Category Archives: Technology

The Corporate View of Water Strategy – a Webinar with SAP, Intel and IBM

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When water is cheap and abundant, why should corporations be planning their water management strategy for a thirsty future?

“The Corporate View of Water Strategy” webinar will bring together leaders from SAP, Intel and IBM to discuss why water management is important, how to implement a water management plan, and the practical application of water management in a large and successful corporation.

Speakers are:

  • Peter Williams, CTO, “Big Green” Innovations at IBM
  • Carrie Freeman, Director, Sustainable Business Innovation, Intel
  • Garrett Miller, Director of Sustainability at SAP Labs

Register for this webinar by Monday, November 8, and receive a complimentary copy of “Water 101: a primer for the corporate executive” by Laura Shenkar, Principal at The Artemis Project.

“The Corporate View of Water Strategy” takes place on Thursday, November 11 from 8-9:00 AM PST. Early registration price of $149 is valid through Monday, November 8. Space is limited.

Register here.

The Gatekeepers of Water Tech

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Water Sanitization

Utility managers like Eric Rosenblum and Ron Zegers are part of a small cadre of experienced leaders within the water utility who have been facilitating new water management approaches for decades.  They have ensured that, with very few exceptions, there is a steady supply of healthy and safe drinking water.

Like other water utility managers, these men play a quiet but essential role in our world. Our water infrastructure is not only the hard bound pipes and pumps that treat water and deliver it to us – it’s the lakes, streams and rivers that are our source of freshwater.  Protecting these sources has become an essential part of the role of water utilities.

Control Panel

We want innovative video games and haircuts, but we want the same old water.


We want innovative video games and haircuts, but we want the same old water.  It is the responsibility of water utilities to avoid any unnecessary risks to water quality, and this makes them among the most risk adverse customers for new technology.

Copy Cat

They demand that new approaches be well-proven in other utilities before they’re considered. As explained by Andrew Salveson of Carollo Engineers, “One of the major hurdles we face is the municipal copy-cat market, and this presents a hurdle to innovation.”

Promising technologies spend $500,000 to $1M just to prove their technology works full-scale at a single utility.  Many of the seemingly most promising companies over the past few years have not been able to survive the long and expensive process of proving their solutions in the municipal market.  As a result, the benefits of these solutions are often never seen by the general population.

Scarcity and infrastructure decay require new solutions for water resources management.  The process for bringing water technology to market requires money, but more importantly it requires leadership.  The few companies that make it through this arduous process are applying innovation to how they bring to their technology to market.

Bringing Water Design Vision to the “Rest of the Mess” in Real Estate

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Shanghai Towers

Shanghai Towers

The Shanghai Tower will serve as a mammoth 125-floor rainwater harvesting structure. The breathtaking outside shell borrows the best designs from nature, collecting rain to purify and replenish 675,000,000 liters of water each year. Combining stores, offices and apartments, the building will serve as an icon for water resource management in China, as the country struggles to find enough clean water for its people and its growing economy.

“Unfortunately, most of the buildings in the world are not Shanghai Towers – most of the buildings aren’t new,” noted Dave Pogue, Director of Sustainability for CB Richard Ellis in the Artemis Project webinar earlier today.

“While some of our buildings are new, we also need to be concerned about managing the ‘rest of the mess’,” David Pogue, CB Richard Ellis.

Shanghai Towers

Shanghai Towers

“While some of our buildings are new, we also need to be concerned about managing the ‘rest of the mess’,” Pogue explained.  CBRE manages over 1.2 billion square feet of property in the Americas, and the bulk of those buildings are not new. Environmental considerations must contend with budgets.  “We have a lot of buildings struggling trying to find a way to be better in a water constrained world,” Pogue stated.

While water is vital, it is virtually free today.  And water seldom gets attention until there is a crisis.  Pogue noted that basic water saving devices such as toilets and urinals generate only a trickle of benefits and take 8 to 10 years to pay back. They’re better than nothing, but still just a small drop in the bucket.

We’re still waiting for the onsite appliance that reclaims water and treats rainwater with the precision and beauty of a miniature Shanghai Tower.  Small-scale onsite waste water systems operate today, recycling water from sinks and toilets to save over half of the drinking water used by an apartment building.  Companies like Dominic Sulik’s Natural Solutions Utilities are offering whole building solutions for onsite water management that match much of the savings from the Shanghai Tower. This offering is a service that pieces together existing solutions.

