BlueInGreen Taps Its Technology to Help Improve Drinking Water in Three States

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BlueInGreen’s CDOX unit at a water treatment facility.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — BlueInGreen LLC, a water-quality management firm affiliated with the University of Arkansas, has reached agreements with water providers in three states to help them more effectively and efficiently produce clean drinking water.

BlueInGreen will install its dissolved carbon dioxide solutions system — an invention patented by the University of Arkansas System’s statewide Division of Agriculture and exclusively licensed to BlueInGreen — at water treatment facilities in Omaha, Nebraska; Bismarck, North Dakota; and in the Antelope Valley, located 60 miles north of Los Angeles.

The purchase orders for the dissolved carbon dioxide solutions system, which the firm has trademarked CDOX, totaled $756,000 in those three areas. These contracts put the 10-year-old startup company on pace to shatter its annual sales record, according to Clete Brewer, chief executive officer of BlueInGreen.

“This is exciting news,” Brewer said. “It looks to be a breakout year for us. We are more efficient than any other company in dissolving gas into liquid for water and wastewater treatment. Our technology and our people make a difference. We have the most cost-effective dissolution and injection system on the market. That means smaller pipes, less infrastructure and lower operating costs for water treatment facilities.”

BlueInGreen is headquartered in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park, which is managed by the University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation. It was founded in 2004 by University of Arkansas professors Scott Osborn and Marty Matlock. Osborn holds appointments in the Division of Agriculture, the College of Engineering and Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. Matlock, executive director of the office for sustainability at the University of Arkansas, is also a professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering.

Osborn has remained with the firm as a member of its board of trustees, and Matlock now serves as an adviser.

Here’s how the CDOX system works:

• Carbon dioxide is injected into the system’s pressurized saturation chamber.

• Water is drawn from the exact location that requires treatment and is sprayed through an area of pressurized carbon dioxide.

• The process instantly supersaturates the water with dissolved carbon dioxide to form a supersaturated carbon dioxide solution.

•  The solution is quickly pumped back to the desired treatment location, creating a continuous flow of treated water for superior efficiency and effectiveness.

In addition to the purchase orders for the CDOX systems, BlueInGreen recently sold a supersaturated dissolved-oxygen system for corrosion and odor issues, trademarked as SDOX-CS, for $60,000 for use at a water collection facility in Arizona. It marks the company’s first sale of its SDOX-CS system.

In its first five years of existence, BlueInGreen received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to further develop its technology and begin commercialization. In 2010, the SDOX system received an Innovative Technology Award from the Water Environment Federation, an international not-for-profit technical and educational water quality organization.

BlueInGreen has 11 employees —more than half of whom are University of Arkansas graduates — and recently added the position of vice president for manufacturing. It is a portfolio company of VIC Technology Venture Development, a private technology venture development firm based at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park.