Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Nicholas Dyner. Nick is the CEO of Moleaer, an organization that produces commercial nanobubble generators to deliver sustainable, chemical-free water quality improvement for agriculture, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, and more. In this episode, Harry and Nick discuss Nick’s extensive background working in the water treatment industry. Nick expounds on nanobubble technology, what it is and how it can be used to improve vertical farming and the agricultural industry as a whole. Finally, Harry and Nick talk about the ongoing struggle for universal access to safe water and how advancements in technology can help restore and improve the quality of sea life.

Episode Sponsor

CULTIVATD

Key Takeaways

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• 03:22 – Harry welcomes to the show Nick Dyner, CEO of Moleaer, who talks about his organization, the benefits of nanobubble technology and how the pandemic has impacted his business
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• 10:53 – Nick discusses Moleaer’s entry into the agriculture space
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• 14:41 – Nick’s background in water
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• 
  
• 18:31 – Nick provides his opinion on the best water to drink on a daily basis
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• 20:59 – Challenges surrounding global access to water and the amount of water that is required for farming and agriculture
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• 24:23 – Nick breaks down horticulture, aquaculture and food safety
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• 27:52 – How technology can help restore and improve the quality of sea life
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• 29:26 – Nick recalls the moment he met the founders of Moleaer and reflects on the journey to his first executive leadership role as CEO
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• 35:50 – How Nick has grown as a leader and how he approaches growing his team
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• 38:54 – Other opportunities for nanobubble technology
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• 40:20 – Nick talks about the most interesting thing he learned about the vertical farming industry
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• 42:27 – A tough question Nick has had to ask himself recently
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• 44:35 – Harry thanks Nick for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can connect with him
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Tweetable Quotes

“The value proposition of transferring oxygen or air very efficiently, particularly in shallow water, caught the attention of a few folks in the greenhouse horticulture space. The first greenhouse we ever did was in Dallas, Texas, a very small greenhouse where high temperatures in the summer would bring the water temperatures north of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. What happens when water temperatures rise is the amount of oxygen that water can hold goes down. It’s Henry’s Law; it’s a function of physics.” (11:34)

“I think people should be paying more attention to their tap water and what they consume.” (19:33)

“It’s one of those things that you hope everybody in some way or another becomes more aware of or gets to see is just the privilege that those in developed economies like the United States, Canada, Europe have when it comes to simply open your faucet and have fresh, clean water come out.” (21:44)

“Aquaculture is a bit different. We really focus primarily on salmon farming and shrimp farming, salmon being the larger of the two.” (26:01)

“America’s rivers are sort of under threat in a very big way. People see it from just looking at it; they’re yellow and green. That’s a big area where we’re keen to focus on and really start thinking about how do we restore the aquatic health of these fresh water bodies across the world.” (28:53)

“We’re learning everyday around the fundamental properties of nanobubbles and what you can do work with a number of different industries. And leaders of industries are consistently showing that nanobubbles create value and it’s unique value and it’s surprising in terms of how they behave.” (38:36)

Links Mentioned

Moleaer Website

Moleaer Instagram

Moleaer Twitter

Moleaer YouTube Channel

Nick’s LinkedIn

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Mentioned in this episode:

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or click the link in the show notes. The value proposition though

about transferring oxygen or air very efficiently,

particularly in shallow water, caught the attention of a few folks in the

greenhouse horticulture space. And one of those greenhouses, the first one we ever

did was in Dallas, Texas, and very small greenhouse,

high temperatures in the summer would bring the water temperatures to north of 90

degrees Fahrenheit. Well, what happens when water temperatures rise is the amount of

oxygen that water can hold goes down. It's Henry's Law. It's a function

of physics.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations with

fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech visionaries.

Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical

farming with your host, Harry Duran.

Vertical Farming Podcast, Season 3. Welcome back. If this is your first time listening,

I'm sure you're in the right place, as this is the show where we interview

fascinating CEOs and founders of the leading vertical farming companies from around

the world. I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case you missed last

week, we had a very fun and engaging conversation with Robert Lang,

founder and CEO at Farm.One. Maybe it's a testament to Robert's

background or the fact that he's in New York, a city which I hold near

and dear to my heart, but we really hit it off and it was a

really lively and engaging conversation. I hope you have the chance to check that out.

This week, we have the pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Deiner, CEO of

Moleaar. I hadn't heard of Moleaar before and I'm so glad we were able to

make this conversation happen because I learned a lot about nanobubbles.

Moleaar is an organization that produces commercial nanobubble generators to deliver

sustainable chemical-free water For agriculture, reservoirs,

lakes, ponds, and more. In this episode, we discuss Nick's extensive

background working in the water treatment industry. He teaches us a

little bit about how nanobubble technology works, what it is, and how it can be

used to improve vertical farming and the agricultural industry as a whole.

Finally, we dive into the ongoing struggle for universal access to safe water and how

advancements in technology can help restore and

improve the quality of sea life. I am always fascinated when I

learn new things on these episodes and really excited to share this

conversation with you. This episode is also brought to you by the Vertical Farming Weekly

Newsletter. Each week, our team member Daniel Drey scours the ends of the earth,

fords rivers, and climbs mountains to bring you the latest and greatest in the world

of vertical farming. If you haven't already, make sure you sign up so you don't

miss an episode when we publish them, and also so you're up to date with

what's happening in the world of vertical farming. So many interesting things have been changing

rapidly, and Kudos to Daniel for doing such a great job in

wrapping that up every week for us. If you enjoyed this episode or

past episodes, I'd love it if you leave a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

I'd love to read yours out next. The queue is currently empty, so make sure

you get those in and hear your name mentioned next week. Okay,

who wants to learn about nanobubbles? So, Nick Diner,

CEO of MoleaR, thank you for joining me on the Vertical

Farming Podcast. Thanks, Harry. Thanks for having us. Appreciate you including us

today. So where in the world are you? That's

probably a good place to start. So I am in the office. We have been

open throughout this entire 12-month period. We've been very lucky.