Property Chart

Property Chart

We can see the crises are coming, but we are still waiting for the Apple version of a building water system that matches the benefits of the Shanghai Tower.

“Its not about the cost of water, it’s about the downtime and the risk for the property,” John Macomber, Harvard Business School.

“Its not about the cost of water, it’s about the downtime and the risk for the property,” notes John Macomber, Professor of Sustainability at Harvard Business School.  If there is a lower cost of capital for a better risk-adjusted return on the property, then onsite water management makes sense financially.

Sustainable Building Image

Sustainable Building Image

Professor Macomber suggests that real estate properties such as accommodations and hospitality operations—hotels, spas, and hospitals—are examples of some of the early candidates for water tech. “The beach head for water tech is where the landlord pays for the water, where the landlord can effectively measure the benefit of an intervention, and where the volume of water used really matters to the economics.”

Desalitech Reduces Costs of Desalination

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Middelgrunden Windmills Outside Copenhagen

Efficient desalination can utilize alternative energy, like these Danish windmills, thus relying on the ocean twice. / Photo: andjohan on Flickr

The most common question I field when I mention desalination is, “Doesn’t that take a lot of energy?”

The truth is, yes, it does. That’s why you’ll not hear me advocate for desalination without strongly insisting on complementary conservation.

We must redouble our conservation efforts by upgrading infrastructure intelligently and in no way excuse wasteful water practices by pointing to the plentiful, historical ingredients of desalination: oceans of water and oceans of coal.

Each barrel of freshwater extracted from the ocean has costs, so we should use the water as efficiently as possible, recycling it and then remediating it into the water cycle.

Yet, conservation alone isn’t going to meet our water needs. The world’s population is expected to increase by 2.5 billion over the next 30 – 40 years, while the current, natural water cycle is not expected to increase its output.

Just as we must increase conservation, we must prepare for the impending water plateau by increasing our capacity to produce fresh water.

Hence my excitement in June when I heard about Desalitech’s successful pilot.

The test purified Mediterranean saltwater, using Desalitech’s proprietary Closed-Circuit Desalination saltwater reverse osmosis method (SWRO-CCD).

Using common components, without energy recovery, running a high-pressure pump at 81% mean efficiency and circulation pump at 37.5% mean efficiency, the pilot achieved 48% recovery at 2.05 – 2.40 kWh per cubic meter of fresh water. For comparison, Perth’s desalination plant using Energy Recovery from ERI achieves 43% recovery at 2.32 kWh/m3.

Desalitech aims to increase the mean efficiency of the off-the-shelf, high-pressure pump to 88%, to provide recovery at 1.75 – 1.95 kWh/m3 on Mediterranean saltwater. The same pumps used on ocean water could produce equal recovery at 1.5 – 1.7 kWh/m3.

Desalitech’s implementation reduces the cost of powering desalination processes. It also decreases capital expenditures. Nadav Efraty, CEO of Desalitech, told me, “This technology is reducing energy consumption by up to 50% when we utilize about twice the membranes, reduces energy by about 10-15% when we use only 40% of the membranes compared to a conventional plant, or reduces energy about 30% when we utilizes the same amount of membranes, but in this mode, since we don’t utilize any form of energy recovery, we still see a reduction in capital expenditures.”

Even with less than half the membranes, the technology still sees 10-15% energy reduction. That’s a 60% savings on capital expenditures for membranes.

As an added element of efficiency, plants utilizing Desalitech’s technology can turn plants up and down depending on demand: Nadav explained, “The very same unit can operate at very high production rates part of the day (when power rates are low for example) and in extremely low energy consumption the rest of the day.”

Desalitech does this by independently controlling component flow rates, recovery, pressures and cross flow irrespective of the other variables.

Following their successful pilot, Desalitech is addressing brackish water. Desalitech’s three BWRO installations are fully operational facilities, capable of producing 10,000 m3 fresh water per day.

Resource Recovery Companies Find Sustainable Advantage

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Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant / Photo: roboppy on flickr

Everywhere you look people are trying to do more with less. Reduce costs, increase efficiency, reduce energy use, recover resources. There are strong economic drivers to do all of these things, which also happen to be sustainable.

On July 22nd, 2010 I moderated the first in the BlueTech Tracker(TM) Webinar series: Mineral & Resource Recovery from Wastewater. We featured four companies with innovative technologies, and perhaps even more importantly, innovative business models. The companies were Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Calera, CASTion and Oberon.

Ostara produces a slow release fertilizer product, Crystal Green(TM) from wastewater.

