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The Digital Executive
Restructuring Water to Destroy PFAS: Gene Dedick on Breaking Chemical Barriers and Building Healthier Futures | Ep 1114
00:18:40
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Gene D. Dick. Gene D. Dick has over 35 years of experience in water research and industrial chemical and equipment applications for influent, process, wastewater and recycled water systems. He has held roles as sales engineer, technical director, Vice president, president and Chief Science Officer across various industries including petroleum, steel, mining, power pharma and municipal sectors. Gene has extensively studied water structure in both formal and informal settings. He is a co holder of multiple U.S. patents and has secured international permissions under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Well, good afternoon Gene, and welcome to the show.
- [00:56]
B
Good afternoon, Brian. Thanks for having me here.
- [00:58]
A
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it and appreciate you making the time hailing out of Grand Junction area in Colorado. I appreciate I'm in Kansas City, so we're about an hour apart, but either way you took the time to sit here on a podcast and have conversations, so I appreciate that. Gene, let me jump into your first question. You've spent decades working in water and industrial chemical systems. What was the aha moment or technical insight that led you to led to the idea of using restructured water hydrated electrons to permanently destroy pfas rather than just capture or contain them?
- [01:35]
B
Good question. In the summer of 2023, we at H2Plus were discussing studies that we were doing on desalinization of oral membrane performance improvement with some membrane experts at a large university in the United States. They were studying membrane enhancements for PFAS removal and during that discussion they asked what we could do, if anything, with pfas. And to be very candid, Brian, I thought pfas, what the heck is a pfa? I wouldn't have known what one was if it came up and bit me on the hindquarters. So I schooled up and we ran studies over the next 30 days, got ahold of some PFAs, did the bench studies, and we saw some very promising results in reduction destruction. So we started working on the H2 plus patent, the PFAS patent. And during that patent deep dive is when I had the aha moment that you asked me about. I read a 2004 article in my research from Berkeley News at Berkeley in California and it stated in that article, when you add excess electrons to water, you create hydrated electrons. That's when I realized this is what we were doing. And the diamond bullet went through my brain and made the connection on why we were destroying PFAS in such short timeframes. So that's it.
- [02:53]
A
Wow, love the story, really do. And the fact that you didn't know what PFAS were and you went out and researched it and just got after it and 30 days later you had some results there that you could really, you know, get your arms around. So I really appreciate this story. That's, that's awesome what you're doing to help mankind, help the world be a better place. So Gene, can you explain in accessible terms how hydrated electrons work in your system to break carbon fluoride fluorine bonds, so stubborn in pfas? What are the key chemical physical challenges, you know, the stability, competing reactions, etc in achieving high destruction rates?
- [03:34]
B
Okay, so first understand that we are an advanced reducing process, meaning that we donate electrons, electron energy into the water, we generate it in a gaseous form, it's an energy rich gas with our technology, and then we diffuse that gas into PFA's contaminated waters. When we do this, two things happen. Number one, the hydrogen bonds that stick water molecules together and give it its wide range of liquid phase, you know, 0 to 100 Celsius or you know, 32 to 212, they're disrupted, they get looser. And that's essentially how we make the gas. Right? But once we have this gas made, we put it into the contaminated solution, then the hydrated electrons are then created in these bubbles at the liquid bubble interface. So the disruption of the hydrogen bonds between the water molecules inhibits the water molecules that want to normally pack around the hydrated electron that we generate in aqueous in liquid. And to give you an analogy, that movie, the Incredibles, that guy running down the ramp with the blonde hair and all those black balls start sticking to him, I don't know if you remember. Anyhow, they become totally consumed, these hydrated electrons, so they have a very short life. So we have to overcome that challenge. Okay, but if we loosen up the hydrogen bonds between the water molecules and they're not so active at trying to capture and surround these hydrated electrons, then they are available for a longer time to touch, come in contact with and destroy PFAS. Okay? Each one of these hydrated electrons has 2.9 minus 2.9 volts of reduction potential in each one of them. To give you a comparison, a sodium metal ion releases 2.7 volts of reduction potential. I don't know if you've ever taken sodium metal and thrown it in the water. The explosion is violent. Well, these things are more powerful, but they're very small, so they, they can, you know, give a lot of Energy at their size range. So you can look at YouTube for that reaction. They got great videos on sodium explosion. So we're dealing with a lot of energy in a lot of diffused gas that we generate. And then the hydrated reaction kinetics, once we start making these hydrated electrons and allowing them to permeate the bulk liquid, that's the key. Then the PFA's destruction. It's published in the scientific literature. It's on the order of pico to femtoseconds that's 10 to the minus 12 to 10 to the minus 15 seconds. That's pretty fast. Okay. The other thing is, as far as inhibitors to our process, we don't react with oxidizable material like bodies and oxidizable things because we are a reducing. We're not an oxidizer, we're a reducer. So to think about it, put it in terms we get a Disney fast pass around the things in the water that are would be susceptible to oxidizing. And we focus on the reducing things. The culprits, the reducible contaminants like pfas so we can get there quicker, avoid all the going through the infantry to get at the desired targets like the PFAs at much less cost than oxidizing based treatments that use a lot more energy. So when also when we have other contaminants in solutions, certain ones, we actually exploit them and their properties to accomplish what we're trying to do, which is brave. You know, PFAs destroy them. And that would be in drinking water, things like wastewater RO reject that they're currently using as a capture technology for pfas. Spent ion exchange regenerant that they use ion exchange units to take out the PFAs and water. So those kinds of things, we can use the things in those solutions to our benefit. So that's how we avoid contamination. The hydrated electrons end hydrogen bond disruption. Allows us to to get out through the bushes and get to the animals that are behind the trees. That being the pfas, if that made any sense.
