ROCHESTER — A national laundry chemical company expects to clean with technology co-developed by Paul Jewison, an engineer who is also Rochester’s general manager.
Textile care services.
Gurtler Industriesa family-owned manufacturer of detergents and specialty chemicals for the commercial laundry industry, recently purchased the rights to the intelligent UV light Advanced Oxidation System developed by Jewison and Andrew Rupnow.
The process, jokingly described by Jewison as “a hand grenade exploding in a basketball,” is used in large industrial laundry facilities.
The system they created in 2017 brings together technology from wastewater treatment and industrial bottling to UV disinfection and laundry cleaning.
They plugged it into Textile Care’s south Rochester facility, which cleans thousands of pounds Mayo Clinicbed linen every day, as well as the lines from most hotels in the area. Jewison and Rupnow started a company called Omni systems to develop and market their process.
The advanced intelligent UV oxidation system uses a series of UV lights to create ozone to charge the wash water. This water is then passed through a separate set of tubes with another collection of bulbs to emit more UV light.
The washing machine uses a mixture of fresh water and recirculated fresh water. Using this process, laundry does not need as much water or cleaning chemicals.
The system not only disinfects the laundry, but also makes the bed linen white by “supercharging” the water with hydroxyl radical molecules. The result is an efficient sterilization and cleaning process that is more environmentally friendly than traditional methods.
“It was dumb luck that we created a completely new process,” Jewison said. “The hydroxyl radical is the strongest oxidizing agent on planet Earth. It removes hundreds of different types of stains such as food, blood, faeces, urine and medicines from health bedding.”
Contributed / Gurtler Industries
The system, which is designed for massive industrial tunnel washers, will be rebranded by Illinois-based Gurtler as Vis•Tex Omni UV tunnel system.
Jake Gertler, Gurtler Industries vice president of corporate accounts and the third generation of the Gurtler family to lead the company, sees the system created by Jewison and Rupnow as the future of the healthcare laundry industry. Gurtler Industries is the biggest competitor of the St. Paul, Minn.-based EcoLab.
“Once we understood the process and saw the benefits of it, we said to ourselves, we need this technology under our umbrella,” Gurtler said. “We’re bringing this technology to our customers that we believe will ultimately change the way laundry is handled for health. And we were really excited about that.”
Gurtler declined to disclose any details about the financial arrangements for that deal or how much his company paid Jewison and Rupnow.
“They just weren’t in it for the financial gain as much as to do good for the industry.” They knew that we were a company that recognized the value of this technology and would spread it. There is an absolute legacy on behalf of Paul and the Omni team that will continue for decades to come in the industry,” he added.
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