Calera, a Khosla Ventures backed company whose technology is part of a new infrastructure designed to view carbon, not as a pollutant, but as a resource. Calera might be accused of having a Superman complex in the cleantech sector, in that their technology simultaneously contributes to solving two of the most pressing environmental issues of our time: climate change and water scarcity. Calera sequesters carbon from power plants, produces a low carbon cement and helps to desalinate water.

The CASTion Corporation has an Ammonia Recovery Process (ARP) which can produce an ammonia fertilizer product from wastewater and recently won a $27.1M contract with the City of New York to provide a cost effective method for the City to achieve compliance at its 26th Ward Wastewater Treatment plant.

Oberon FMR concluded the quartet. Oberon takes wastewater from the food processing industry, and through the application of some clever biotechnology (single cell protein synthesis), produces a value added, high protein, fish meal replacement for use in the aquaculture industry.

A few key take-aways:

1. This is about Costs
To get out of the starting gate with wastewater technologies in this area, you have to have a compelling value proposition. Resource recovery can enable a technology provider to off-set operational and capital costs and thereby provide a cost effective solution to their clients.

Ahren Britton, CTO with Ostara put it very succinctly with the observation, “as a standalone wastewater treatment technology, we won’t always be the cheapest way to remove phosphorus; as a fertilizer production company, we might not compete with current ore prices, but put the two together, and that’s what makes for the winning proposition.”

David Delasanta, President of CASTion noted that the decision by the City of New York to go with their ARP system on a new project was driven by economics. The City had a regulatory requirement to remove ammonia and the ARP system represented the lowest cost option occupying the smallest footprint. The City in fact sole-sourced this option from CASTion.

Fishing Farm, Jian De, Hangzhou, Shanghai

Fish Farm outside Shanghai / Photo: Ivan Walsh on flickr

The Sustainability and political angle can help to push these projects over the line, as the person who finally signs off on expenditure is likely to be a political animal. However, to get this far in the process, you first have to convince the people on the ground that this is a good idea, and their concerns tend to be less politically motivated and more related to, ‘Will this work and how much will it cost?‘.

Seth Terry, Oberon VP of Operations said they have found that the Corporate Sustainability angle of their approach to turn food processing wastewater into a feedstock for fish meal replacement production, has piqued the interest of a number of major Corporations and was one of the factors which helped them to secure a contract with Miller Coors to construct a full-scale demonstration facility at their site.

There is a monetary value to a company in terms of brand value to be able to show its shareholders that instead of generating a waste product which required disposal, they were able to ‘up-cycle’ the resources in their wastewater and in doing so, off-set the unsustainable harvesting of biomass from oceans to produce fish-meal for fish farms.

2. Resource Recovery is becoming a geo-political and security issue
Certain resources such as phosphorus are becoming a geo-political issue. China has recently put an export tax on phosphorus to discourage the export of this valuable commodity, to preserve it and keep it at home to enable food production. China is known for its ability to take a long-term view on things and this is an early indicator of how important this resource may become. It is worth noting that like oil, phosphorus resources are found in a number of unstable regions of the world.

3. Companies which succeed in this area need to know two markets
The flip side of producing a product while treating a waste, is that you need to simultaneously build an outlet and channels to market for your product, at the same time as you are developing the infrastructure to produce it. This is challenging when working with a variable feedstock (wastewater) and when the quantities you produce, initially, do not make a dent in the larger market for that commodity.

To succeed, companies need to understand the wastewater treatment market and also understand the market for the commodity they are producing.

In the case of Calera, this means they have to know the concrete and aggregate business. In the case of Oberon, they have to know the fish-meal business. Ostara and CASTion both have to understand the dynamics of the fertilizer industry. When you hear Calera CEO Brent Constanz speak about the nuances of the concrete and aggregate market, and then switch back to the importance of piloting on different wastewater streams, you get a feel for the level and depth of understanding required to succeed in straddling these divergent worlds.

At least a part of the sustainable business advantage these companies have, is their ability to understand and create a business model which meets customers needs on both sides of the fence. Companies that can do this are pulling away from the herd. When you combine this with technical know-how, continued innovation and a strong IP position, you have a sustainable first mover advantage which will be difficult for a ‘me-too’ to catch up with in the short term.

The next Webinar in our BlueTech Tracker(TM) Series is on Thursday July 29th at 12 noon PST and will put the spotlight on Microbial Fuel Cells and Bioelectrochemical systems. This group of technologies has the potential to generate electricity from wastewater and produce fuels and chemicals which can be sold.