We are based in California, so about 15 minutes south of

LAX in Los Angeles County. And given the work that we're doing,

both the critical manufacturing for water, wastewater, and

agriculture, we're allowed to stay open and We've been safe

and fortunate, and this is doing well as a result.

And without going into too much detail, it's now been a year

since everything has happened. And folks have had differing,

varying degrees of experiences when it comes to COVID. But

anything stand out for you in terms of the past 12 months?

Yeah, I think the uncertainty when February, March

2020 hit of not knowing what the future

would look like. If you take our company, we were

at that point about 2.5 years into the marketplace with an

entirely new technology, with no precedent for nanobubbles

before, which I'm sure we'll get into what that means later on. And so

when all of a sudden you hear the world is shutting down and you are

a startup, venture-backed startup, you don't really know what that's going to mean. Are we

done? Is this over? What happens next? And so, you know, as

April kind of came around, we decided to just sit tight and

see what happens. We were lucky that we didn't have to make any

changes to the organization. We stopped hiring. But what

happened was certain sectors definitely got affected badly.

That hurt our business. But then the food-related business, particularly horticulture,

anything in controlled growing environments from a small

greenhouse or vertical farm, even to starting to get in sort of the

outdoor specialty crop space, it was growing. It was selling almost on its

own. Our sales team wasn't allowed to travel. We were picking up business. And then

And then when we did start to lift some of the restrictions and

safely and cautiously allowed sort of normal business activity— I

use the word normal loosely there— to resume, the food business has

skyrocketed. And we have been growing through it. We have doubled the

size of the organization. We moved into a new manufacturing facility in Los

Angeles where I am now. And so it's been,

for us, a different story than compared to many. And we've been very lucky to

be so closely affiliated with the food industry as a result.

Yeah. So you mentioned nanobubbles and that's probably going to be a term

or technology that's going to be new to the listeners. So we'll start with

the 20,000-foot overview of what the technology is and maybe a little bit of a

background of the history of it as well. Yeah, I'll start with the second

point. So Molière got started in 2016. At the time,

the co-founders of the company who are still with us, who I work obviously very

closely with, had just developed a new technology to form what

we call nano-sized bubbles in water. And at the

time, they had filed the patents for that technology, wanted to start a company.

I met them shortly after, thought it was interesting, helped them put some—

a group together to invest in them to get it started, and I joined to

help them grow the business. And that's now sort of beginning of

2017, almost just over 4 years ago, and it's

been going very well since then. So, what we do, we're manufacturing what we call

industrial-scale nanobubble systems. Based on our, what we call

nanobubble generation technology. Let me start what nanobubbles

are before talking about the products themselves. We are not a nanotechnology

company. We are strictly talking about bubbles in the

nanoscale, about 100 nanometers in diameter and size.

That's about 1/2,000th the thickness of a grain of salt, roughly the size of

things like bacterias and viruses. So at that scale, you don't see these bubbles.

They behave completely differently from all of the bubbles. So whereas all other

bubbles are being formed when you're trying to inject gas into liquid,

typically it's air or oxygen into water for these different types of biological industrial

processes, you form a bubble, the bubble starts to rise. As it's

rising, you're trying to dissolve air or oxygen as quickly as possible. Now most bodies

of water are very shallow, most bubbles happen to be very big, so the bubble's

rising quickly, it's not spending a lot of time in the water, very little oxygen

gets in, bubble gets to the surface, it pops. The vast majority, 80 to

90% of that oxygen is going to go to atmosphere. It's very difficult to

get oxygen into water efficiently as a result. Nanobubbles are

so small, they actually can't rise to the surface. They stay in the body of

water. So we're dissolving 30 times more oxygen or air per

foot of water in depth. So it's highly efficient, highly economical way

to elevate oxygen levels in water, which improves water quality. We can touch

on that a little bit in terms of what that means. And then more importantly,

these bubbles actually stay in the water. So they're dissolving very slowly. And the bubbles

start to participate in different chemical, physical, and biological reactions that are

creating value around improving water quality, oxidizing or

eliminating the presence of pathogens, helping to remove— reduce the presence of things

like biofilms and scaling that forms on piping infrastructure, particularly in irrigation.

So you get this dual benefit. You start to getting enhanced oxygen levels around the

roots of plants, and that's why we've done so well in that irrigation space, plus

better water quality as a result of the behavior of the bubbles and the oxygen

levels in the water. to provide almost like a cleaner, better water quality

to the roots. So you get this dual benefit from the technology. What

we're doing is forming these nanobubbles in a highly scalable

system. So this— what we do is we diffuse the oxygen to flowing water. We

do it at any flow rate. We standardize around certain features. We can do it

for any liquid flow, any water flow rate, and we put it into a system

that provides all the features and functionality for our customers to be able to utilize

it. And what we see now, particularly in the farming area, where over

200 different greenhouses or vertical farms are using our technologies,

that the system arrives, they usually can install it in a few

hours, maybe up to a day, program it to match their irrigation

cycles and the volume of water they're using. So they'll bring the oxygen levels

to a certain value, irrigate, and that's creating the value for them.

Is it as easy as it sounds? Is it a plug-and-play system? And how

much retrofitting needs to be done for, you know, depending on the vertical farming?

Obviously, you know, we've had conversations here with folks that are doing everything from the

container farm to the, you know, the multi-acre, you know, full build out. So

I'm wondering what the applications look like in those different environments. Yeah, so

we can accommodate the— or we can package the technology for any size.

