Michigan startup Enspired gains steam with PFAS-destroying tech

Denise Kay had never been an entrepreneur. But that didn't prevent her or her work colleague and friend Meng Wang from combining their joint expertise in the clean-tech industry to start a new company.

Their goal was not small. The Michigan State University Ph.D. alums wanted to create a business committed to tackling one of the most pressing environmental issues worldwide. The result was Enspired Solutions LLC, launched in 2021. The firm is housed in the Spartan Innovations small business incubator located on MSU's campus in East Lansing, Mich.

Led by environmental toxicologists Kay and Wang, Enspired Solutions is narrowly focused on providing equipment and technology to help destroy PFAS — perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — in water.

So far, Enspired Solutions has raised $3 million in seed funding, and Key hopes to grow its staff from five to nearly 15 employees by the end of 2023.

As part of Spartan Innovations, Enspired Solutions is supported by the MSU Innovation Center, which also backs an array of business and community partnerships with the potential for commercial success. Since 2018, Spartan Innovations has invested in 47 startups like Enspired Solutions with more than $4.3 million in combined funding, according to Spartan Innovations Project Coordinator Nichole Maguire. Other companies include Portera Technologies and Cogrounded.

The Innovation Center has been working with faculty and nonfaculty to launch startups, protect intellectual property and patent a discovery for the last decade.

Enspired Solutions certainly fits the profile.

The company has received $410,000 in pre-seed investment, won $270,000 in grants and prizes and has a $325,000 contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, Kay said. Enspired has used the funds to optimize the company's chemistry design, manufacture the first PFASigator commercial-scale model, and hire three full-time employees.

"We are currently in a $3 million seed series funding round with significant interest from corporate ventures and independent investors," said Kay, a Laingsburg, Mich., resident.

PFAS are synthetic chemicals widely used for more than 60 years to make plastics, firefighting foams and lubricants. The term is an acronym for a class of more than 5,000 "forever" chemicals.

High PFAS exposure can lead to liver damage, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, high cholesterol, obesity, hormone suppression and cancer in humans, according to the CDC. Although fewer than 10 are considered highly toxic by the EPA, up to 95 percent of Americans have measurable levels of PFAS in their blood because they are in everyday products from stain-resistant carpet coatings to fast food restaurant burger wrappers, Kay said.

The biggest danger to humans is the presence of PFAS in groundwater and wastewater and their threat to clean air because PFAS are in the foams firefighters use to put out high-temperature fires.

"We have to do something to destroy the PFAS, or they will continue to accumulate in the environment. (These chemicals) never go away," Kay said. They just move from a person to some other (physical) property."

A study by scientists from the Environmental Working Group found that median amounts of PFAS in freshwater fish were 280 times greater than similar chemicals in commercially caught fish. Testing data was taken from the EPA and FDA, according to Manufacturing.net.

The PFAS-remediation market is more than $160 billion, she said. However, current applied technologies are not removing the contamination but rather capturing the PFAS and transferring it elsewhere, Kay said. One effective strategy to remove PFAS is using a carbon filter to remove nearly all harmful chemicals from water or other materials. However, it is difficult to dispose of carbon in an environmentally sustainable way. If not done properly, the carbon releases PFAS into the air or water.

"I have been impressed by the technology and the team at Enspired Solutions.... The traction they are getting in diverse sectors means their business model is strong and has positive repercussions for raising capital with partners here in Michigan," said Jeff Wesley, executive director at Spartan Innovations and its funding organizations Red Cedar Ventures and Michigan Rise.

One possible Enspired client is chemicals company Haviland USA. Haviland uses the carbon-filtering method to rid wastewater of PFAS, but Steven Buday, director of water treatment for the company's Grand Rapids, Mich., location, is interested in Enspired Solutions' system if its recent bench testing proves effective.

"Obviously, we don't want PFAS to go into a landfill, and we're open to any system that allows us to get rid of PFAS here onsite," Buday said. "They seem to have a good process."

Buday expects testing results to be available by the end of this month, which could lead to a pilot program with Enspired Solutions.

In addition to current clients like the U.S. Department of Defense, which supports firefighting training activities and strategies, Keys said other potential clients are wastewater treatment operators and a growing number of manufacturers in such sectors as metal platers and fabric manufacturers.

The state of Michigan established the Industrial Pretreatment Program, designed to protect, preserve and improve the state's surface water quality by implementing federal and state rules to limit pollution from industrial discharges. Numerous states have similar initiatives in place and could be clients of Enspired Solutions as well.

Drinking water facilities are another key target for Kay and Wang.

Kay and Wang worked at the global architecture, engineering and consultancy company Ramboll for a decade before starting Enspired Solutions as a fully woman-owned company. That fact alone is a unique differentiator in the industry, Kay said.

Together, they aim to commercialize an already patented technology to permanently remove and destroy PFAS and to function as a global supplier of PFAS destruction equipment and technology. The company is fully licensed to sell the patented technology exclusively and commercially.

"It's hard to believe that we quit our jobs and started our new careers in the middle of a pandemic to do this," Kay said.

While COVID was not the motivation to start Enspired Solutions, the fact that Wang, a Chicago resident, and Kay were working from home in 2021 may have positively influenced their decision.

Now, Kay wants to increase the size of Enspired's East Lansing headquarters at the incubator, upgrade its research and development capabilities and create a global sales and distribution network.

"There are more PFAS in water than is acceptable by EPA guidelines," Kay said. "Municipalities around the U.S. are also trying to decrease PFAS in drinking water. We can be a partner and solutions partner for all of these [entities]."