Again the approach is the same, how to squeeze some value out of that wastewater.

Paul O’Callaghan is Principal of O2 Environmental, a consultancy group providing water technology market expertise, founder of the BlueTech Innovation Forum and co-author of ‘Water Technology Markets 2010′.

Engineers Turn Water Contaminant into Fuel

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Aerial Top Dusting Is a Leading Cause of Water Contamination from Nitrates

Aerial top-dusting is a leading cause of water contamination / Photo: tjmartins on flickr

Researchers in Delaware are worried by high levels of nitrates recently discovered in groundwater and drinking water. A recent study found 76% of domestic wells contained nitrates. 18% of the wells exceed federal standards for drinking water.

Even some deep wells are affected, leading Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources to conclude that surface contaminants are penetrating natural barriers, meaning “ground-water quality in a significant fraction of confined aquifer wells is susceptible to human activities.”

Nitrates reach surface waters and groundwaters via septic systems, stormwater runoff and fertilizers used at farms, homes and businesses including golf courses. Nitrates threaten pregnant mothers, children and, in sufficient concentrations, nitrogen-rich waters precipitate eutrophication, contributing to dead-zones like in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nitrates that don’t directly enter surface waters and groundwaters are typically removed from the wastestream at wastewater treatment plants, either via efficient processes like Ostara’s Nutrient Removal Technology (which removes nitrogen in the from of NH3, aka ammonia) or via energy intensive processes utilizing aerobic bacteria.

But now a couple of rocket scientists and a waste expert from Stanford have devised a way to safely and efficiently dispose of nitrates while powering wastewater treatment plants without an external energy source.

Greenhouse Gases as Resources

Rocket Engine via Stanford

Rocket Engines Burning Nitrous Oxide produce pure Nitrogen and Oxygen / Photo: Brian Cantwell at Stanford

As we’ve discussed previously, wastewater treatment processes utilizing aerobic bacteria require energy intensive aeration in order to operate (up to half of operating costs). Anaerobic bacteria require much less energy, but convert nitrates into nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than C02 – and Natural Gas in the form of a methane biogas.

The scientists, Craig Criddle, Brian Cantwell, and Yaniv Scherson, have decided excess gases aren’t such a bad thing. In fact, they want to utilize produced Natural Gas to power wastewater treatment plants off-the-grid, enabling plants to be placed in areas without a reliable energy supply. The plants could recycle fresh water for water–stressed regions.

What happens to the nitrous oxide is equally remarkable.

The nitrous oxide is burned off in a small rocket engine. Says Cantwell, “When it decomposes, nitrous oxide breaks down into pure nitrogen and oxygen gas. At the same time, it releases enough energy to heat an engine to almost 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it red hot, and it shoots out of the engine at almost 5,000 feet per second, producing enough thrust to propel a rocket.”

To propel a rocket, or, put to better use, to generate electricity.

The scientists’ plan harvests resources commonly occurring in wastewater. “For too long we’ve thought of treatment plants as places where we remove organic matter and waste nitrogen,” Criddle said. “We need to view these wastes as resources, not simply something to dispose of.”

Saving Money while Saving the World

In the developed world, the technology could produce wastewater treatment plants with low emissions (some natural gas will be emitted when combusted).

That’s important because wastewater treatment plants accounted for 4.9 TgCO2 equivalents of nitrous oxide in the US in 2008 (equivalent to 4.9 million metric tons of C02).

When you utilize instead of emitting the methane produced by wastewater treatment, which reached 24.3 TgCO2 in 2008, and eliminate expenditures and emissions from energy used to power aerators, you begin to see the scale of potential energy, emissions and cost savings.

It’s a remarkable advance: a self-sufficient, low-emission wastewater treatment plant that produces nitrate-free fresh water, thereby protecting water’s end-users: aquatic and human life.

Via PhysOrg / Stanford

Market Driven Tree Hugging

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A helicopter pours water on Californian wildfires in 2009 / Photo: kevindean on flickr

A number of small buckets of water can contain a wildfire / Photo: kevindean on flickr

Climate legislation in the United States just went up in a cloud of CO2. Again.

Which doesn’t for one second mean the battle is lost.

Regulation may have failed, but thankfully, the free-market surrounding water isn’t waiting for regulations to change. The BlueTech sector is already in position with profitable solutions to mitigate climate change.

