Breakthrough Technology Company of the Year
BlueGreen Water Technologies
What is it?
An Israeli company operating in four continents dedicated to promoting the human right for fresh water by eliminating toxic algal blooms.
What has it done?
During 2020 BlueGreen enjoyed an explosive international interest in its innovative solutions to the global epidemic of toxic cyanobacteria, undertaking major projects for cleaning extensive water bodies in China, South Africa and the USA, while adapting its sales force to accommodate this global expansion.
What makes it special?
BlueGreen responded in record time to Florida’s DEP Agency when it required an urgent solution for toxic algal blooms originating from the state’s largest lake, Lake Okeechobee, which were contaminating waterways state-wide. The company has further cemented its solution-driven status in the US in Lake Minneola, Florida, where its preventative approach has kept toxins in the lake below detection levels, while approvals for the use of its products have been obtained in multiple states, including California, New York, and Maine.
The company is also at the centre of China’s unprecedented drive towards cleaning up its polluted water bodies. In June 2020, Nanhu Lake in Hunan Province experienced clean waters for the first time in 12 years thanks to BlueGreen’s solution.
BlueGreen’s solution presents a huge leap forward from the traditional practice of using massive volumes of chemicals to manage cyanobacteria. Its floating, time-releasing products are naturally propelled by winds and currents, selectively eliminating toxic algae while rehabilitating the aquatic ecosystem, and the company further employs its satellite-based capabilities to detect and analyse bloom outbreaks in near real-time all over the world.
Distinction
NX Filtration
What is it?
A Dutch provider of membrane solutions that has developed a hollow fibre nanofiltration membrane.
What has it done?
2020 saw NX Filtration’s ground-breaking one-step membrane process excel in a dizzying number of applications including dirty surface water treatment, wastewater reuse and the removal of micropollutants for both municipal and industrial customers. Major project wins in Indonesia and Sweden were complemented by a rapid global expansion of pilot trials, a huge ramp up in production capacity and the expansion of the sales force to bring a game-changing technology to the world.
What makes it special?
NX Filtration’s membrane provides a step change in water treatment, disrupting traditional treatment trains such as UF-RO in surface water treatment and wastewater reuse applications. The firm demonstrated this to remarkable effect in a project at the Forsmark power plant in Sweden, where its one-step membrane process replaced an existing system based on coagulant injection, dissolved air flotation and sand filtration to produce clean drinking water.
Heavily-polluted water sources are no obstacle to NX Filtration, where in Indonesia, its membranes were chosen to turn the heavily contaminated Masjid river into a valuable source of drinking water for the city of Dumai. Similar commercial projects have followed in the Philippines as the technology’s combination of robustness and little to no chemical requirement makes it a compelling solution for remote applications on a global scale.
By controlling membrane properties on a nanometre level via polyelectrolyte layers, NX Filtration is uniquely positioned to meet the growing challenge of treating micropollutants in different feedwaters. It is part of numerous R&D projects in Europe fine-tuning its membrane for a plethora of applications.