So we can go a small containerized farm to a large, you know,

massive traditional Dutch greenhouse. Some of the next-generation greenhouses

that invest heavily in technology are also customers of ours. So it's very

flexible in that way, in that respect. In terms of plug and play, I mean,

it's close to it, right? Some things, you know, are truly plug and play where

5 minutes of effort. That's not us. There is some work. I would be misleading

if I said otherwise, but typically it's minimal. It's plumbing

and power. We're not really changing process. We're not going to

change how you irrigate. If you have a storage water tank or

a drain tank or a day tank where you do— where you either catch

the water for reuse purposes or you are setting up your fresh water

with your, your fertigation, putting in your nutrients, typically our customers

will just attach 2 pipes to the tank, one that's going to pull water from

the tank through our system and one that's going to put it back. Our system

comes with a pump. We can provide an oxygen concentrator if you want to use

pure oxygen. We can provide an air compressor if you want air, or you can

attach it to an external gas source if you buy your oxygen from a gas

supplier, and then you plug it into power. So typically it's a few

hours of effort, particularly in the horticulture space. When the company

first got started, when you think about the applications where you

thought this was going to make the most sense or show the most improvement,

how has that changed? And, you know, talk about the entry into the

agriculture world as well. Yeah, no, I love that question. Thank you for asking.

We started out thinking we were wastewater. So we were going to go to every

wastewater treatment plant and provide them a more efficient way to get

air into the wastewater treatment process, to elevate the oxygen levels,

to enable the microbiology, the beneficial bacteria, to treat

the contaminants in the wastewater before it gets discharged to a river,

lake, ocean, et cetera. That's a hard business. Anyone who's been in the wastewater

business can tell you it's a hard business. The value proposition, though,

about transferring oxygen or air very efficiently,

particularly in shallow water, caught the attention of a few folks in the

greenhouse horticulture space. And one of those greenhouses, the first one we ever

did, was in Dallas, Texas. And very small greenhouse,

high temperatures in the summer would bring the water temperatures to north of

90 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, what happens when water temperatures rise is

the amount of oxygen that water can hold goes down. It's Henry's Law. It's a

function of physics. So when the temperatures rise, they're not

able to maintain a dissolved oxygen, DO as we refer to it, in

the water that enabled the crop to actually grow effectively. And you would see it

in the roots. The roots would look very brown, very small, not healthy, not

robust. So that grower heard about Molière,

heard about our value proposition of dissolving gases very efficiently, heard about these

nanobubbles staying in the body of water, water. And sort of simplifying

it a bit, said, hey, this could be interesting for us. Would you like to

do this together? And we said, let's go test it. You know, just give you

a free unit to trial. Let us know what happens. Based on what we were

reading, the literature, the idea that roots need oxygen, all kind of made

us feel like the science was on our side. Now it's just a function of,

does it actually work in a commercial environment? And so they tested the

product using pure oxygen, injecting these oxygen nanobubbles

through our technology into the deep water culture. They were growing through a deep water

culture pool. and brought the oxygen

levels to about 25 to 30 parts per million, or milligrams

per liter. That's about 2.5 to 3 times more than the

saturation point you can achieve with air. And we did it very cost-effectively.

What was more interesting, though, was the output, right? We have some great photos of

this, and even on our website, where you can see basil, lettuces,

basically leafy greens grown in oxygenated

nanolevel water, grown in you know, basically regular water where they're using

some sort of air stone or Venturi to put air into it. And the yield

improvements were greater than 50%. Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to guarantee a

50% yield improvement everywhere you go. That's not the point. The point is that

we saw markedly different outputs in growing without changing

temperature. This was at 93 degrees Fahrenheit water. And I think what's

more interesting for the farmer, from what we've learned from sharing, you

know, the results of the photos from this experience and also others,

Is the health of the root, right? You're starting to see wider, longer,

larger roots, thicker root mass, bigger root mass, and a healthier

plant as a result. And I think that's what's caught people's attention

more than anything else, because yield is a multivariate equation, right? We're only going to

affect one input. But what we do affect is that root

development and plant health. And that's where we said, okay, we're onto something here. Let's

try it again. So we did another greenhouse, small one, actually

introduced by that first group that we did. And then

started doing it again and again. And now more than 40% of our business is

horticulture. So it has truly become sort of the

cornerstone of what we do. And the most interesting part is most

of the salespeople that we started with who are still in the organization came from

the wastewater business. They've adapted their knowledge

of water treatment and the role of oxygen to

solve problems in these other industries. It must be

interesting because, you know, when you tackle a problem like agriculture

and you can make marked difference, in the quality of the water, which

results in a better crop and a better yield, which is going to result in

better output. And, you know, when you're talking about agriculture and controlled environment

agriculture especially, like, those little things really make a

difference in terms of, you know, at the end of the day, how much output

you get, you know, from a square foot. That's, you know, what the common

measurement in TEA— because, you know, every little tweak that you can make— and

a lot of times a lot of the focus here has been, you know, on

the quality or the types of systems, you know, with aeroponic or the hydroponic

or the types of LED— LEDs or the robotics that they're using. So this is

the first time that I'm having a conversation with, uh, you know, someone, a

company that's actually looking at it, the, the actual makeup of the water,

which is something we probably take for granted. And I think I get the sense

that water is something you've been studying for a while because you had a previous

role at LG in water as well. Yeah, but yeah, for water,

for me, goes back almost 15 years. Started at General Electric and GE They

put me in the water business for what was supposed to be a short-term project,

turned into a 5-year stint with GE Water, which was a fantastic experience.

