You have more than 30 years of experience as a chemical engineer and are recognized as a pioneer in the water and wastewater industry. How have you seen technologies like electrodeionization evolve and impact the industry?
At Evoqua Water Technologies and its predecessor companies—where I spent most of my career before transitioning to private practice—my colleagues and I had the opportunity to establish the commercialization of a new water treatment process. It was a novel concept where people have been purifying water one way or another for thousands of years.
The process called “electrodeionization” or “EDI” provides purified water to meet stringent levels of quality for ultrapure water. This quality is so high that the impurities in a single drop of drinking water would be enough to contaminate and render unusable, purified water of a volume the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool.
The EDI process ultra-purifies water inexpensively and continuously with low energy consumption and in the large volumes needed for use in the microelectronic, pharmaceutical, and power industries. It does so simply and silently, at low pressures and for years at a time, by passing pretreated water through beds of specialized ion exchange resins in an electric field, without chemicals for regeneration or disposable elements.
Explaining the EDI process, moving ions in an electric field, seems simple. However, that simplicity masks the technical complexity of the electrochemistry and construction features needed for a commercially viable product. Further development in EDI is possible, and each incremental innovation, whether resulting in better quality water or lower operational costs, could lead to expansion into new applications and markets.
You’ve moved on from in-house work and taken a new role as senior counsel at the boutique intellectual property law firm, Lando & Anastasi, LLP. How do you stay updated on industry trends to best serve your clients in developing and protecting their innovations?
My interest in cutting-edge technology drove my interest in IP. There has never been a time when advances in technology are more needed. IP work is an ideal adjacency for learning and provides opportunities to meet and work with technology experts and business leaders at the highest levels.
Outside your work as an IP attorney, you chair the ASTM Subcommittee D19.08 on Membranes and Ion Exchange Materials. Can you tell us about your recent work to revitalize ASTM’s Standard Specification for Reagent Water (D1193)? Why is this standard critical for industries worldwide?
Ensuring the quality and reliability of reagent grade water—the ultrapure water needed for laboratory use and the chemical analysis used in contamination prevention—is a critical topic. Pure water in the lab is a basic requirement for obtaining reliable data in numerous industries, such as the environmental sciences, food and beverage, energy, and electronics, and in the clinical, medical, pharmaceutical, and life sciences fields.
When the top standard in the world for lab water purity—ASTM D1193—came up for renewal, I volunteered to gather a worldwide team of experts and end-users to revitalize and amend the standard to leverage advancements in water purification technology.
What were some of the biggest challenges you and your team faced while revitalizing the D1193 water standard, and how did you address them?
Improving a global water quality standard relied upon by hundreds of thousands of laboratories was an awesome challenge. Regulators look to D1193 when qualifying a lab for critical chemical and biological analyses in many applications. Our working group needed to carefully decide on amendments that brought the standard up to date but would not result in disruptive changes in requirements for users and producers of the purification systems, or the qualification and validation procedures already in practice. We worked tirelessly to form consensus on the philosophy of the standard and ultimately decided to amend it to accept new technologies, as long as they could be validated to meet the minimum purity standards. Voting at ASTM for a revised standard requires essentially unanimity of experts. In the end, we had more than 200 total votes with no negative votes cast!
Your water industry expertise and recent work on the water standards led you to co-chair the new ASTM task group, AC837, directed at electrolyzers and fuel cells. Why is the development of ASTM standards for electrolyzers and fuel cells important for the future of the hydrogen economy?
Transitioning from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources in a short time is perhaps one of the most complex technical tasks. There are thousands of potential solutions, and each is important. One solution is producing hydrogen-based fuels using renewable energy and raw materials (like water) through electrolysis and recovering the hydrogen fuel’s energy content using fuel cells (which produce electricity and return water).
The chain of successes needed for the transition from traditional energy sources is challenging. It includes generating and transmitting clean electricity (e.g., wind or solar) for hydrogen-producing electrolyzers; transporting the hydrogen-based fuels to their points of use; and changing the processes that need the fuel away from traditional sources (for example, in steel production, or switching to fuel-cell-powered ships or cars).
The scope and depth of technological advancements needed make it essentially impossible for one person or group to have expertise in all aspects. For electrolyzers or fuel cells alone, expertise is required in mechanical and electrical design, chemical engineering, electrochemistry, materials science, polymer chemistry, and chemical catalysis. Practical know-how to safely handle and process the raw material inputs (or outputs) and associated hydrogen (and oxygen) gases is also required.
ASTM identified that while many quality and safety standards for hydrogen exist, there are essentially no standards for water purity, standardized tests, or recognized measurement techniques for qualifying sub-components needed in manufacturing electrolyzers and fuel cells. This dearth of standardization has resulted in inefficiencies in developing and identifying the safest, most reliable, and most cost-effective raw materials, production techniques, and sub-components.
For this reason, ASTM decided to form a joint collaboration team of standards experts at ASTM and beyond to develop reliable standards for producers and users. The experts have wide-ranging technical experience and experience in developing ASTM standards in both the hydrogen electrolyzer and fuel cell groups, and the water treatment and chemistry areas.
How will the work of task group AC837 contribute to safety, efficiency, and scalability in the hydrogen sector?
ASTM task groups, like AC837, establish a common technical language that improves communication between suppliers and customers and enhances quality and safety across industries. Each group comprises experts from relevant fields and specialties to address critical needs and develop standardized measurement protocols in a specific industry.
For example, consider the perspectives of three experts in different fields using the same standards to ensure quality in their work in the burgeoning hydrogen economy:
A polymer chemist developing an improved polymer for application in a fuel cell or electrolyzer needs to consider the: required physical strength and chemical resistance for durability in extreme conditions; targeted transport properties for high-pressure high-temperature environments; and testing necessary to validate cost-effectiveness and reliability.
A water treatment expert who knows how to purify water at different levels and low cost might question the water quality and quantity available at the source, and the critical thresholds for measuring water impurities.
An expert electrolyzer manufacturer would need to specify and purchase the best functional polymer and the optimum water purification system for a new electrolyzer design.
The ASTM initiative addresses these distinct challenges by creating standardized property measurement protocols. These standards will guide chemists in polymer development, help water treatment experts design optimized purification systems, and give manufacturers clear specifications—all using the same reference framework to improve collaboration and accelerate technology advancement.
What’s next for ASTM’s work on hydrogen standards, and how can experts participate?
The AC837 task group presently consists of approximately 60 members with knowledge of electrolyzers, fuel cells, hydrogen, water purification, electrochemistry, catalysts, and polymer electrolytes. We need more. If interested in joining the collaboration of ASTM subcommittees D03.14 and D19.08, contact Gary Ganzi (gganzi@LALaw.com), or ASTM directly, referencing task group AC837.
About Gary C. Ganzi
Gary Ganzi, Senior Counsel for the technology savvy IP law firm, Lando & Anastasi, LLP, has decades of experience developing sustainable solutions in water and energy and as the leader of the in-house IP team at Evoqua Water Technologies and its predecessor companies. Gary is a named inventor on more than 100 patents around the world and is recognized as an expert in the field of high purity water production, reuse, and electrochemical technology.
