Friday, June 27, 2008

PoroGen grows ‘molecular filtration’ membrane biz

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Ben Bikson has been working with porous materials and membranes for 40 years and has seen the industry go through ever-shrinking levels of granularity, from particulate filtration to microfiltration and on down to nanofiltration.
But his latest company, PoroGen Corp. has developed a membrane for chemical filtration that could take the industry to a new level.

“It’s smaller than nanofiltration, but they don’t really have a name for it yet,” said Bikson, president of PoroGen. “Molecular filtration,” he said, may be an adequate way to describe it.

Regardless of what it’s called, investors are buying in. PoroGen recently closed a $2 million Series B round of funding, led by the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund, which also participated in the company’s first round, the amount of which was not disclosed.

The promise of PoroGen’s membrane lies in its ability to use a polymer called polyetheretherketone, or PEEK. Traditionally recognized as a porous polymer with the potential to filter on a molecular level, PEEK has been difficult to adapt to a wide variety of uses because of its reaction to harsh chemicals and environments, according to Bikson, who holds more than 40 patents surrounding membrane technologies. He is a former engineer at Norwood-based Innovative Membrane Systems Inc., a subsidiary of industrial gas giant Praxair Inc.

PoroGen has already established a customer base in the gas business, where its product is included in the turnkey gas separation systems of several original equipment manufacturers, though Bikson would not name names.
With the 15-person company growing rapidly, PoroGen has been pursuing new applications, particularly in the biofuels and alternative energy space, where the membrane can help extract ethanol or butanol from a fermenting substrate (corn or switchgrass, for example).

Those are the kinds of applications that attracted the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund.

“So much of the clean energy space involves separating one thing from another, be it in making biofuel or the remediation of pollutants, so there is an intriguing value proposition in being able to do that cost effectively,” said Jay Fiske, a partner in the fund.

While PoroGen has begun generating revenue from the gas-separating applications, the alternative energy products are still under development.

Bikson would not provide specific details about PoroGen’s process, but he said that it is a new approach to extruding the material on the nano-level, which changes some of the characteristics and makes the material resistant to chemicals, heat and pressure.