(don't) Waste Water! | Water Tech to Solve the World

MM Clear is dangerous. Roughly one-half of MM Clear channel's 600 videos feature a miracle product that turns any water into perfect drinking water. That's what they claim, but you'll never see them drinking it. Why? Well, let's look at the technology they present. We see that it's powered by a pump that raises water to, let's say, 3 meters, so at a pressure of 0.3 bars.  That's the entry range of...

It's time to hold a 1977 promise! In 2021, 2 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water. But how can it be when you know that, in march 1977, the United Nations held a conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and they pledged to bring water to all? And that wasn't a one-off. The entire eighties were named the water decade. And then again, the millennium development goals set the...

Ceramic Membranes may take over the market by storm. When membranes became mainstream in the late nineties, ceramic players already existed in niches such as Oil & Gas. But no one would have ever thought of applying the technology in water applications.  At ten thousand dollars per square meter, ceramic membranes were not only prohibitively costly but also fifty to five hundred times more expe...

Bacteria can update your calendar! As a wastewater operator, you have no control over what comes into your system. So regularly, a sudden gap in wastewater's content causes your bacteria to be upset, resulting at best in some drops in treatment efficiency.  And at worst, in long-lasting issues, until they recover... Indeed, it would incredibly ease up plant operation if bacteria could talk!  Well,...

Deep Ocean can desalinate water. To push seawater through a reverse osmosis system, you need to pump it up to a pressure of about 60 bars.  That's roughly 20 times more than the pressure we get at the tap, and of course, it gobbles a lot of energy. But energy is not the only source of expenses when you operate a desalination system. You also have to cope with the membrane's degradation over time a...

We burn far too much wastewater! The industry represents roughly 20% of the World's water abstractions.  And sometimes, that water gets exposed to a wide array of complex pollutants, hence transforming into wastewater that's hard to treat. What would you do if you were an industrial whose core business and competencies have nothing to do with the treatment of those substances? Well, you'd go for t...

We need to give our pee a second life! By 2030, we will miss 40% of the water we need to reach an equilibrium.  This means we whether accept our fate and dry out or try to find that missing water in the next decade. You don't want to dry out? Me neither, so what can we do? Suppose we solve the problem the conventional way. In that case, it will cost the World about two thousand billion dollars to...

I'll kill them all Wait, don't worry, that's good news! What we call wastewater sludge is, in fact, a concentration of microbial cell mass.  To picture it, imagine a herd of micro-organisms, tired of having eaten a lot of organic matter and resting together in a mud-like aggregate. Now, that mud can be valorized and turned both into biosolids you'll transform into fertilizer and biogas that can be...

Waves can desalinate water! About one out of five people living in the Mediterranean area suffer from constant water stress. That's representative of the challenge remote and decentralized places face in the new realm of water scarcity. At the same time, the World is urbanizing fast. By 2050, two-thirds of humanity will live in cities, and we will build the equivalent of New York City every month...

It's time to refurbish your basement! When a water or wastewater network pipe is laid, it is supposed to last a couple of centuries.  When you think of it, two centuries ago, only two cities in the world exceeded one million inhabitants: London and Beijing.  Fast forward to 2022: 512 cities exceed the million mark. Surprise, surprise, we outgrew our water networks. So what shall we do? Open all ou...

A crazily expensive 1-step unit is the future of wastewater treatment. In the early eighties, Andrew Benedek had a vision. One day, the World would need to reuse its wastewater and have the right tools to do so. And what better than a membrane could guarantee a safe and constant outcome for the treatment he aimed to develop?  Andrew was convinced of it: membrane bioreactors would become a go-to. Y...

What used to be garbage is now a treasure! The world needs to find 500'000 tons of Lithium per year to cope with the galloping growth in electric vehicles. Even God - sorry, Elon Musk - acknowledged that we're swiftly running into problems. Over the last year, Lithium prices rose by 500%, so that nowadays, this increase alone costs about 1'000 dollars for every Tesla. Yet, the two conventional lit...

