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Innovation Support Voucher – VIDA , Investigating Olive Mill Wastewater Treatment with the advanced oxidation from VoDCa

By Uncategorized

With the awarded innovation support voucher from VIDA, Water Knight recently completed the investigation on the potential of VoDCa for the treatment of olive oil wastewater.

The food industry is by far the largest potable water consuming industrial activity per ton of food product. In the operational water footprint assessment one litre of olive oil can generate 1-1.2 litres of wastewater.

Olive Oil Wastewater (OOWW) has a high environmental impact and is characterized by its high COD, BOD, suspended solids, high salts content and a very high toxicity phenolic compounds due to which its biological treatment is not feasible. Advanced oxidation technologies that harness the potential of OH radicals are quiet expensive on the CAPEX and OPEX that employ O3/UV/Tio2. Biological oxidation is not only ineffective due to the toxicity attributed phenolic compounds to the bacteria but also expensive due to a typical scale of operation that OO Mill producers are practicing.

Regulations to treat OOWW have been enforced in Italy by an environmental law to treat or eliminate their wastes and it is expected that sooner or later other olive oil producing countries such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal may have to follow a European directive to treat OOWW. OO mills are thus looking for alternative technologies that they can afford at a small scale and also have a small footprint, chemical free and is commercially viable.

VoDCa Reactor

VoDCa tests were carried out on the waste water samples received from the Spanish olive oil mill producer with the key objective to reduce the bulk load of high pollution in OOWW (characterised by Chemical Oxygen Demand, COD).

VoDCa treatment on OOWW with a very small amount of Hydrogen Peroxide addition resulted in a COD reduction of circa 50-70% in 30-60 minutes of treatment time. The encouraging results from the VIDA feasibility project  provide a clear evidence for the potential of VoDCa Technology in the olive oil processing market. Considering the complexity of the OOWW and the limiting conditions such as capex, footprint, and practicalities of required operating protocols in its treatment, the revealed results from the robust technology of VoDCa demonstrated a promising approach to treat .

Water Knight would like to that the VIDA project initiative that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

#VoDCa, #vortexcavitation, #h2020, #INNOSUP, #SMEs, #clusters
#VIDAVoucherScheme,
#VIDAChallenges, #VIDAinnovations
#CoFundedByH2020VIDA

Water Knight joins BioBizz Hub

By Water Treatment

We are extremely delighted and proud to share that Water Knight has joined as a second participant of BioBizz Hub.

BioBizz Hub is an unique initiative from Paques to help budding startups in the field of water treatment technologies.

By joining a BioBizz Hub a startup can accomplish a massive jump-start to realize their ambitions by leveraging Paques’ proven experience in introducing new and innovative technologies.

By and large the startups in water technologies experience two big stumbling blocks, 1. scaling up and 2. getting an access to the market. Particularly on these two areas they struggle to timely roll out their technology in big and better ways. This is because often a compelling value proposition is a sweet spot between the technology and the business.

The main challenge for the startups is the missing access to a guided execution whilst getting over these two stumbling blocks. Timely execution with a value support and attention to details is required to wisely and strategically penetrate in the water market. Further, an astute business development with the prospective customers often requires a good mentoring and a sales training.

A water-tech startup will have to address these gaps that are spotted in many multidisciplinary areas and thus needs a timely support in sales, business (legal and tax), access to analytical facilities , engineering/mechanical competences, competence development,  etc.  To simply put forward, an harmonious orchestration in such support functions is required.

BioBizz Hub precisely fills in this huge gap wherein the required missing dots across many such support functions can be quickly found and thus can be leveraged within Paques. This enables a startup to quickly test and validate their innovative technology at a commercial capacity and further achieve a product-market fit in a timely manner.

Since the joining of BioBizz Hub in January, it has been quiet an action packed journey for Water Knight. For the coming months we will closely work with BioBizz Hub and Paques to bring our technology to the market.

So stay tuned in for the next updates.

Original news can be read here

About Paques – Paques is an industrial leader in the field of water treatment technologies. Paques Develops anaerobic wastewater treatment systems that produce energy from wastewater while purifying the water and allowing reuse of the treated water. The biogas produced during the treatment process is a source of green energy. Paques has a comprehensive product portfolio for integrated water treatment and gas in various sectors including, food, pulp and paper, beer and beverages, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, metals and mining, oil and gas, textiles and tanneries.

Water Knight is a finalist at this year’s “Waste Water–Free Chemical sites” challenge area of AkzoNobel Chemicals

By Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hurray!!!

Water Knight is selected as one of the finalists amongst 150 idea submissions received worldwide on the portal of Imagine Chemistry.

https://www.imaginechemistry.com/news-overview/finalists-2018/Water_Knight/

Imagine Chemistry is an open innovation collaboration platform of the AkzoNobel Chemicals’ startup – a challenge that creates value-added joint partnerships between promising startups and AkzoNobel Chemicals.

Water Knight’s idea on “Wastewater treatment process intensification through high-performance vortex cavitation reactor producing OH radicals” is selected under the challenge area of the Waste Water–Free Chemical sites.

Under this challenging area, AkzoNobel is looking for improved methods to purify their wastewater streams to decrease the environmental impact by reducing the organic matter content, reusing the water amid specific challenging areas within their Waste Water Streams.

As one of the finalists,  Water Knight will now participate in a three-day event in June at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden,

We will work with AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals experts and partners in R&D, finance, innovation, and marketing, as well as senior management and potential investors, to further develop, sharpen and strengthen our value proposition on the vortex cavitation.

Exciting time for our company!