The most elegant climate solutions are the ones that make the unit economics work first. For a decade, a small team in Madison, Wisconsin tried to do exactly that with one of agriculture’s most critical and problematic inputs: phosphorus. Their plan was to pull it from municipal wastewater, crystallize it, and sell it back to farmers as fertilizer. It was a neat, closed-loop idea that turned a treatment plant’s headache into a revenue stream. The company, Nutrient Recovery and Upcycling, or NRU, managed to patent the process and land a licensing deal with an established industry player. Then, in 2024, it quietly ceased operations [PitchBook, Unknown].
The phosphorus wedge
NRU’s core technology, developed in soil scientist Phillip Barak’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, targeted phosphorus removal early in the wastewater treatment process [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, Unknown]. Instead of letting it cause scaling and sludge problems downstream, the system precipitated it as brushite, a form of calcium phosphate that is a high-quality, slow-release fertilizer [University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015]. The commercial pitch was straightforward: reduce a plant’s chemical and maintenance costs while creating a new product line. The company also held IP for nitrogen recovery, aiming to turn wastewater treatment from a pure cost center into a resource recovery engine [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, Unknown]. Their primary targets were municipal and agricultural wastewater operators in the Midwest, with discussions for pilot projects in Milwaukee and Illinois [University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015].
A licensing exit, not a shutdown
The company’s most significant strategic move came in 2017, when it licensed its flagship CalPrex phosphorus recovery technology to CNP - Technology Water and Biosolids, a subsidiary of the equipment firm Centrisys [CNP - Technology Water and Biosolids US, 2017]. This deal clarifies the company’s ‘Exited’ status. Rather than a pure shutdown, NRU transferred its core asset to a partner with an existing sales channel and installation base in wastewater plants. Co-founder Menachem Tabanpour even joined CNP following the agreement [CNP - Technology Water and Biosolids US, 2017]. For a spinout that had disclosed only about $46,400 in total funding and operated with a team of two to four people, this was a logical, asset-focused outcome [PitchBook, Unknown] [SBIR.gov, Unknown].
The founding team brought deep technical expertise but operated on a shoestring budget.
| Founder | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Phillip Barak | Science Director, Co-Founder | UW-Madison soil scientist whose lab invented the core recovery technologies [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, Unknown]. |
| Menachem Tabanpour | CEO/President, Co-Founder | Former student of Barak’s; led commercialization efforts before joining CNP [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, Unknown]. |
| Mauricio Avila | Technical Director, Co-Founder | Soil scientist and senior agricultural consultant for the company [The Org, Unknown]. |
Where the loop didn’t close
For all its technical promise, NRU’s journey highlights the classic valley of death for hardware-intensive climate tech. The bet was sound in principle,creating a salable product from a waste stream,but the path to scaling a physical, chemical process inside risk-averse municipal utilities is long and capital-intensive. The company faced established competitors like Ostara, which has its own crystallized fertilizer product, and the very partner it licensed to, Centrisys, which now controls the technology. The limited funding suggests the venture model never fully engaged with the company’s capital needs for pilot deployments and sales engineering. The risks were not about the science, but about the sheer operational grit required to turn a patented reactor into a repeatable, profitable service inside a wastewater plant.
Doing the math, the value proposition had to clear a high bar. A mid-sized wastewater plant might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on chemicals to manage phosphorus. If NRU’s system could cut that cost by half and generate, say, $50,000 worth of brushite annually, the payback period for the capital equipment still needed to be under five years for a municipal budget to approve it. That’s a tough equation to prove without a multi-million-dollar war chest for demonstrations. In the end, NRU proved the technology could work and find a home, but not that a standalone company could own the market. Its legacy is the licensed IP, not a scaled business. The incumbent it had to beat wasn’t just another startup, but the entrenched inertia of public utility procurement. It managed a technology transfer, but not a market takeover.
Sources
- [PitchBook, Unknown] Nutrient Recovery and Upcycling 2026 Company Profile | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/122313-52
- [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, Unknown] Nutrient Recovery & Upcycling company brief
- [University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015] Spinoff that puts phosphorus in its place signs key contract | https://news.cals.wisc.edu/2017/04/11/spinoff-that-puts-phosphorus-in-its-place-signs-key-contract/
- [CNP - Technology Water and Biosolids US, 2017] About - North America | https://cnp-tec.us/aboutnorthamerica/
- [SBIR.gov, Unknown] SBIR Advance profile for Nutrient Recovery and Upcycling
- [The Org, Unknown] Mauricio Avila profile at Nutrient Recovery & Upcycling | https://theorg.com/org/nutrient-recovery-upcycling/org-chart/mauricio-avila