Toxic waste from metalworking could be cleaned up and turned into grey' water by bacteria in an environmentally-friendly process being developed by an Oxford company.

Microbial Solutions has just secured a £1.2m investment to develop its ingenious product and secured a partnership with Houghton Europe, a leading provider of industrial fluids.

Building on work by Dr Christopher van der Gast of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Microbial have developed a patent-protected mixture of bacteria which can break down the toxic waste in spent metalworking fluids.

Microbial's chief executive, Will Pope already has an enviable track record for building successful environment-based businesses from technological innovations.

He intends to repeat the trick at Microbial and explained the problems with metalworking fluids.

"In a machine shop, when you are drilling, cutting and metalworking, what you want is an efficient cutting process so, for lubrication and heat loss, you spray a jet of oily emulsion at the cutting face," he said.

"In use, these materials get heavily contaminated, but because of the oil content, they also harbour bacteria. The bacteria start to degrade the lubricant and contaminate it, so that becomes dangerous to use it."

To slow that process down and prolong the life of the fluid, biocides are added, all of which makes a highly toxic waste product when it reaches the end of its life. This waste then has to be taken away by tanker to be broken down in a specialist treatment facility.

Dr Van der Gast's PhD work saw him scouring the globe for the right combination of bacteria that could be put together in a consortium' to break down the metalworking fluid in a safe manner.

This consortium is placed in a large cylinder called a bioreactor, and the treatment is now patented and trademarked as Microcycle Technology.

Dr Duane Ager, the company's chief scientific officer, worked with the inventors, Dr van der Gast and Professor Ian Thompson, both of whom are on Microbial's advisory board. He explained how their bioreactor digests the waste: "We pump air around the bioreactor at a rather slow rate and the bugs that we put in eat the metalworking fluid. The pumping doesn't cost much in terms of energy, so we're thinking of running it from solar panels."

"The bacteria are grown on a matrix. When you vent your waste to the sewer, the bacteria remain on the matrix, so you just fill it up back up again and the process starts again," he continued.

The main by-product is grey' water which is clean enough to go straight into the sewage system, or can be re-used on the premises. And the whole process is carried out on-site, so there's no tankers driving the waste around.

The big news apart from the funding, which will allow Microbial to make the industrial scale bioreactors for the commercial trials and start the research into other similar applications, is the partnership with Houghton Europe, which sells the very industrial fluids that Microcycle Technology has been invented to clean up.

It might seem that getting into bed with a company like Houghton is a bit like sleeping with the enemy, but it does all fit together in a symbiotic way.

Prof Pope agrees Houghton is a very forward-thinking company.

"It shows their desire to provide a whole service for their clients," he said. "From their point of view, it's quite enterprising, and it's certainly helpful for us."

Dr Ager added: "It opens a massive market for us and we can piggyback on their reputation in the marketplace."

Microbial are based at the Cherwell Innovation Centre at Upper Heyford, and are a great example of how the centre's DiagnOx laboratory facilities can help young companies hurdle business start-up barriers.

Both the principals are effusive about the boost they have gained by being based at the Cherwell Innovation Centre, and DiagnOx in particular. "It is is a terrific facility, there is nothing like it in the South-East," said Prof Pope. Dr Ager agreed: "They have bent over backwards to accommodate us."

The facility allows start-up companies to go straight in and get working. They can share the large expensive machines in the central lab with other companies, instead of spending their precious seed capital buying them.

Microbial also has its own lab room where it can set up test bioreactors and leave them running. When In Business visited, they had only been in for six weeks and already had three test set-ups running on different mixes.

"We were really able to come in and hit the ground running," Prof Pope said .