How Aquacycl Helps Industries Tackle Wastewater, Emissions, and CostsHow Aquacycl Helps Industries Tackle Wastewater, Emissions, and Costs

The world churns out nearly 95,102 billion gallons of wastewater a year, stretching utilities to their limits and costing exorbitant amounts in money, energy, and emissions to treat it. That’s if treatments are even available. And the industrial sector produces a huge share of that dirty water—up to 22 percent reports the United Nations.

Some technology developers are stepping up with solutions enabling these generators to treat their wastewater before discharging it to sewers, lightening utilities’ loads, cutting emissions, and lowering processing costs that are ultimately passed on to them and to taxpayers.

Evolving treatment systems range from durable membranes that allow for selective filtration, to breakthroughs in salt- and mineral- removal methods.

Among the latest leaps forward is a biological process to eliminate hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) from large-scale wastewater holding tanks.

Designed for oil & gas, food & beverage, pulp & paper, and municipal wastewater sectors, SulfideFix as it is called, can reduce sulfide levels from 100 parts per million (ppm) to below 1 ppm within days, says Orianna Bretschger, Aquacycl CEO and co-founder—the technology’s developer. That’s a roughly 99.9 percent reduction.

Sulfide is corrosive, rusting out electronics, pipes, and other infrastructure. It creates an intense rotten egg smell, and exposure at even low concentrations can be dangerous. This toxic, potentially damaging gas has become an industrywide headache as it inevitably ends up in any wastewater holding tank that contains organic compounds.

SulfideFix harnesses bacteria as its treatment tool. It’s done by blowing air across water’s surface, enabling the microbes to float to the top of the tank and consume sulfide gas. 

“What's really impactful is it requires a very small amount of energy to blow air across the water. Because we're just whispering it across the surface, we can use blowers as small as aquarium pumps, depending on tank size.

And we are not adding chemicals. We are simply taking advantage of and speeding up a natural process,” Bretschger says.

Several alternatives have long existed, but they have limitations. One “go-to” method involves blowing air into the water (as opposed to across the surface), which requires enormous-sized, energy-consuming equipment and typically has minimal impact on sulfide.

Chemicals can work, but they need continual dosing and adjustments in concentrations based on fluctuations in incoming sulfur. Biofilters are another option, though they have a large footprint and need extensive maintenance.

The trend with emerging systems like Aquacycl's is to move toward onsite, or distributed, processing and rely less on centralized infrastructure. Transporting to large, energy-devouring facilities is a carbon intensive-process—up to 10 percent of all global emissions are associated with moving and treating dirty water.

Processing on site minimizes those emissions while making utilities’ jobs more doable as they tussle to stay on top of soaring volumes.

SulfideFix follows the young tech company’s first product launch: a bio-electrochemical treatment branded as BETT that eliminates organic carbon from high-strength industrial wastewater.

Bretschger and her team are just starting to get the word out about this newest offering, first made available to BETT users who realized they had a H2S problem and wanted a solution for that too.

So far two clients have signed on to SulfideFix. Bretschger can not name them, but says they are Fortune 500 companies in the beverage space with multiple facilities globally.

PepsiCo was Aquacycl’s first industrial client. The beverage giant leverages the company’s inaugural product, BETT. Besides targeting organic contaminants, the “bugs” release electrons, which produce electricity that speeds up treatment, and also powers the system.

For PepsiCo, these onsite capabilities have meant being able to reduce its discharged volume enough to save the utility 200,000 to 400,000 kilowatt hours annually. This correlates to greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 100 tons a month. They achieve this outcome just by operating one 40-foot container at one site, Bretschger says.

Aspen Distillers, the country's first LEED platinum green operation of its kind, begins with BETT, then adds a polishing step. The Colorado-based operation generates water pure enough to use it to irrigate wheat fields in the summer and feed treated effluent to an onsite creek in the winter while meeting regulatory discharge requirements.

In a year, Aspen Distillery reduced its CO2 emissions by 240 tons; saved 95,000 kilowatt hours of power; reduced sludge by 72,000 pounds, and achieved net positive energy generation.

More operators, like Aspen and a couple of other Aquacycl clients, are going the onsite, multiple-step route, coupling technologies that tackle the toughest contaminants with others that do the last polishing step. Piggybacking requires less energy, less maintenance, generates less sludge, and it can typically clean water up enough for reuse, Bretschger says.

She projects the trend to make cleaner water at the generation source will gain more momentum. Operators are paying attention to rising transportation costs and tightening discharge limits –and at a time when water scarcity is becoming a bigger part of the climate conversation.

As far as what the future might look like for Aquacycl, Bretschger plans on moving into other verticals. While the company’s existing client base is beverage manufacturers and distilleries, the team has done pilots for the oil and gas industry focused on hydrocarbon remediation. They have piloted polymer reduction projects for the chemical industry involving breaking down plastics. And Bretschger has worked for the military, exploring off-sewer grid sanitation.

That is actually how she started 20 years ago—working on off-grid solutions for sanitation in parts of the world where big infrastructure was, and still is, lacking.

“I’ve done it for the military but also for low- and mid-income countries, where more people have a cell phone than a toilet. 

“We need to do something about that. And that's why we began developing Aquacycl’s technology. Our long-term vision is still to provide distributed [on-site] sanitation … and sanitation for all.”