Water as a Vocation

How many times today did you rely on access to clean water? How far did you walk to get it? Did you let it warm up to do the dishes or take a shower? Did you think about where that water came from, or what happens after it went down the drain? These are questions Paige Peters, founder and CTO of Rapid Radicals Technology, posed to the audience at the beginning of her TEDx Talk at Marquette University.

She continued, admitting that those weren’t questions she had asked herself before becoming an engineer. As a freshman in college, Paige joined Engineers Without Borders and worked on a water supply project in the Domincan Republic. She had finally found her vocation. “I chose water because it is inherently human, social and public. Water connects all of us and nonselectively gives us life,” Paige said.

Paige graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Marquette University and returned in 2015 to pursue her M.S. in Environmental Engineering with an emphasis on water and wastewater treatment. Paige was motivated by the fact that 850 billion gallons of untreated sewage are discharged annually into lakes and rivers from overburdened, aging sewer pipes that aren’t keeping up with climate change and urbanization. Her research focus was developing a high-rate advanced wastewater treatment process, particularly for elimination of combined sewer and sanitary sewer overflows.

The project began as an accepted proposal with the National Science Foundation Water and Equipment Policy Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. In 2016, funding was renewed for a second year in response to the success of the research. This foundational technology gave Paige the momentum to launch Rapid Radicals and collaborate with numerous industry partners such as the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, City of Fond du Lac Wastewater Utility, and NEWwater Green Bay. These industry partners continue their support of the project to offer valuable input during pilot-scale development.

“Wasterwater utilities deserve a better solution that cost effectively meets discharge permit requirements every time, no matter the flow of the storm event,” said Paige. Her decentralized solution treats water 20 times faster than conventional treatment facilities and at 25% of the cost of underground storage systems.

Rapid Radicals seeks to expand beyond the municipal market and the Greak Lakes region to provide reliable waste treatment for a more resilient future.