Heavy Metal Eco Extraction - HMEE

We have a new unique process called Heavy Metal Eco Extraction which reduces and recycles heavy metals from sludge and process water from the industries. Heavy Metals are widely spread and have been a large problem for decades. The more we produce, the more heavy metals are polluting our environment. The WHO estimated in 2020 that around 800 Million children around the world are suffering from lead poisoning. Lead poisoning has shown to lead to lower IQ and behaviour problems in children which leads to lower results in school among other things. But all heavy metals cause large problems as they enter our bodies. They attach to the cell and prevent them from carrying out their functions and they cause neurological diseases, affect the skeleton and are especially dangerous to pregnant mothers and the fetus. It can cause miscarriages and malformation of the fetus. 
Since heavy metals are everywhere around us, in the air, water and soil, they enter our bodies through the air and what we consume. And once they enter our bodies they are very hard to get rid of. But it not only affects us humans, but also all animals. Fish, for example, have been known to change their patterns, and it is devastating for all things growing including plants and trees. 

But focusing on humans, a miscarrige causes great sorrow in the family, and every child that is born with an NPF diagnosis not only affects the immediate family, but they need more hospital care as they are growing up and most of the time they need special schools and sometimes even full-time assistance throughout their life. Parents usually have a more stressful life which leads to additional health problems, siblings are affected as the child with the diagnosis takes up so much time and effort from their parents, and they are limited in where they can go and travel and sometimes even in the food that they eat.

In our lab tests we were able to remove 99% of the Heavy Metals in the process water from 2 industries form the north of Sweden. Those results are unheard of and were even better than we had expected. Our process is called Heavy Metal Eco Extraction (HMEE) and the Heavy Metals we can extract can be dried into a powder and sold back to the industries, thus creating a more sustainable society and a circular economy. 
Our process is a wet-chemical process and we build a small installation at our clients industry where we lead out their sludge or process into our mobile facility (about 3-4 containers in size). After we lead it through our process we lead it back into our clients regular process, but now containing almost no Heavy Metals and they are well within the permitted levels. As we are currently in the process of getting a patent we can not go into details at this time, but we can say that our lab tests were made by Genesis Water Technologies in the US, the labtests before and after were performed by an independent lab, and that we right now are collaborating with Rise Processum and Boliden in Sweden in setting up our own lab in Sweden were we can test our clients sludge and process water and show them what our process could do for them. 

By removing the Heavy Metals before they enter back into the ecosystem we can prevent the Heavy Metals going back out into our air, water and soil. This will have a very positive effect on all of the world as humans overall health will improve, they won't need as much hospital care and medicines, they will be able to work and take care of their families and hopefully live long and fulfilling lives. 

The effect will be a lot for the women, who will have less miscarriages and give birth to healthier babies. Usually it is also the mother who gets the most responsibility for the child with the NPF diagnosis.  Many children and families around the world have also been exposed to Heavy Metals by businesses who has not taken responsibility of their waste. One such are is Arica in Chile. (https://latinamericanpost.com/...) and this is the sort of disasters that could have been prevented by using our method. This is also the kind of area that we would like to go into later and actually clean up. It will also have an impact on the male population. Most of the people in prison are male and "We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)

As we are working to remove the Heavy Metals from the Eco System, we will also as the years go by, start to see the positive impact it will have on the world as a whole. As people starts becoming more and more aware of the problems that Heavy Metals can cause in their life they will also demand less pollution of Heavy Metals which will affect the policy makers. To have less disease in the population is something that is a win for the society as a whole. 

Our Chemical Engineer, who invented the HMEE process, has been working for more than 18 years with sludge treatment and water cleaning. He has great knowledge about our future clients and what their needs are, and he has a solution that can finally help them. 

Our CEO, Håkan Stegeby, has a great knowledge in business administration and networking with politicians, CEOs of recycling places and government agencies that fund projects. He is retired so he has time, and he has been putting a lot of his time into our start-up. 

Me, Eva-Marie, I am an educated Digital Media Producer and I too love to Network. I am the one pushing for our company to be seen and heard in Social Media and at pitching events. I recently pitched in front of our Swedish Crown Princess Viktoria and her husband in Åre Business Forum which was a great honor. 

We have had successful tests in  a US lab so the method has been tested and we are in the stage where we want to build a pilot to test it in an actual industrial environment. So right now we are constructing our own lab together with Rise Processum in Sweden so we can test our future clients' sludge and process water so we can show them what exactly our process can do for their Heavy Metals. 

We have been working without salaries in our start-up because we believe that it is so important to get this process out into the world. All the money that we get, we put into the company so we can grow a little at a time. Now, we are getting close to the point where we will need to work full-time to really push the company forward and so we are trying to attract funds so that we can do that. 

