There are some people who, through their clarity of purpose, make a cliche resonate with meaning.

Andrew Benedek is one of those people, and when he says, ``I felt I could make a difference,’’ it defines a moral ground, explaining why a person who had achieved solid security in his middle years, threw it all over and gambled everything on a vision that only now, 16 years later, is gaining international prominence.

Benedek is chairman and chief executive officer of Zenon (pronounced ZEE-non) Environmental Inc. of Burlington. Zenon is at the forefront in global efforts to employ membrane technology for purifying water, eliminating water pollution, and recovering materials from liquid waste for reuse.

The theory behind what Zenon does is simple enough. It makes filters with holes of the precise size needed to trap offending particles. Those particles may be bacteria. They may be viruses. They may be molecules of salt, of toxins, of precious metals. They may be molecules of anything as long as their size is determined -- and size can vary enormously from the smallest molecule, which is hydrogen with only two hydrogen atoms (H2), to compounds that may contain millions of atoms.

In practice, making the filters requires an awesome precision and technical expertise. The membrane itself is plastic, formed into tubes or sheets or whatever shape is appropriate. The holes can be so small that only an electron microscope can detect them.

How do you make holes that small? How can you be so precise as to vary the size according to what molecule you want to trap? How do you keep the holes from clogging? How do you ensure long-term reliability? How do you do all this and end up with a system that is cost competitive?
 Zenon, using a chemical process to make the holes, has found out how. It provides water purification units to Canadian peacekeeping forces. Its system treats waste water at the General Motors transmission plant in Windsor. In the last few weeks, it has been awarded contracts to install systems for purifying drinking water in Collingwood, for treating the wastewater of a food processor in Germany, and for cleaning wastewater and reclaiming materials for a metal processor in western Canada. It has sales around the world and almost all of its revenue comes from exports.

Membrane technology is the route to the future, Benedek says. For instance, he adds, ``You passed some oil refineries on your way from Toronto.’’ They’re yesterday’s technology. ``They’re the vacuum tubes of today,’’ and just as vacuum tubes were replaced by computer chips, membrane technology will eventually replace refineries and other industrial processes that are used to purify or separate.

The most significant thing about membrane technology is that it has the potential to eliminate liquid waste pollution completely. It is, says Benedek, revolutionary.

Zenon has concentrated on water and it has been spending almost a third of its capital on research and development. It’s sales, which have been going up about 50 per cent a year for the last several years, reached $41 million last year.

Benedek came to Canada as a refugee from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He was 13 years old and alone. His father had been killed in the Second World War and his mother couldn’t leave.

He lived with an aunt in Montreal, worked to support himself through high school, got scholarships at university, took his Ph.D. in chemical engineering, and ended up as a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Ten years later, in 1980 he gave up his tenure and quit to start Zenon with only the money he could raise from a mortgage on his house, some financial help from his father-in-law, and a vision of creating a radically new tool that would serve industry well and, at the same time, eliminate pollution. Zenon now has 195 employees in Canada, 40 in Europe, and 15 in the United States.

Today, in his early fifties, Benedek is soft-spoken and gracious. I asked him what advice he would give to a young person with a vision today?

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ``If you believe in something that is right for the world, you can make it happen no matter how difficult it looks. But you have to have a firm belief. And it has to be what the world needs.

``Thank God there are always young people naive enough to believe.’’