- [08:00]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that and I'm sure that a lot of our folks in the audience would appreciate the way you explained it at the end of the day. Again, you're making people healthier and we're avoiding these dangerous pfas through your process of disrupting those hydrogen bonds between the water molecules. And there's a lot of energy. I know it's at a very microscopic level, but a lot of energy. They're very excited about what you do. And I appreciate people like you that are helping us be more healthy. And Gene, you've claimed that H2 plus process achieves high PFA destruction at less than half the cost of competing technologies with low energy demands and no harmful byproducts, which is important. Can you walk us through a full lifecycle or cost model? You know, costs, whether it's capital, operating, etc. What monitoring, what assumptions need to hold for all that to be true.
- [08:56]
B
So the first thing is as far as doing a full lifecycle cost model analysis on a voice on a podcast, it's going to be difficult. I would ask that they contact the inquiries. Contact us at our website, at our company website or call me. It's all there. You can get a hold of us. But what I can tell you Brian, is that it's a single step process. So it's a fraction of the capital and operational costs of other destruction methods and even capture methods that are presently used. We utilize 0.0167 kilowatts per gallon treated of contaminated liquid. That equivocates to about 0.2 cents per gallon at 13 cents per kilowatt hour, which is pretty much the national average, high and low. If it's higher power costs per kilowatt, the cost goes up, but so does every other alternative for destruction and energy consumption. In most cases we can send the H2 plus treated water directly to the city treatment plant after we're done. The system is self monitoring. We have several sizes that we can deploy. For example, a 40 foot Conex takes up 40 foot, has a very small footprint and it's very low energy use. That 40 foot CONEX will process about 50 gallons a minute and the water that's treated can go right down to the city sewer. I wouldn't recommend taking things like landfill leachate and such and putting it directly in the river. But after our treatment, it's certainly qualified to go to the POTW for the city. If you want any more detail on pricing and cost, please reach out and contact us.
- [10:44]
A
That's amazing. Thank you so much. And you're right, if you wanted to go through that full life cycle cost model here on a podcast, we'd probably have to see if we can compete with Joe Rogan on a three hour.
- [10:54]
B
Right.
- [10:55]
A
So we won't do that today. But I appreciate the fact that you did highlight a single step process which allows again your process to be much more inexpensive than other methods with obviously a low energy cost there. So appreciate that.
- [11:10]
B
And then Gene, no chemical additions too. So Sorry.
- [11:13]
A
No, that's great. That's great. No chemicals. That's, that's even better. So I appreciate that. And Gene, looking ahead, what's your vision for how PFAS destruction technologies will reshape water treatment globally? Are there emerging contaminants beyond PFAS that this type of technology can be adapted for?
