Making The Oil Patch a bit Greener: Plant-based Cleaner brand In boom Mode

by using Chad Watt

Solugen, a Houston-based mostly maker of plant-based peroxides, is hunting for partnerships to expand using its chemical compounds with US oil producers and past, according to co-founder and chief technology officer Sean Hunt.

The enterprise last month raised $32 million in a sequence B funding led by way of Peter Thiel's Founders Fund to speed up that effort and broaden the reach of its items for different industrial uses.

The enterprise's enzyme method creates hydrogen peroxide and spinoff chemical substances with corn syrup and ethanol as feedstocks. Solugen presents a cleaner and greener chemical production system, but for the oil patch, Solugen believes its strategy is also logistically more straightforward and lends itself to small scale and cellular manufacturing, in response to CEO Gaurab Chakrabarti. common peroxide vegetation delivery with petroleum-based feedstocks and can be found close to petrochemical complexes.

Shale oil and gasoline wells that count on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, constantly produce volumes of brackish produced water that need to be handled before it can be disposed of or reused. That technique customarily worried a petroleum-based mostly produced far from the oilfield, in keeping with Hunt.

West Texas Fracking area gasoline Plant burning off excess gasoline with flames at a pretty sunset or first light on the Delaware River Basin

Getty

In distinction, each oil-producing basin within the US has effortless access to corn, Chakrabarti says. setting up plant life for its enzyme-based mostly construction system requires less capital, and that they can be positioned right away close conclusion-users, he says.

within the oil patch, charge trumps all different issues, says Michael Pavia, a  chemist, project capitalist and oilfield entrepreneur. A cleaner/greener process and even an American-made product may grasp some intangible appeal, but for oil producers, such selections boil all the way down to "do I get what i would like finished?" he provides.

Solugen presently produces its peroxides and related chelating brokers in Houston, Bellaire, Texas, and Midland, Texas. The business turned into founded in 2016 and raised $5 million from Y Combinator in 2017. further investors within the company consist of Refactor Capital, Fifty Years and KDT Ventures. Solugen bought seed funding from the Massachusetts Institute of know-how.

The sequence B got here swiftly after a $13.5 million sequence A funding in October 2018.

moreover treating produced water from oil and fuel wells, Solugen makes chemical compounds for use in wastewater remedy and purchaser items. The enterprise is next bringing its water treatment technology to the mining industry in North the united states, Hunt says.

go with the flow spas and cleansing wipes

Solugen all started on a small scale, with a construction unit that Chakrabarti and Hunt constructed with material they bought at a hardware store.

Its first products protected offering a plant-based bio peroxide to waft spas and a plant-based mostly cleansing wipe for patrons. It sold the wipe enterprise, known as Ode to clean, to Diamond Wipes in November 2016, for "tens of millions" of bucks, in line with a previous press record.

Solugen isn't any longer in the go with the flow spa business however has established a fine corporation contract with Diamond Wipes, which facets towards the enterprise's method — to be the "invisible 800-pound gorilla" within the plant-based mostly chemicals enterprise, Chakrabarti says.

To that conclusion, Solugen is targeting supply offers and partnerships with middle market corporations, Hunt says, and could sooner or later partner with massive chemical giants in the peroxide enterprise.

"They sell rail automobiles, we sell tanker vans," Hunt says, noting that logistics and freight is a true challenge for core market chemical consumers.

The company has already bought acquisition processes however isn't interested in promoting. The executives say it's too early in the company's building to carry on company partners.

Chad Watt covers power and deal-making in the US Southwest from Dallas. He may also be reached at chad.watt@acuris.com.