On that side of it, we were dealing much more purification. So the

filtration of contaminants in water to get to a higher purity

water combined with the removal of salts. So power plants, microelectronics

manufacturing facilities, and also drinking water for hotels and resorts in the Caribbean and

elsewhere in the world where they're not on, let's say, the municipal grid and they

actually have to build a plant in sort of the hotel, so to speak, to

perform drinking water quality from seawater. That eventually

led me to, and what brought my wife and I out to California, to join

a startup in the reverse osmosis membrane field that was called

NanoH2O. And that was some technology that was spun out of UCLA.

And what we were doing was developing a new membrane to

separate salt from water more efficiently, which is a function

of how much pressure does it take or energy does it

take to force seawater through these membranes and separate

the salt from water. So we thought we had— we did have a more energy-efficient

way to do that. An incredible experience. Traveled the world as a result. Most

of our business was outside the United States, but that was really just around separating

salt from water. Complex in nature, but very, you know, sort of

binary. Give us salt, we separate it, we give you fresh water. And then

eventually that became part of LG. LG bought the company. What I think is more

interesting about what we're doing with Molière and sort of to your point earlier

about maybe we don't pay attention enough to water is water is complex. It's a

very complex chemistry. Everyone's water is unique, which is why you can never

guarantee an outcome in what you're doing when you're offering a

solution to somebody. You can only guarantee a change in the property of water

in that particular person's water. In our case, we rise— we increase

the dissolved oxygen content, we remove pathogens like Pythium and Phytophthora. But what

that ultimately translates to for the customer is always going to be highly dependent on

what I

can't imagine what it must be

like in your household when it comes to decisions about what type of water to

drink and how the taste of tap water— and that's probably been going

on for decades in your house. Yeah, I would say my

kids, my 8-year-old, my 6-year-old, know more about water than they probably should, probably

than they want to, but at that age they don't know the difference. And when

people ask you— I dabble a little in like learning like differences, and

you know, you have the reverse osmosis, and I bought a distiller, so I was

distilling water, and that takes a little bit of time because it probably

takes, you know, a good 6 to 8 hours to distill, you know, a couple

of gallons. But what I found— always found fascinating is the

residue that was left over as a result of the distillation. And

naturally, when you distill it, you remove everything. So you do have to put in

some of the trace minerals and all that stuff in there as well. Right. So

I'm just wondering how your opinions and thoughts on the quality of the

water, and, you know, if people were to ask you like, what's the best In

an ideal situation, the best water to drink on a daily basis, what would you

say? Yeah. So my opinion on that has evolved quite a

bit over the last several years. I would say prior to what happened in

Flint, Michigan, tell you to drink tap water. And if you don't like the taste

of it, put it through a Brita and get the carbon filter and get the

taste that you want, but you're not going to change the health and safety of

the water. Obviously what happened with Flint, and of course that's only one

case, so you can't judge the entire municipal water supply as

a result certainly, you know, makes you think twice about giving

advice. But then I also think some of the conversation

around contaminants of emerging concern— that's the expression those

communities studying water quality refer to things like PFAS, these

forever chemicals that are now apparently showing up in 90 to

95% of our taps, and unclear to what extent

there is a health and safety risk. But I think some, you know, there's There's

no downside in considering how to

mitigate that, obviously, besides the cost versus just consuming it

blindly. So I think people should be paying more attention to their tap

water and what they consume when it comes to drinking with it. Showering

and cleaning things, that's obviously a different story. You know, in our house

right now, we still do drink tap water. We use a Brita or carbon filter

to change the flavor of it. Of course, I'm drinking bottled water in front of

you, but we generally drink tap water. Yeah. I do trust the water supply,

but obviously there's good reason to always now be more

cautious given some of the things that have happened in space. And are

there— I mean, if that was a concern, is something like reverse

osmosis, is distillation, you know, is there

one that's better than the other or any others that I'm leaving out? No, those

are both equally effective. Yeah, so there's membrane filtration, reverse osmosis is

one of them. There's things like ultrafiltration that you'll hear, which is slightly

different in terms of what it can remove, but equally effective. You know, in other

parts of the world that have been less fortunate to have the same robust sort

of infrastructure we've had, most homes will have some sort of home

drinking water treatment system. I just think of India, where they have many

different types that are available. A lot of times they try to match the quality

of the water in the faucet based on where you are in India, which city

you're in, with the filtration system that's necessary. All of those

are very effective. Distillation, membrane filtration, et cetera. And

if you live on a, you know, if you are one of the 13 or

14 million homes in America that are on a well, you probably have your own

home filtration system. For others, I think it's just a function of trust. Okay.

Having had experience to the challenges and

the issues around water and access to it

worldwide, I imagine this is something that's been, that you've been

aware of earlier than most people. And some people probably still don't realize

it, but I think the studies that I've seen, and you can tell by some

of these charities like the water charity, for example, like, I think one of the

things that people don't understand is the lack of

access that people have to fresh drinking water outside of the,

you know, in third world countries. And I'm wondering how much of that you became

more aware of as you were getting older. No, for sure. I

would say the last 10 years, particularly prior to Molière, where we were very

focused on more of the municipal side of water treatment It's

eye-opening. It's one of those things that you hope everybody in some way or another

becomes more aware of or gets to see just the privilege that

those in more developed economies, whether it's United States, Canada, Europe,

have when it comes to just being able to simply open your faucet and have

fresh, clean water, for the most part, come out of the faucet without a lot

of thought. Whereas in other parts of the world, there's just huge numbers

of people that don't have that ability. And then As a result, there are many

that also suffer from poorly treated water, but they have no

choice but to drink it because they don't know if it's contaminated or not. But

they also can't wait because they'll dehydrate or they can't actually boil water for

whatever to cook, etc. And you get these incredible choices that people have to

make that for most of us, we take for granted. I think there's another side

of it too, as well, which ties more to what we're doing today,

which is how much water goes into all of the

outputs. that exist in all economies, right? Just think about

California. Somewhere between 70% and 80% of California's fresh water goes

to farming. Wow. Right? And about the majority of the world's water goes to

agriculture. And I think we take for granted just how much

water input is necessary for the output.

