login register unsubscribe from alerts spacer
      
Water Today Title March 29, 2024

HOMEspacer | ABOUT spacer | ADVISORY INFO spacer | WT FREE SMS WATER ALERTS spacer SIGN-UPspacer | LOGIN spacer | UNSUBSCRIBE spacer     WT INTERNATIONAL spacer     

     WT     Canada    Mexico    USA: New York    Georgia    Louisiana    Ohio    

Features



2018/11/2
Toxic algae - The Barley Prize


$10 MILLION BARLEY PRIZE - THE CONTENDERS



brought to you in part by



Ad - Econse





WaterToday sent a series of questions to the four finalists for the Everglades Foundation's George Barley Water Prize: Wetsus, Green Water Solution, University of Idaho and Leetown Science Center (USGS) - as well as first runner up, ZeroPhos. Wetsus, Netherlands, submitted its Nafrad technology using advanced filtration, flocculation, and high-capacity adsorption on a special granular iron-oxide material to push effluent phosphorus levels to extremely low levels, while producing calcium phosphate, an inorganic fertilizer as a byproduct.


Wetsus - Leon Korving

1. Given the size of some of the bodies of water (lake Erie for instance), once you meet the prizes expectation of how much water to filter, is your technology/method scalable to much larger amounts of water being cleaned?


Our technology is certainly scalable to large volumes: it has been selected for that purpose. We have selected an approach that will allow for low pressure drops when scaling up so that pumping costs can be as low as possible. We foresee that there will be various ways to implement and apply our technology. Most likely first steps will be polishing of point sources like sewage treatment effluent and drainage canals from agriculture. Water volumes will still be large, but significantly smaller than treating the whole volume of a lake.


2. Do you think that if the problem isn’t solved first, fertilizer being used for instance, does it really help to clean the water once?

The technology that is developed in the George Barley prize can be an important contribution to the solution, but cannot be the only solution. It is an important tool in a full toolbox that is needed to address the huge eutrophication problem. Efficient use of fertilizer should also be part of the solution. However, even when farmers would do this, there is legacy of phosphorus in soils that can wash out to surface waters over time. Therefore we think it will be necessary to clean the water for several years to really ensure a long lived good ecological quality of the surface water.


3. Given the now increasing amounts of pfoas, chemical pollutions, and new dangers being chronicled at an almost daily pace, is your method/technology adaptable to filtering other contaminants easily?

The adsorption process that we apply can very easily be adapted to removal of micropollutants. Wetsus has actually already been doing research on the combined removal of phosphate and micro-pollutants and also see some interesting potential for synergies between the two. Such an extension of the process would be relatively cheap.


4. When you have a company doing its daily revenue generation, does your situation mean that a special team has been developed just to win this prize? Some of the participants so far have said money to develop was a challenge.

The Wetsus contribution to the George Barley prize is based on two ongoing research developments that were already financed by several companies. Nevertheless, participation in the George Barley prize did require additional budget. We were fortunate to be able to win prize money in stage 1 and 2 that made it possible for us to cover our additional costs for participation the George Barley prize. Ofcourse participation in the final stage will be a much bigger financial challenge since it will require an investment of 1-2 million $ to participate in the final stage. We have confidence that this is possible, because of the high profile of this competition and the perspective to win 10 M$.


5. Do you think you should win? And if you do, what would you use the prize money for?

We think we have proposed a very suitable technology for this challenge and Wetsus has showed consistent results by ending up as winner in all three stages of the competition so far. Therefore we are confident that we can do a good job in the final stage of the competition. Of course this is innovation and there are still things that we need to improve in the process, but we feel that we have the team and partners that are up for that challenge. The prize money that we have won so far has been used to finance our participation in this competition. If we would win the 10 M$ we would use it to compensate the investors in our technology and the surplus would be invested into new breakthrough research to solve the world’s water problems.


  • WT SECTIONS

    Latest Features   Rez Water   WT Tech   WT Space   City Water


  • Have a question? Give us a call 613-501-0175

    All rights reserved 2024 - WATERTODAY - This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part and may not be distributed,
    publicly performed, proxy cached or otherwise used, except with express permission.


    HOMEspacer | ABOUT spacer | ADVISORY INFO spacer | WT FREE SMS WATER ALERTS spacer SIGN-UPspacer | LOGIN spacer | UNSUBSCRIBE spacer     WT INTERNATIONAL spacer     

         WT     Canada    Mexico    USA: New York    Georgia    Louisiana    Ohio