Steve Madsen founded TERSUS Solutions in 2009 after falling into a dry-cleaning career completely by chance.
Alongside a friend in 2004, he started a dry-cleaning company using the first-generation CO2 machines. After talking to the first-generation manufacturers of the machines, he didn’t find a real appetite to grow and progress.
By this point, Steve had fallen in love with the technology- but not the machines, so he set about improving them, eventually building his own.
TERSUS Solutions was born in 2009, with the first protype machine launching in 2011. Now on its eight-generation machine, TERSUS is focused on CO2 technology, with Steve’s current role as Chief Technology Officer helping the team to build a tool that advances gear cleaning.
In this interview with Assistant Editor, Isabelle Crow, Steve explains how his mission has always been to ensure that firefighters have access to the cleanest possible gear.
It’s a tool- not a silver bullet. It’s not something that is going to displace water 100%, but it is a process that does a much better job.
Water does not perform very well on certain things, which can be harmful to firefighters. With things like hydrocarbons, it is very good at removing it, especially compared to water.
The goal is to get the firefighter gear as clean as we possibly can, regardless of the method or the uses, whether that be water or CO2.
Again, it’s just a tool that is advancing us in certain areas that have previously been difficult.
We were contacted by the Belgian Federal Government back in 2014, as they were doing a broad study on the mortality rates of firefighters in Belgium. This study came from an earlier one in 2006 from the university. Here, it was revealed that firefighters have a six-year shorter lifespan than the average population.
To gain this result, they were looking at everything; lifestyle, diet, exercise and laundry. How can they get the gear cleaner? Is there any residual impact from the gear not being clean?
They were looking at every sort of laundry technique at the time that was available, including traditional dry-cleaning methods and probably at the time, we were about the only ones doing any CO2 cleaning at all.
We were contacted and set some gear to run for testing, which was analyzed by Centexbel Laboratory in Belgium, which is a textile laboratory. We ended up doing three rounds of testing, including one where they sent somebody from Centexbel to observe.
Specifically, we were looking for PAHs and VOCs and how we could remove these better. I think through their original testing, they recorded 7-55% coming out in water.
Ultimately, with our process, we were removing 95% plus and up to 98%. We then started working with some folks in Europe and continued to develop our process from there.
Three or four years ago, with North Carolina State, we worked on the PAH in the VOCs and a little bit on the phthalates too.
We then did some testing with California Energy Commission and the US Navy on ballistics, cold weather gear and some fire gear from one of their station bases on the West Coast- that is a lot of testing.
Those are the key points of how we got to where we are now, it’s been a little bit of a long slog but we’ve hung in there.
First and foremost, we are curious. We always question: “how we can do things better?”
Specifically, with the firefighter gear we maintain a neutral approach, the goal is aways how do we get it cleaner.
We specialize in CO2 but the aim is always cleaner gear. We want to make the cleaning available and accessible, so that firefighters are getting cleaner gear regardless of the methods. Whether it be water, or C02 or a combination.
The goal is to get the cleaning rate higher; we think it can be better and we want to work to try and improve cleanliness rates. This has always been TERSUS’ quest.
A lot of reasons, just because in our experience, at least from where we sit and when we look at folks that are in the business of cleaning the gear, it’s difficult to get answers.
There are methods in which they do it, to get it to the point where it meets minimum standards. But how do we improve it? It’s very cost prohibitive for a small business to be able to test things.
We are originally bootstrap entrepreneurs, so we like to get stuff done. We figure out our own pathway. We’re building a very comprehensive laboratory to be able to conduct testing in real time, consistently improve our process and then hopefully open that up at an affordable cost.
That’s where the innovation is going to come from. It’s going to come from the people that are on the ground doing the work every day.
Hopefully, we will have our lab opened up soon. We are always looking at the degradation of gear: how long is it lasting and what are the effects of cleaning on durable water repellency?
How long are we able to keep the characteristics and when do they start to deteriorate? We’re going to be looking a lot at that sort of thing.
It’s also important to take feedback from firefighters, stations and markets as to what they’re seeing out in the field. Ultimately: how can we all work together to improve the cleanliness of the gear? That’s what we are doing, it’s cleaning gear.
We all believe cleaning gear is the focus and we try to figure out how we can collaborate completely across the industry so that the firefighters have access to the cleanest gear that they could possibly have.