And one of the things that we're trying to take a look at is by

putting these bubbles into irrigation water, for example,

do you get better water utilization? And if you get better water utilization,

meaning you need less water, what effect would we have on the

overall water consumption? And what does that mean, particularly as a result of

climate change and access to fresh sources of water is getting harder and harder? What

does that mean for these industries and how they can actually benefit from

utilizing less water to achieve the same output they need? Are you at the point

where you've done those comparisons or is this a little too early?

Too early. We definitely wouldn't make that claim. We've seen observations

in various applications

where Nanobubble-enriched water seems to flow

more easily through things like soils or columns of minerals and

rock and ore, et cetera, which probably leads a little bit to

what they call sort of the wettability of water. So, if you've ever heard of

surfactants in water, soaps in water make water wetter, flows faster, flows easier.

Nanobubbles seem to have similar properties in that respect. And so, one of the things

we look for when we do outdoor irrigation is the ability for water to

drain through the soil. The compaction of soil. So if the soil is very compact,

you'll get that puddle that forms on the top, and that's just because it's taking

a long time for the water to penetrate through that. We want to see if

there's differences in the way the water will flow through these compact soils. And if

that's the case and the soil is able to retain that moisture, then we're on

to something. And that's something we're looking at over the next several months as part

of the sort of evolution of how our technology goes into more and more applications

or deeper into existing applications. On the site, when you talked

about the specific applications within agriculture, you have it broken up

into horticulture, aquaculture, and food safety.

Do you look at those as specific individual use cases?

Yeah, and very much specific use cases, specific applications or

industries. We work with different partners and sometimes have different, completely different

customers, and I'll elaborate a bit on that. So I'll come to

aquaculture third on that list. When we think about horticulture, sort of controlled

growing where irrigation, where farmers are investing in irrigation, could be

drip line systems, could be obviously if it's in the greenhouse, could be deep

horticulture or NFT with the With the gutters, that

to us is one specific market. Taking our technology and our products,

injecting oxygen nanobubbles into that irrigation water, improving the

root health, root development, plant growth. In food safety, we see it very differently.

Food safety is really around the washing of foods and the disinfection or the

sanitization of food packaging equipment and food processing equipment and the washing of food

surfaces. Virginia Tech University, I would say now probably three or four

months ago. Published in a scientific journal, a paper

using Molière system to produce nanobubbles, showing that nanobubbles were

able to break apart biofilm, what they call biofilm matrices on surfaces like

Vibrio, Listeria coli, as a viable replacement

alternative to chemicals, chlorine, peracetic acid, et cetera.

And that would be a different customer group. So rather than going to like tomato

farm, you're going to like an apple orchard and not talking about growing apples, but

washing apples. And that's a new segment. We're really starting to look at that through

partnership potentially and developing that. We're just taking some of that work from

Virginia Tech and starting to see how we can translate it to something commercially

viable. Aquaculture is a bit different. We really focus primarily on salmon farming

and shrimp farming, salmon being the larger of the two. In that segment, our customers

are already using oxygen. We're doing 2 things. We're going to reduce the amount of

oxygen they need to maintain oxygen levels to grow salmon effectively, and

then we focus on certain what I call niche, although still enormous,

applications within salmon to help those growers overcome certain

challenges. So salmon are sometimes vulnerable to sea lice. Basically, it's like a

bacteria that forms on the fish itself. You have to treat that. When you

treat it, you want to maintain higher levels of oxygen so the fish are not

under as much stress. So we focus in that area to help companies that specialize

in sea lice treatment do it more efficiently with the salmon grower. We also do

something which I think is the most interesting thing we do, Probably across all the

applications is seafloor restoration or seafloor remediation. So

under net pens, so salmon starts on tank on the land, gets big enough, it

goes out to a net pen in the sea and finishes its growth. While that

net pen, there's fish waste and there's food waste that comes to the

bottom surface of the seafloor, lands on the seafloor below the net

pen. And what happens is it starts to deplete the

oxygen levels on the seafloor and the seafloor life.

So, the problem with trying to

oxygenate the seafloor using conventional methods is that the oxygen,

the bubbles rise. So, none of the oxygen actually comes to the bottom. Well, nanobubbles

don't rise. They're highly efficient at delivering dissolved

gas, in this case, oxygen, to a target. And if the target is the seafloor

and you inject it at the seafloor, it will stay on the seafloor. And so,

we're starting to do work through partners in Chile, where it's become a much bigger

issue than elsewhere. around seafloor restoration, the remediation of the

seafloor by bringing oxygen levels back to the seafloor below these

salmon cages. And it's interesting because it's another example of just how the

technology starts to expand and create value in these industries

beyond just the traditional put oxygen in the water. I would imagine

now that like my mind is racing because like if you think about all these

places like the coral, right, they talked about the places where they know that it's

been damaged or it's beyond repair. And I'm wondering if there's applications

out in the wild, not just in controlled environments, where the injection of

this nanobubble water could improve the quality of the

sea life. Yeah, our head of marketing wants us

to go fix all the bleached coral in the world. I tell her that's going

to be a lot of nanobubbles, a lot of boats. But she's

absolutely right. I mean, the technology can

help restore it. It's really a function of just the scale

and the cost to do so. And it always comes back to, well, who's going

to pay for it? And I think— and there's other ways to also try to

address that issue, right? And so at some point, I think most importantly, the issue

