Resilience tops innovation needs
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Resilience and leakage solutions featured strongest when five water companies shared their innovation needs with prospective water technology investors at a recent conference in London.
Anglian Water, Bristol Water, South East Water, Severn Trent Water and Souther Water held a series of round table discussions on innovation requirements at the event hosted by water technology analyst BlueTech.
Aside from leakage issues’ high profile other notable points included ambitions to reduce carbon emissions and to up use of renewable energy and energy storage. Digital solutions and artificial intelligence were specified by two companies as was predictive maintenance.
BlueTech showcased 15 companies “selected from across the world” to present “highly innovative technologies addressing some of the water industry’s biggest challenges.” The event theme was “innovating towards resilient water systems.” Chief executive of BlueTech Research, Paul O’Callaghan, said the technologies were “selected by our expert analysts are those we believe have the greatest potential to drive resource efficiency and address water scarcity.”
The 15 firms and their technologies featured are listed here.
Acuva - Canada
UV-LED drinking water disinfection systems.
Aqualia - Spain
Large-scale integrated microalgae-based wastewater biorefineries for the production of agricultural fertilisers, biostimulants, biopesticides and feed additives.
Aquatech – India
Vacuum membrane distillation that combines thermal and membrane treatment of reject reverse osmosis and brine streams to r meet zero and minimal liquid discharge requirements.
CustoMem – UK
A bio-based adsorbent material that can be customised to capture micropollutants from wastewater, including pesticides and pharmaceuticals.
DeSaH – Netherlands
Decentralised wastewater treatment that can generate biogas through anaerobic digestion, produce fertiliser through struvite precipitation and recover greywater for reuse.
Electro Scan – USA
Machine-intelligent probes that automatically locate and quantify defects in water quality at a rate of litres per second.
Eliquo Water – Germany
A system for removing phosphorus from wastewater whereby digested sludge is degassed prior to dewatering and the phosphorus is precipitated in a vacuum reactor tank and retained as micro-crystals in the sludge after dewatering.
Fracta – USA
A cloud-based technology employing artificial intelligence to assess, calculate and visualise the condition of water distribution mains.
Iota Services – Australia
A company that harnesses, commercialises and shares innovations proven by Australia’s South East Water so other utilities around the world can reduce operating costs and improve their customers’ experiences.
LG Sonic - Netherlands
A loating, solar-powered system that combines real-time water quality monitoring, satellite data and ultrasound technology to control harmful algal blooms in large water surfaces.
Nijhuis Industries – Netherlands
Electro Osmosis sludge management solution that can dewater sludge up to 40-50% dry solids.
PowerTech Water – USA
A capacitive coagulation process that removes heavy metals from water streams without the use of chemicals, membranes, or adsorbents. Activated carbon electrodes and small applied potentials operate in an active filtration process to remove metals permanently with selectivity greater than 99% with no sludge production.
Typhon Treatment Systems – UK
An LED-UV system, designed to treat continuous flow rates in the range suitable for industrial and municipal applications.
Vienna Water Monitoring Solutions – Austria
A fully-automated rapid microbiological measurement technology for monitoring microbiological contamination in 15 minutes.
WaterMax – Switzerland
Proprietary aeration technology for hyper-oxygenation of wastewater by generating nanobubbles that improve efficiency, effectively reducing energy and operational costs.