liter quantities of water in approximately three hours. The SolarBag is currently used in developing countries and sold for emergency preparedness and backcountry hiking. The company is incorporating the same technology into thin, round pads that would float a few inches below the surface of standing stormwater and treat much larger volumes.

The Oregon BEST funding will enable Puryalytics to work with faculty and students affiliated with Oregon State University’s Institute for Water and Watersheds (IWW) to evaluate the overall concept of the new system, establish key design parameters and generate third-party test data. The OSU research team, led by Todd Jarvis, Oregon BEST researcher and the interim director of the IWW, will construct artificial ponds or tanks that can be closely controlled and monitored, where prototypes of the water treatment devices will be tested.

“Todd and his team at OSU are great partners, and they have the analytical horsepower to provide the third-party testing and data our company needs,” said Mark Owen, CEO of Puralytics. “One of the challenges for a small company is that you don’t have the analytical equipment or the funding to pay for third-party validation, so Oregon BEST is really filling that gap. Without this grant and Oregon BEST’s connections, this development work would have been significantly delayed.”

Link to the complete press release from Oregon BEST.

The Water Research Symposium at Oregon State University will be held May 13, 2013 at CH2M HILL Alumni Center.  This one-day conference highlights a variety of outstanding student research in the fields of water resources science, engineering, policy, and management. Oregon graduate and undergraduate students conducting water-related research are invited to present oral or poster presentations about their proposed, ongoing, or completed research. Anyone interested in water resources is encouraged to attend. This will be the single greatest opportunity of the year for the exchange of knowledge and ideas among students, University faculty, staff, and local professionals in Oregon working in water resources.  Abstracts are due April 7 and Registration closes May 1.  The event is co-sponsored by the IWW and the Water Resources Graduate Program at OSU.

Courtesy Professor Robert Lackey wrote an editorial about "normative science -- information that is developed, presented or interpreted based on an assumed, usually unstated, preference for a particular policy choice.”

Robert T. Lackey retired in 2008 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Corvallis national research laboratory where he worked for 27 years as a senior scientist and deputy director. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)