When it comes to water use, most people think of drinking water, but manufacturing and other industrial uses consume billions of gallons of water every day. For example, by some estimates, it takes more than 3,000 gallons of fuel to produce one iPhone.
Gradiant is working to reduce the amount of industrial wastewater around the world. Founded by a team from MIT, Gradiant provides water recycling, treatment, and purification solutions to some of the world’s largest companies, including Coca-Cola, Tesla, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. As a full-service water company, Gradient says it helps companies reuse 2 billion gallons of water every day and save an additional 2 billion gallons of fresh water from extraction.
The company’s mission is to protect water for future generations as global demand for it grows.
“We work on both ends of the water spectrum,” says Anurag Bajpayee, SM ’08, PhD ’12, co-founder and CEO of Gradiant. “We work with super-contaminated water, but we can also provide ultra-pure water for use in areas like chip manufacturing. Our expertise lies in acute water problems that cannot be solved by traditional technologies.”
Leveraging its patent portfolio, Gradiant creates customized water treatment solutions for each customer that combine chemical treatment with membrane filtration and biological processes to significantly reduce water usage and waste.
“Before Gradient, 40 million liters of water were used in the chip manufacturing process. “It’s all polluted, processed, and maybe 30 percent is reused,” explains Prakash Govindan, co-founder and CEO of Gradient, who earned his PhD in 2012. “We have the technology to recycle 99 percent of the water in some cases. Now, instead of a chip manufacturer consuming 40 million liters of water, they only need to consume 400,000 liters. This is a sea change in water consumption in this industry. This isn’t just happening in semiconductors. We’ve done this in food and beverage, renewable energy, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and many other sectors.”
Learn the value of water
Govindan grew up in an area of India that experienced years of drought, starting when he was just 10 years old. With no running water, one of his jobs was to carry water up the stairs to his apartment whenever the water truck arrived.
“My brother and I were able to carry enough water for a week,” Govindan recalls. “I learnt the importance of water the hard way.”
Govindan attended the Indian Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and then went on to MIT for his PhD, where he worked in a group working on water issues. He began researching a water treatment method called carrier gas extraction for his PhD under the guidance of Gradient co-founder and MIT professor John Lienhard.
Bajpai had also worked on water treatment at MIT, and the two collaborated with the Deshpande Center to de-risk the technology. After a brief stint as postdocs at MIT, the researchers licensed their work and founded Gradiant in 2013.
Carrier gas extraction was Gradiant’s first proprietary technology. The founders brought their first partners into the Texas company and started out treating wastewater from oil and gas wells. But Gradient gradually expanded to solve water problems in power generation, mining, textiles, and oil refining. The founders saw opportunities in industries such as electronics, semiconductors, food and beverage, and pharmaceuticals. Today, oil and gas wastewater treatment represents only a small part of Gradiant’s business.
As the company has expanded, it has added technologies to its portfolio and patented new water treatment methods centered around reverse osmosis, selective contaminant extraction, and free radical oxidation. Gradiant has also developed digital systems that use AI to measure, predict, and control water treatment facilities.
“What sets Gradiant apart from other water companies is that research and development is in our DNA,” Govindan said, noting that Gradiant has world-class laboratories at its Boston headquarters. “At MIT, we learned how to develop cutting-edge technology, and we’ve never given up on that.”
The founders liken their technology stack to Lego blocks that can be mixed and matched depending on a customer’s water needs, and Gradiant has built more than 2,500 end-to-end systems for customers around the world.
“Our customers are not water companies. They are industrial customers: semiconductor manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, food and beverage companies,” Bajpai said. “They’re not getting ready to start up and running their water treatment plants. They see us as a water partner who can solve their entire water problem.”
Continue to innovate
The founders say Gradiant has doubled its revenue each year for the past five years and continues to add technologies to its platform. For example, Gradiant recently developed a critical minerals recovery solution to extract materials such as lithium and nickel from customers’ wastewater, which could expand access to key materials needed to make batteries and other products.
“If we could extract lithium from brines in an environmentally and economically viable way, the United States could meet all of its lithium needs domestically,” Bajpai said. “What’s holding back large-scale lithium extraction from brines is technology. We believe the technology we’re currently deploying will open the door to direct extraction of lithium and completely revolutionize the industry.”
The company also tested its method of removing PFAS, the so-called toxic “forever chemicals,” in a pilot project with a major U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, and hopes to deploy the solution in municipal water treatment plants in the near future to help protect cities.
At the heart of Gradiant’s innovation is its founders’ belief that industrial activity need not deplete one of the world’s most vital resources.
“Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been taking from nature,” Bajpai says. “Treating and recycling water, reducing water consumption, and making industrial water more efficient gives us a unique opportunity to turn back the clock and give water back to nature. If that’s your motivation, then you can’t choose not to innovate.”
