Western Autotroph Company LLC

Western Autotroph Company (WAC) seeks to commercialize the biotechnologies that exploit autotrophic microbes for range of industries including: environmental, energy, mining, and animal and human health.  I negotiated a license for five issued patents and two provisional patents from the University of South Florida for technologies that improve biological wastewater treatment, that I invented while a faculty member.  In addition, I have a PCT applicaiton that describe a number of novel autrophic bioreactors for multiple markets.  More recently, I published a research article that describes a new hypothesis that links excessive sulfur consumption to blood oxidative stress.  A new provisional patent application was filed that describes methods and systems for measuring, reducing, and increasing blood oxidative stress.Currently, WAC is focused on improving nitrification in industrial and municipal wastewater treatment systems by commercializing three new technologies: NitriLESS, NitriMORE and NitriMAX.   NitriLESS may allow a membrane bioreactor to operate at a long solids retention time without nitrificaiton.  A pilot-scale demonstration is scheduled to evaluate NitriLESS in October in Seattle. I'm currently in discussions with Chicago to test NitriMORE in late 2015/early 2016.  NitriMORE and NitriMAX improve the rate of nitrificaiton by increasing the abundance of nitrifying bacteria in the system or improving the growth conditions, respectively. Two new product offerings, NitriSAFE and NitriRITE, are currently in development.  Both biotechnologies are based on the fundamental knowledge of the NitriMAX technology.  For NitriSAFE, unwanted nitrification in water distribution systems that use chloramine disinfection may be prevented by adjusting the water quality to poor growth conditions for the nitrifying bacteria.  For NitriRITE, soil nitrification is controlled for crops and turfgrass, which may reduce nitrogen losses and improve yields for crops.Future biotechnologies include MethanoMAX for reducing the costs of anaerobic digestion, BioGTL for producing biopropane from biogas, and others.  Finally, I'm interested in validating my new Hypotheses regarding the primary cause of blood oxidative stress (BlOS) and the relationship between health conditions and BlOS (the figure to the left).  Once validated, I plan on developing a clinical diagnostic method (BlOS#) and a methanogen based pro