gets addressed and a solution is found. And if we can be part of that

solution, we'd love to be. But it's an enormous problem that's going to

require some enormous scale. Oceans are pretty big. Where we do think

similar is rivers. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, America's

rivers are sort of under threat in a very big way. People see it from

just looking at it right there, yellow and green. That's a big area that we're

keen to focus on and really start thinking about how do we restore the

aquatic health of these freshwater bodies across the world. Is any of this

patented? Yeah. Our core technology is patented in the US

and many international markets. And then we actually continue to invest in new ways

to generate these nano-sized bubbles. So we have additional patents that

are pending related to nanobubble generation. We still invest heavily in

technology development, Take me back to the moment when you met

the founders, having had this experience in water. What was it

that got you excited about what you saw here? Because I imagine there was

something there because the fact that you're now running the company means you

saw some promise there. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, when I first met them, I

wasn't interested because I was told it was an aeration system and I thought aeration

was sort of uninteresting. Aeration's been around for

75, 100 years. It's widely used in every wastewater

treatment process. Wastewater comes in, you put some bugs in

there to treat the wastewater. The bugs are aerobic, so you got to give it

some oxygen. Well, you put an aeration system in there, and then you just give

it time, and it will do its job. When they started to discuss this whole

idea around nanobubbles, and you start doing Google searches on nanobubbles,

you will go down a rabbit hole very quickly, and it's fascinating. There are— the

extent of research going on is the academic

community at the university level around the use of nanobubbles

is extraordinary. We only focus on a few markets, and they're

obviously very big markets, around bringing this technology into sort of

the commercial industrial world. But there's nanobubble— there's research around

using gold-coated nanobubbles as an improvement to chemotherapy for

cancer treatment. Wow. There is the use of oxygen nanobubbles to deal with

skin disorders, and we've been called by families who've asked us

for that, which is always a hard conversation when you hear about the challenges people

have. There's the use of nanobubbles for CO2 sequestration

in concrete development, for example. So there's lots of different

applications that are being studied. And when you start looking at that and you start

realizing, you know what, this is, this truly is a new class of technology, new

class of science that can create extraordinary value in a number of

different, very important industries and very much aligned with the

goal of, of trying to address many of the environmental challenges that the world

is going through. Was science your

favorite subject in high school? I don't know. I think that was history.

I was a history and economics major in college. So this is— I just pretend

to be a scientist or engineer here. When were the pieces

coming together? Because obviously you ended up working at

GE, and was that interest just cultivated over time,

or is it something that you've always had a fascination with? Specific

to water? Yeah, just learning about systems and how things

work and the science mixed with the history aspects

Yeah, no, I'll tell you, there's 2 parts of it. One is I always have

liked how things work, and I do like working for companies that build something.

So I don't know if I would do very well in sort of the software

and services. Nothing you can't touch. Behind my wall here, yeah, behind my

wall here is a factory, and we do build stuff. And it's my favorite part

is just walking through there, which I do several times a day. So I do

love that aspect of it. I think what got me really hooked on the

water side of it is the local aspect of water, right? Mm-hmm.

So when I was with, in my previous company, I was lucky

to travel to 92 countries and to do business in 92 countries.

And just seeing people, meeting people, learning about people

in each one of these different places in the world. And

water is obviously very personal. It's very local. It's very fundamental to,

you know, every country's economy and every person inside that

economy, country, that you start to get just an enormous appreciation

for this industry and you get to live a very

extraordinary life as a result. So this is the first time

you've had a leadership role, chief executive role. Is that correct?

Yeah. So talk a little bit about that journey because how do

you prepare for that? And then obviously once you're on the job, there's a bunch

of things that you probably didn't see coming. So I'm always curious, you know, I'm

an entrepreneur myself and I know there's folks listening that are are curious in

that aspect of it. So I'm wondering how that's been for you. Yeah. If you

know how best to prepare for it, let me know, because I wish someone had

told me that beforehand. Yeah, no, it's hard, right? I think the hardest part of

what we're doing is the people aspect of it, right? It's finding, you know,

really good people and attracting them to come work for this

new thing called nanobubbles and a new company called Molière.

And people take risk as a result, and I'm always incredibly grateful for that. Making

sure people understand sort of the mission and vision of the company. And that evolves.

And in our case, it can evolve rapidly. And it evolves rapidly because all of

a sudden we discover a new purpose for nanobubbles and we say, that's interesting. Let's

not get distracted, but let's also not ignore it. And trying to— and then

also given COVID, we are, we do have a number of

people who are working from home and we haven't had a team meeting in over

a year where everyone's together in a room, something we would do twice a year.

And we have employees that are in Europe. who haven't met

half the employees in the company because we've doubled in size. And trying

to get everyone to really understand each

other, because you want to do business with people you like and you understand

and you know how they work. And to do that through Zoom all the time

is challenging. It's tiring. So I think, you know, that whole

understanding of finding the right people, creating that right

organizational structure, keeping them focused and aligned with what we're

trying to accomplish and what we do pivot or change,

making sure it's well communicated. That's the hardest part, right? And I always think

about, are we creating enough visibility in the organization? I mean, are people

seeing everything they need to see? Are we communicating

effectively? People being, you know, up to speed on what's happening?

And do people really understand accountability? Not who's to blame,

but who's responsible, who's got this? That's the challenge of this job

more than anything else. And that's what I spend most of my time focused on.

Can you think of any relationship you've had with someone who has served as a

Inspiration or a mentor for you along the way?