- [11:32]
B
Yes, in the areas. I mean, if you look at PFAS and contaminants in the same category, this issue is kind of like a nine headed hydraulic. It's coming out of landfills, it's coming out of our food. A steak, a normal steak on a plate has 4,000 parts per trillion of PFAs per kg of meat. Lump of chicken, same thing, 3,700 per kg of meat. The fish I eat out of the mesa up here and in the mountains, the trout I eat, that is 400 parts per trillion per kilogram of meat. So there's no getting away from this thing. It's permeated our existence. So what we got to do is cut off the heads of this hydra one by one. The areas that I see for improvement or other things that we're focusing on are drinking water because that directly contacts, you know, living people. For example, there are chemicals called trihaloacetic acids and trihalomethanes in the drinking water. They're generated when the organics from a river come in, react with the bleach or disinfectant that they use in the water and it generates these chemicals out of these normally naturally occurring organics material. These things are impossible to get out. They use carbon presently, but it's still a big issue. We can destroy these with our technology on contact. So that's one area that we're looking at to solve that problem. Another drinking water that's becoming a very notable issue is the destruction of the contaminants from pharma and personal care products. So people, they void pharma personal care products down the drain right after they use them. For example, in toothpaste and deodorant. There's an antibacterial, antifungal chemical, it's called triclosan and it's in toothpaste and deodorant. And these things are known endocrine hormone disruptors and they cause problems. We can destroy them with our technology. Other things that are in the drinking water, pesticide residuals that have a long lifespan and phenolic phenols that are the water treatment plants may not remove them in their process. So what we can do there we perform what's called chemically a nucleophilic attack on the carbon rings. In these compounds, a process called ring cleavage happens. We break the rings and then the compounds are easily destroyed with the amount of energy in this hydrated electron. I also wanted to say one more thing. You spoke about health, Brian. We have another vertical on the health side. We have an independent study on the drinking water that we manufacture where we've documented through a third party major university with the number one guy in ATP, that's adenosine triphosphate. ATP by the way, is basically the main currency, the energy currents in all living cells, plants and animals and it's generated in the mitochondria. Don't want to go off on, on that issue, but anyhow, it's basically the money in the cells that we use for energy. So we have a documentation. We put our water versus 18 milliq water in the lab, the lab water they use, which is ultra pure. And we evaluated exoskeletal muscle tissue. We grabbed samples out of equine out of horses because you can't go cutting people up obviously without consequence. So we found in this study that we increased ATP by 25%. And then we took that study and parlayed it into a living thoroughbred horse study where we had horses running on giant Nordic tracks at another major university. And the same horses concluded a 6.5 increase in VO2 max. And the same horses ran 2 minutes 19 seconds longer at the same speed than the horse is drinking normal water. So these are the areas that we're going after because all these things impact people directly. And that's. Those are some of the things we're working on.
- [15:36]
A
This is huge. Absolutely. PFAS contaminants that you spoke about is huge. Obviously you had an example there just in the horses, you know, that makes me wonder what the heck am I, you know, intaking into my body. But, but I also read somewhere recently you could correct me, but I think there's like 7 million of these different types of chemicals that are affecting us in the world.
- [15:59]
B
Correct. And that's correct from. We can't solve it all. But I mean, just think about it from either side. If we can solve a myriad of them and be part of the solution along with other technologies that, you know, help with other things. And then as it affects people, if we can make people healthier, if I, for example, if I give a normal person 25% more income, you know, to stick with the money analogy and the cells and ATP, that person's either going to save that money, invest it a cell, or they're gonna, if they're, you know, not so smart, they're gonna blow the lottery ticket on, you know, wine and roses. Whatever. Endgame is a cell doesn't have the power to think, it just does, right? So it's going to grab that ATP and it knows what it needs to do with this extra energy. So it will either heal or make more cells or make the cells processes go better, faster. And that was displayed in the studies that we did with the horses on the cellular level and on the actual life performance level. So those are the things that we're trying to help. We're trying to help people. When I close my eyes, Brian, at the end of my, that is at least I want to say, hey, I tried to help the people around me in future generations because, you know, the water, we all have to drink it in four days without water, you're dead. Four days without food or with energy. Without energy, you ride a bike. But the water thing is crucial because it causes all kinds of consequences very quickly.
- [17:38]
A
Wow, that's amazing. I appreciate that. And what I have the utmost respect for our people like you that I've spoken here on the podcast that truly again, when they do their final resting of their eyes, know that they have made the world a better place. And I think that's awesome. So appreciate that.
- [17:56]
B
And I have a team that thinks like this. It's not just me. I'm nobody. It's my team that helped us get here so we could take the time to do these things and many people before me, you know, in previous lifetimes to generate the principles of science to get where we are today. So I figured, you know, why not the thing got laid on my lap for such a time as this. Let's do, let's finish.
- [18:21]
A
Well, absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. And again, it was such a pleasure having you on the show today, Gene. I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [18:29]
B
Thanks, Brian. Thanks for the opportunity.
- [18:32]
A
Bye for now.