Hallo, Bonjour, and Welcome to this special Don't Waste Water podcast season! We're in the middle of a hot summer, and whether you're enjoying the beach, your friends and family, or keeping the boat afloat in the office, I'd like to bring you value in a crisp and snappy fashion. So, for the next 30 days, I'll be running a series I called "Don't Waste Summer" that will light a new topic every day i...

with 🎙️ Carol Maxwell - CEO & Director of MICROrganic Technologies and a Founding Member of ENYA Funds 1, 2, &3  with 🎙️ Brent Solina - CTO of MICROrganic Technologies  💧 MICROrganic Technologies builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater What we covered: 📅 How Microbial Fuel Cells open a new paradigm in plant operation - the era of...

Hallo, bonjour, and welcome to the Don't waste water podcast! I am your host, Antoine Walter, and in today's episode, I am delighted to welcome Carol Maxwell and Brent Solina as my guests! Carol and Brent are, respectively, CEO and CTO of MICROrganic Technologies. MICROrganic builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater.  Wastewater is a fascina...

with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello - Author and Founder of White Stag Investing  💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long term. What we covered: 🌎 How the interaction between Water and the World as we know it relies on a fragile equilibrium  🚰 How our whole economy builds upon a steady supply of...

Nicola Lei Ravello is the Founder of White Stag Investing and the author of stories in #water, #sustainability, and #investing. White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long term.  Water could be anecdotal in an investment strategy. After all, as a sector, it weights less than 1% of the World's GDP...

with 🎙️ Scott Bryan - President of Imagine H2O  💧 Imagine H2O is the world leading Water Innovation Accelerator with $800+M raised in early-stage funding and 1.1 billion people (and counting) served. What we covered: 🌎 How Imagine H2O's Alumni network now extends to 168 portfolio companies in 20 countries  🚀 How Imagine H2O launched in 2008, creating the water innovation accelerator concept fro...

Scott Bryan is the President and First employee of Imagine H2O. Imagine H2O is the leading water innovation accelerator and ecosystem for water, empowering people to develop and deploy innovation to solve water challenges globally. There are some common traits among the about one hundred guests that appeared on that microphone. I could name their grit, their passion for water, or their generosity...

with 🎙️ John Robinson - Partner & Co-Founder at Mazarine Ventures  💧 Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity. What we covered: 🌊 How Quality and Quantity of Water represent increased risks across the industrial and municipal value chains  🧮 How the Environmental, Social, and Go...

John is a Partner and Co-Founder of Mazarine Ventures. Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity.  When you're working in the Water Industry, it is tempting to go for broad quotes like "Water is Life." Sure, that's true. But it might be a bit too general of a statement to be translated...

with 🎙️ Sivan Zamir - VP Xylem Innovation Labs  💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology company globally and follows the simple motto: "Let's solve water" What we covered: 🔬 How Xylem invests in its R&D to stay on top of the Water Technological Game  💡 How approaches to innovation are evolving, and how that led to the inception of the Xylem Innovation Labs  🤝 What the...

Sivan Zamir is Vice President of Xylem Innovation Labs. Xylem is probably the World's largest water and wastewater technology company, and we'll explore today how innovation powers its "solving water" motto.  When you're in business for a while, you can boast of having invented technologies such as the first submersible pump, the first dissolved oxygen meter, or the first digital twin-based wastew...

with 🎙️ Eirik Fadnes - CEO at Cambi Group 💧 Cambi is on a mission to turn sludge into resources thanks to Thermal Hydrolysis Processes What we covered: 💩 How there's no "Waste" in "Wastewater" - always worth repeating! 🏭 How Cambi's Thermal Hydrolysis (THP) enables up to 50% more biogas production and dividing the biosolids volume by two 📈 How Thermal Hydrolysis is a 3-step process that resemb...

Eirik is the CEO of the Cambi Group. Cambi is on a mission to turn sludge into resources; we'll explore how they do that in just a minute. If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you've for sure already heard that there's no "waste" in "wastewater."  We've explained how the world's sewage might be the equivalent of 320 nuclear power reactors, and we've regularly touched on how that wastewate...