When or if Hy-SyEnce takes off as a manufacturer of wastewater treatment systems that both create power and eliminate methane as a by-product, it will all have started at the Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center.

The start-up, founded two years ago in Attleboro, moved its operations in April to ATMC to set up a lab and office as it seeks to bring in $560 million in revenue during its fifth year, in 2012. It recently signed up its first customer — an undisclosed food service company — and plans to have its first commercial system together by this fall.

Hy-SyEnce and another Massachusetts renewable energy company, FloDesign, a Wilbraham-based developer of aerospace technology for use in product development, joined ATMC’s technology venture center this year. FloDesign is also closely tied to nearby Western New England College in Springfield, using the college’s laboratories and other resources and collaborating with staff.

The addition of both businesses is a boon for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth-controlled center.
“Clean energy is a very opportune industry for this region,” said John Miller, ATMC’s entrepreneur-in-residence. “There is still a significant amount of manufacturing potential here.”

The technology venture center includes a dozen companies, including Boston Protein, a bio-tech company creating technology to minimize or stop protein collections in solutions and solids; and Ocean Server, a producer of underwater monitoring vehicles and a battery system that the company says can be added to virtually any device.
Start-ups typically “graduate” from the program in three years, once they develop their product and are ready to take off, Miller said. “Every start-up has something missing — people, money, business planning. I figure out the holes and help fill them.”

The technology venture center takes up the east wing of the 60,000 square-foot ATMC, which opened in 2001 at a cost of $14 million. Last year, the ATMC received a grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to create a clean energy lab to help start-ups. FloDesign and Hy-SyEnce join two other green companies, one dealing with tidal energy, the other wave energy, at the center.

The ATMC will soon be owned by UMass Dartmouth, too. Last spring, the state gave the university up to $11.5 million to buy the building, which it now leases. It is now owned by the quasi-public Massachusetts Development Finance Agent, known as MassDevelopment.

Hy-SyEnce has developed wastewater treatment systems that essentially use bacteria to digest waste, which in nature creates energy. In a wastewater treatment system, the energy is converted into hydrogen — a popular source of clean energy — or into electricity. There is no methane emitted as in traditional wastewater treatment systems.

Don Crookes, the Hy-SyEnce CEO, was introduced to the technology at a hydrogen energy symposium. As a founder of four other venture companies, Crookes took the technology and has brought it to the brink of an introduction to the market. Other companies are starting up using the same technology, he said, but aren’t as far along in development.

The company has received “a tremendous amount of support” from ATMC, whose UMass Dartmouth professors work with the start-ups. Hy-SyEnce has filed patents for its “unique intellectual property,” Crookes said.

Hy-SyEnce’s systems — touted as “converting high-cost wastewater treatment into profit” — can be explained rather simply. “We’re harvesting energy from what traditionally would be waste,” said Ciro DeMeglio, one of four employees and someone who spends long days, often well past midnight, at the ATMC lab. The company, which also includes Don Crookes Jr. and Eric Hilman, recently got its first order — of 125 systems — from an international food service company with a location in Massachusetts.

Hy-SyEnce isn’t announcing the company’s name. But reaching the market has required a lot of patience for the small start-up. “I haven’t seen a paycheck in two years,” Crookes Sr. said.

Hy-SyEnce’s system requires 80 percent less capital investment, takes up far less space, and doesn’t pollute like traditional systems, the CEO said. A Hy-SyEnce module holds 158.5 gallons and is about the size of a golf cart.
So why isn’t a microbial fuel cell-powered treatment system used everywhere?

“It will be,” Crookes said, it’s just a matter of time.