Yeah, a number of people. My father, definitely one of them. He worked in a

company and they manufactured and they were international and it's

been incredibly helpful in that respect. My wife has been very, very

helpful for me. She works way harder than I do and has also had 2

kids who've been working, I mean, doing school from home while she has a very

demanding job. That's something I was definitely— Harder than mine. Yeah. And just

her ability to manage time. Managing time is an incredibly hard thing to do. She

does it exceptionally well. I do it exceptionally poorly, and she has been very helpful

for me there. And then even just from my experience at Nano, right? So the

founder at NanoH2O was the CEO who I worked for, still very much

involved in what we're doing here today, and acts as a very good mentor. But

yeah, I think for me, they exist everywhere, not just people I've worked

for, but people I've worked with and people who've worked for me have helped me

become much better. How have you grown as a leader since starting

the company? I've become more patient even though I'm incredibly

impatient. So that's probably more than anything else.

And so how do you think about, you know, growth of the team when you

mention all these, you know, unique applications for nanobubbles,

even educating people as to the potential and the uses for them,

and then thinking about where, you know, do you need more salespeople, do you need

more marketing people, do you need more scientists, you know, you know, as

sometimes as the the buck stops here guy, you

know, you're put on the spot to make some of these decisions. And I imagine

at this point you have a team, but I'm wondering about your thought process, how

you think about, you know, how do you grow and in what direction?

Yeah, we need all 3 of those functions and we need them badly. We are

recruiting for them, by the way. We do have open positions, all 3 of those

areas. I'll tell you what we've learned over the last 3 and a half years

of doing this. We've learned that, you know, if I take

agriculture. When we go to talk about irrigation water to a

farmer, a farmer doesn't want to talk to another farmer. They don't want to talk

to somebody who comes from the farming industry. They want to talk to somebody who

comes from the water industry. They have a specific problem or a

potential benefit that we can create for irrigation water. They want to talk

to somebody who understands water as a result. And so

the people who've been highly effective in the sales

area of our company Have a strong appreciation or passion for

water or wastewater. And wastewater, just sort of being analogous, because the

learnings from wastewater you can apply to water based on what we're doing, putting

various gases, primarily air or oxygen, into water. So what we

really think about, and that applies to all industries, not just irrigation, I just use

irrigation as an example. So what we really think about now is, you know, we've

got over 700 of these nanolevel systems deployed globally. We're fortunate

enough to be growing at a very nice rate. And now we're really

thinking about how do we do this on a global scale? And it starts with

figuring out which geographies, which countries, which territories, whichever you want to call it,

do we want to expand into next? And how do we find those highly

effective salespeople that we've been fortunate enough to find here and also

already have in the Netherlands and start to expand that? And then what kind of

support do they need from us to do their job? They're the ones that need

to make decisions. Water is local. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. They need

to be able to make decisions on the ground locally for their customer, with their

customer. And our job here in Los Angeles is to support them as effectively

as possible with the right products, the right delivery, with the right high

quality, and the right tools to do their job. And so we'll invest here to

support them there, both in terms of industry strategy as well

as product marketing and application engineering. And in the application

engineering side, the research side, that's probably the most

exciting area. I spend way more time there than I should just because my curiosity.

Curiosity always brings me there. But we're learning every day

around the fundamental properties of nanobubbles and what you can do with them

and do work with a number of different industries and leaders in industries

that are consistently showing that nanobubbles create

value and it's unique value and it's surprising in terms of how they behave.

And are there applications for personal use? I

think of— I've done float tanks before, so I'm just— that's an experience where I'm

totally immersed in water and I've had really good experiences there. From a

just calming the mind aspect. So that's something that came to mind, but I don't

know if there's other similar types of applications that could be on the horizon.

Yeah, I think in the consumer space, probably the most interesting ones based on

taking what we've done in industrial space and applying it is sort of in that

wellness space, swimming pools, hot tubs, spas, et cetera,

where the same value proposition related to the oxidation benefit

of a nanobubble, the ability to naturally naturally oxidized pathogens

can be accomplished using less chemicals. So, if I can reduce the

amount of chlorine in your pool by putting just our air nanobubble

generator in the discharge of your existing pump because you're already recirculating water,

that's interesting. I think that could be valuable. You know, it's a function of how

much the consumer wants to reduce the amount of chlorine they

use. Chlorine is highly effective, but many people don't want to use as

much chlorine as necessary. And if If we can help there and tap into

that, I think we can, we can create something valuable for that space as well.

That's probably the most logical near-term consumer

opportunity. But, you know, we have, uh, one of our co-founders talks about

fish bait for well builds. Actually, I don't even know what you— I'm not a

fisherman, so I don't know what you call it, but, you know, keeping the fish

more vigorous and healthier. And so the list of ideas around this

is pretty long. What's been the most interesting thing for you as

you started to learn more about the vertical farming, you know, controlled environment?

industry? Because that was the origin story for this podcast, just me being

fascinated and learning along the way by

having these great conversations with these CEOs and founders. And so for you,

not even understanding that this was going to be an application when you started the

company, now seeing how much value it's adding for this

industry, what's your learnings been? Yeah, I'll tell you,

obviously there's a lot of economic reasoning for building greenhouses and creating the

whole vertical farming, horticulture industry and the growth that you're seeing. What I

like about it, though, isn't that economic part of it. What I actually really like

is that we're part of a solution to a much bigger problem,

which is how are countries or populations going to

grow locally, responsibly, in harsher

environments with the— as a result of climate change being hard to grow locally.

Yeah. And the fact that we're playing a role in that is incredibly important to

me, and I hope to the organization and our entire team. Because it's

important, right? And so when I see, particularly countries like the Middle East, right?

So in the UAE or Saudi Arabia, that whole Gulf Coast, the GCC area,

you know, the effort they're making to figure out how we're going to grow in

a desert. You can't do that unless you're doing vertical farming or, you know,

greenhouse-type farming. And the fact that we can play a role in that and make

that more cost-effective and more viable and more

responsible, more sustainable, is an important sort of vision and

mission to be behind. Yeah. And I think that's my favorite part of maybe

anything we're doing as a company, but particularly in what we're doing in this space.