The inefficient transportation and treatment of water from source to end-user accounts for 13% of energy use in the United States (and 17% in water-starved California).

As we reported earlier this year, the Carbon Footprint of Water Report calculated that a 5% decrease in infrastructure leaks in the United States would save 270 million gallons of water a day and 313 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually — enough to power 31,000 homes. Not only that, but it’d keep 225,000 metric tons of C02 emissions out of the air.

Meanwhile, cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Seattle are introducing plans to replace aging infrastructure, to the tune of nearly $5 billion. Which is only a portion of the estimated $335 billion national pricetag.

It’s a perfectly timed confluence of events: we’re facing a global crisis. The inefficient water complex – which bears some responsibility for the crisis – is due for an upgrade. Simultaneously, innovation in water efficiency has bloomed.

Throughout the country the BlueTech industry is poised to offer municipalities and water authorities cost-savings and reduced costs to upgrade infrastructure via smart-water systems, efficient water-treatment and stormwater management, and positive revenue streams through resources recovered from waste streams.

As water supply ceases to match demand, new desalination technologies can replace ancient systems to achieve excellent energy efficiencies – often with decreased capital expenditures.

Each of these methods mitigates the causes of climate change by making efficient use of water, thereby making efficient use of energy. Efficient energy use reduces fossil fuel extraction (thereby reducing water usage still further) and reduces the release of pollutants like CO2 and mercury into the atmosphere and water supply.

And each of these methods reduces costs for implementers, either by reducing capital expenditures or by reducing operational costs. They’re a win for the economy and a win for the environment.

To be sure, it’d be helpful if Congress would expedite adoption of clean technology by establishing a firm price signal for pollution. But as American politicians have repeatedly refused, the free market is ready to manage the growing climate and water crises, with or without Congress.

Calera Captures Carbon in Concrete, Produces Clean Water

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Concrete apartments in Gimhae, Republic of Korea, extend to the horizon.

In Gimhae, South Korea, concrete apartments extend to the horizon. / Photo: oceandestoiles on flickr

Concrete. There’s a lot of it on earth. Pretty much every paradise has its parking lot. And its big-box store, high-rise condos, sidewalks, stadiums and office parks. Bridges, tunnels, jetties, locks, canals, station platforms: all require concrete.

Concrete is the second most consumed substance on earth (pdf), after water: three tons of it per year, per person on earth.

Manufacturing all that concrete is the second largest source of carbon emissions in the world, after energy generation, accounting for 5% of world CO2 emissions.

But a Californian company, Calera, has developed a solution.

Calera’s process, called Mineralization via Aqueous Precipitation, makes producing cement – the binding ingredient in concrete – remarkably efficient, by tackling multiple problems in one play.

Continue reading →

Ostara Gets Three With One Blow

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Cyanobacteria Bloom

Toxic cyanobacteria Bloom on Lake IJsselmeer / Photo: Stefe on flickr

At The Artemis Project, we tend to prefer solutions that solve multiple problems at once. Hence we love Ostara‘s nutrient recovery technology. (And we like no-mix toilets.)

The Problems:

  • Peak phosphorous
  • Struvite scaling
  • Eutrophication

Peak Phosphorous

Peak phosphorous is the dilution of necessary-to-all-life phosphates and the exhaustion of concentrated caches. Estimates give us 30-40 years.

Peak phosphorous more important to human life than Peak Oil: whereas there are alternatives energy sources, there is not an alternative to phosphorous. Phosphorous is created when two oxygen atoms fuze above 1,000 megakelvins (that’s 1.8billion Fº), so humans can’t make any more of it.

Five countries own 90% of the known phosphorous deposits. Yet, most well-fed countries have a consistent source of the element: wastewater. That’s where Ostara steps in.

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Water PLUS – Keys to Building a Scalable Water Business – Part 2

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In my previous post I introduced the PLUS framework for water-technology scalability, and expanded upon the first two attributes: Software and Usability. Let’s explore the other two: Leverage and Partners.

Leverage means capitalizing — to exponential effect — on assets, processes and data already existing in the organizations you are serving. Water utilities, for example, have plenty of ‘leverageable’ assets, primarily deep and rich knowledge, held by experienced people. Tapping into this resource is not easy, but best-practices are a power-multiplier, and baking the combined experience of hundreds of professionals into an automated decision-support system is a great way to make your solution scalable. It’s the famous network effect. A great example: SmartMap by Thomson Mapping is a Water-specific CAD software that implements existing models as a baseline for new designs.

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