Eva-Marie works with getting the process known by applying and pitching to events all througout Sweden and the World. She works with the Social Media and participate in Accelerators and Networks to reach out throughout the world. 

Very soon in the future, Heavy Metals will be scarce. That is why we need to start recycling them now. This creates a circular economy!

As we remove the heavy metals, the Sludge will be able to be used for fertilizers for the farming and forest industry. Right now they are not permitted because of the Heavy Metals. This is a sustainable process!

First we will make a Pilot plan together with an industry so we can prove our process in an actual industrial environment. 

Then we want to build or own cleaning facility.

We want to start in Sweden or Europe and then expand across the world. Our goal is to have a daughter company in each country so that they all can benefit from our process.

Our process meets 9 of the UNs Sustainable Goals:

3. Good Health and Well being
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
10. Reduce inequalities
11. Sustainable cities and communities
12. Responsible consumption and production
13. Climage action
14. Life below water
15. Life on Land
17. Partnerships for the Goals

We will be working with governments so that they know about our process and how it can help them in creating more sustainable cities and communities. We will be able to measure how many governments we have contacted and where they are in the process of aquiring our services. 

We will be working with factories and municipalities about the production, making sure that they know that we exist and the solution we have for them to be more environmental friendly and responsible as a producer. 

Our process will help degrease the amount of disease and this will be something that can be measured over time. 

Right now there are many women who suffer negative consequences because of the Heavy Metals in our surroundings and by removing them we hope that their life will become easier and healthier. 

And we will be able to measure the decrease of Heavy Metals in the water and land areas where we are working with our process.  

We will start by making it more public knowledge just how much Heavy Metals do to their bodies and health. As they grow in awareness they will start to talk more about it in media and demand a change in the current processes where Heavy Metals are released straight into our air, water and soil because there are no checks and sludge is being burnt and sent to landfills. 

We will collaborate with environmental organisations and show them that there are options to clean Heavy Metals and have them start their influence work from their side.

We will build our own network of environmental friendly journalists and newspapers so they will publish our News releases as we advance in our business. 

We will contact all Government cleaning facilities and present our process to them. As their awareness grows that there is an option and the publish awareness grows they will have no other option than to use the only alternative to Heavy Metal reduction, and that is our process. 

The process is in the process of being patented and our attorney had adviced us to not talk about the specifics of the process at this moment without a signed NDA. But I can say that it is a wet-chemical process and that our chemical engineer has almost 20 years of experience in the area and has dedicated himself to solving this problem since 2011. 

Our engineer has developed this process and he has worked in a treatment plant so he knows that it is working. in 2020 we also ran labtests in the USA with an independent lab: Genesis Water Technologies. The results were even better than we expected with a more than 99% reduction of 3 different heavy metals. And the same process works equally good for all the heavy metals, we do not have to change the process depending on which heavy metal it is. Before and after we ran the tests, we had samples sent to another independent lab, so they verified our results. 

Right now we have one that works full time, our CEO who is retired. 
Our Chemical engineer participate in meetings but does not get a salary yet. I work part-time with writing applications and pitching on my free time. I work full-time in a non-profit organisation to support the family. 

Our engineer has been working on the process since 2011 and we started our Start-up in 2017 and have been working on it more frequently since 2019. 

We are three founders in the company, two male and one female. If we take in another founder, we are looking at taking in another female to balance up the and get the founders more equal.

Our engineer is also not from Sweden, like me and our CEO, and so we are looking at include different nationalities and strive for an equality among genders within our company. 

For the businesses and cleaning plants and factories who use our process we will change per m3 of their sludge or process water cleaned through our HMEE process. How much will depend on the flow and the contamination of Heavy Metals. 

They will have the option of having the cleaning taking places at their facility, but later as we have our own treatment facilities we can pick up the sludge and process water and clean it in our facility. 

We will sell the service of cleaning the sludge and process water. We will charge per m3 cleaned, which is something these industries are already used to paying.

We can then also sell the heavy metals as a powder back to industries who needs them. 

Also, the sludge, after it has been treated and the Heavy Metals are removed, can be sold as fertilizers for farming and forest. 

We have received a few grants from both the Swedish government, Vinnova and Energimyndigheten, for making the lab tests and also the LCA, we have won a few competition such as Venture Cup North: IMPACT maker and the ÅForsk Scholarship (10 people from all over Sweden won). We participate in a Business Accelerator called Bizmaker and participated in the EIT Raw Materials first Accelerator.  So up until now we have not taken in any outside investments into the company. 

WHAT WE HAVE RECIEVED SO FAR (IN SWEDISH CROWNS)
VINNOVA                                300 000
Energimyndigheten                300 000
ÅForsk Scholarship                 200 000
Rise Processum FoU Råd         400 000
EIT Raw Materials                   100 000
Nordea Bank Scholarship          10 000
Bron Innovation                       30 000
TOTALT                               1 340 000