Rodney Herrington is
the President and Founder of Aqua Access LLC, a company
offering product development and commercialization of
water technologies, as well as consulting services in
the water treatment arena. His market experience
includes municipal potable water, wastewater, cooling
towers, aquatics, food and beverage processing,
shipboard systems, and personal point of use devices.
Rodney’s more than 38 years in product development has
focused principally on water treatment technologies.
Rodney helped to found water treatment company MIOX
Corporation in 1994, serving as Vice President of
Engineering and Chief Technical Officer prior to his
retirement from the company in March 2010. Rodney’s
responsibilities included development and scale-up of
on-site chlorine generation systems for industrial and
municipal markets; products for the US Navy, the US
Army, and the US Forest Service; and handheld treatment
devices for the consumer market. He also managed the key
components of the intellectual property portfolio, with
his name on nineteen patents issued or pending. Other
responsibilities included the procurement of outside
research and development funding, interface with
regulatory agencies for product approvals, introduction
of technologies to NGOs, identification of partner
companies for manufacturing and components sourcing, and
assistance to the sales team for technical support and
client presentations.
Rodney’s career has encompassed taking a number of products
from concept to reality, starting with community-sized
on-site chlorine generation systems. Rodney envisioned a
miniaturized version of this same electrolytic
technology that could be used by individuals. His
concept for a handheld treatment device remained in his
patent notebook for a couple of years, until the
opportunity to pursue his invention arose. The project
was ultimately funded by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), which was looking for a
man-portable system that could treat any water anywhere
to US EPA drinking water standards. Rodney led the
multi-million dollar development program, turning his
invention into reality. The
MSR MIOX Purifier is used today by avid
outdoorsmen, military personnel in various countries,
and Peace Corps volunteers who need access to clean
water. No one else has successfully miniaturized the
electrolytic process in such a form.
Rodney was also instrumental in development of a reverse
osmosis (RO) hand pump system that includes significant
innovations in spiral wound membrane designs as well as
small hand pump systems. These membrane element
innovations offer significant capacity increases for all
size RO plant operations, from household use to
community desalination systems.
Rodney’s early career included design engineering work at
Texas Instruments on cryogenics and infrared detection
systems, as well as Vice President of Engineering with
an oilfield equipment manufacturer building drilling
rigs. In 1983, he began working for the environmental
remediation engineering firm Los Alamos Technical
Associates (LATA) as head of the design division.
Responsibilities included sales, project management, and
profit and loss. LATA spun off MIOX Corporation in 1994.
Rodney is a registered engineer in New Mexico and Colorado,
and is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a BS in
Aerospace Engineering, an MS in Mechanical Engineering,
and several post-graduate business courses.