Last 17th and 18th of May, various REWAISE partners attended the BlueTech Forum 2023 hosted in Edinburgh, Scotland. The venue was organized by BlueTech Research, one of the REWAISE consortium partners and co-sponsored by Aquaporin and Rewaise, as well as various other major players in Water Technologies.
REWAISE participated in the ‘Innovation Showcase’, where water tech start-ups deliver 120-second elevator pitches to the room. The technologies contributed by REWAISE partners were Sanitation360 and Mides. Sanitation360 technology, a revolutionary fertilizer recovery system in separate toilets, was presented by Jenna Senecal, CEO of Sanitation 360. Mides technology (microbial desalination cells), a sustainable desalination system without electricity, was presented by Naiara Hernández, Researcher at FCC Aqualia.
Image 1. Jenna Senecal, CEO of Sanitation 360
REWAISE was presented in the “5×5 partnership stories”, a quick-fire round of 5x success stories featuring 5x top water tech innovation partnerships that shared the secrets to their success – against the clock: 5x minutes to be precise. Severn Trent Water and Organics, as well as other companies such as AB InBev and Evolve, took the public on a whirlwind tour of what makes their partnership a winning combination.
Paul Knuckle, Funding Lead at Severn Trent Water, highlighted Severn Trent’s journey to circularity, developing solutions that eliminate losses of materials to create value from resource recovery. Patrick McGlead from Organics, as Severn Trent also based in Coventry, showed how to reach this goal, presenting the Organics Thermal Ammonia Recovery process (OTARTM). This thermal process utilises waste heat to recover 98.5% of the ammonia from wastewater and is currently being commissioned at Severn Trent Water’s Spernal Resource Recovery and Innovation Centre.
Furthermore, the REWAISE team summarized the project and its innovative solutions in a 30 min presentation, named “Living Labs’ Project Reports”. Frank Rogalla, Director of Innovation at FCC Aqualia and project coordinator, presented the project philosophy with three ways to reach the full value of water. Ola Hansson, Manager at WIN Water and Therese Jephson, Senior Project Manager at Sweden Water Research explained the synergies between suppliers and utilities to generate sustainable solutions in residential areas.
Image 3. Naiara Hernández, Jenna Senecal & Therese Jephson at the REWAISE Discovery Zone
As specific examples, AquaPorin introduced their biomimetic membranes, and Naiara Hernandez showed four successful applications in water treatment, to remove nitrates, sulphates, fluoride, or salt from brackish water. To use membranes for energy and nutrient recovery, Frank introduced the Anaerobic MBR which is currently deployed at the Citroen factory in Vigo. Finally, Jenna Senecal showed another way to recover fertilizers, by collecting and concentrating urine with their separating toilet developed by Sanitation360. The presentations demonstrated large-scale technological innovations to extract the value in, from and through water, contributing to a smart and secure water supply and generating new business and benefits in society.
Additionally, REWAISE was present in the Discovery Zone, designed to explore the project’s scope in-depth, showing various aspects of the technologies, including their objectives and methodologies. Aquaporin, Organics, Sanitation 360 and AquaBio, a partner in the related project www.ultimatewater.eu displayed their solutions and engaged with the more than 200 stakeholders present at the BlueTech Forum, including water managers, businesses, policymakers, investors, and the general public.
As a result, the innovative offerings of REWAISE were shared with other organizations working towards similar goals, not only to increasing the visibility of the project but also to foster collaboration and partnerships for joint action.
Image 4. Jenna Seneca at the REWAISE Discovery Zone