Yeah. And it seems to be a consistent message that I hear throughout these

conversations. The more people we have working on this problem, the

better. I really don't get the sense that anyone feels like they're in

competition with each other. I think it's just really this need to solve this

global problem of access to food, quality

food and supply chains and everything that all these

different companies are doing and through their unique specialties are

improving their sort of piece of the process, which is what I

love. Yeah. No, for sure. And it's nice to be part of that. What's a

tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

I wasn't prepared for that one. A tough question.

I would say the tough questions that we're experiencing professionally now

are what to go after. And what not to. So there's

the silver, you know, that shiny silver spoon, the expression of, you know, everyone wants

the shiny object. People always want to go chase and having to tell people no

more and more, which is never fun, right? Is

getting to be a bigger responsibility as the company's growing and obviously falls on

someone like myself to sometimes make those decisions. That's the hardest part, I

think, professionally. Is there anything about the technology that I

haven't asked that I should? No, I think we covered it. Yeah, no, I

think, I think it's the only thing I'll add just from something we're doing that's

pretty interesting, particularly as we expand into, into maybe

the specialty crop outdoor space, which I know is a bit different from the vertical

farms. We're starting to offer our products now in terms of these more mobile systems

we offer as a service. So we're really trying to create more of a Nanomobile

ecosystem around our customers and how we operate with them and our channel

partners in the process. And I think that's gonna be an interesting aspect. of what

we're going to be doing combined with the digitalization, the digital platforms that we're putting

in place to be able to enable our customers to control this equipment more

easily remotely, have visibility into the equipment and the quality of water,

and really trying to not only provide a solution to the problem, but also

make them aware of the problem and connect the two. And I think that puts

Molière in a unique position in this aspect of how we enhance the value of

irrigation water. Yeah, it reminds me, it seems like with a lot of these applications,

Once the system is in place, anything to

measure or track the effectiveness, I think, is really important.

And I imagine that's something maybe to what you're alluding to, this ability to

measure the results before and after, during, and just

so that the client can see the efficacy

of the systems, I think, is probably something really important for them, especially as they're

thinking about the cost and the time of making an investment like this.

No, for sure. And that's what we anticipate as well. And I think that's where

we're going to be able to create more and more value as we go deeper

and deeper into these different industry segments. Well, Nick, I want to thank you for

taking the time to educate the listener on

nanobubbles. It's something that— it sounds like a Jetsons technology

when you first hear it, and it sounds like it's a

completely made-up term. And obviously people's mind goes to nanotech, but I

think a familiarity with the term nanotech

probably helps these discussions a little bit more now because it's not such a

strange concept. And, I think we're seeing more and more

technologies working at the nanoscale. And,

you're doing it with water and they're doing it with fabrics. And,

there's just a wide array of industries that are starting to

work at that level and realizing there's almost another whole

world that was out of our purview, out of our eyesight because we

just didn't have the way to measure it. Right. And we're discovering more and more

about the world around us that was always there. We just couldn't see

it. Yeah. Yeah. And the only thing I'll add to that is because you said

that, you know, it's a Jetsons technology. I did leave out, we do have a

partnership with Utah State University and NASA looking at using oxygen

nanobubbles in irrigation water to irrigate plants in microgravity environments. So

with the, you know, decades from now, and when we are growing, you

know, outer space, Mars, moon, wherever, the idea of

irrigating effectively in these microgravity environments needs to be solved. And so we are

part of that, that effort to go figure that out, which is a pretty neat

project to be part of. Your Jetsons comment wasn't that far off from

the actual reality of where we're at. Yeah. Sometimes when I think about where the

future is headed, I get excited and kind of, I turned 50 last year. So

I'm, I'm like, I probably won't be around to see the super cool stuff, but

even with the stuff that's happening in the next 10, 20 years, it's just, I

love technology. I love future technologies. I love

movies about time travel. So all that stuff is just, and it's to see some

of these stuff, these things like that were just a thought in someone's— a

science fiction writer's mind, you know, 30, 40 years ago are coming to

fruition. It's pretty exciting times to live in, I'll tell you that much.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So where's the best place for folks to learn more about

Moleaer and to connect with you if they'd like to? Yeah, no, thanks for asking.

Uh, certainly our website,

moleaer.com,

and, you know, start there and easily get in contact with any number of people

on our team or any one of our partners. through that platform. Okay, that's the

easiest places. All right, we'll make sure we have lists to all those and your

socials in the show notes so people can connect and learn more. I imagine after

this episode we'll have piqued some folks' interest in learning more about the

technology. So thanks for your time, Nick. Yeah, thanks, Eric. Appreciate you having us and

including us. Thanks again to Nicholas for coming on the show and sharing his story.

As always, full show notes available at verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Thanks

again to our season 3 title sponsor, Cultivated. If you're looking into a vertical

farm and don't know where to start, start or which technology would suit your needs,

reach out to them today. Best of all, their service is free because they work

on behalf of their partners. Learn more at cultivatd.com, and that's

spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com.

Just leave out the last E. Podcast production and marketing provided by Fullcast.

Sign up for a free podcast brainstorm at fullcast.co/vfp15.

As a reminder, if you're enjoying this show, please leave us a rating and a

review at ratethispodcast.com.

We'll be sure to read those out on future episodes.

Tune in next week for my conversation with Eric Levesque,

co-founder of Cultivated. Until we meet again, here's to your health.

Thanks for listening. To read the full show notes for this episode, which

includes any links mentioned in the episode, as well as a full show

transcription, visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com.

There, you can sign up for our email list to be notified when new New

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