BioLargo Inc., a developer of sustainable cleantech technologies and full-service environmental engineering company, announced that its subsidiary BioLargo Water presented the results of its municipal wastewater treatment pilot at the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association's annual conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The subsidiary’s results say that the company's patented Advanced Oxidation System (AOS) water treatment technology is a powerful yet energy- and cost-efficient solution for removing emerging contaminants from wastewater.
In the face of an expanding population, aging sewage treatment infrastructure, and the growing concern of hard-to-treat wastewater contaminants like pharmaceuticals (a.k.a., "micropollutants", identified by the U.S. EPA as "contaminants of emerging concern"), there is a growing global interest in new water treatment technologies that can effectively and affordably remove a broad spectrum of water contaminants while also addressing legacy contaminants like bacteria and viruses.
BioLargo developed its AOS for tertiary wastewater treatment. The AOS uses proprietary electro-oxidation technology to generate a blend of powerful iodine molecules and hydroxyl radicals inside its patented reaction cell, resulting in rapid water disinfection and breakdown of organic contaminants.
A commercial-scale AOS unit has been operating, continuously, on-site at a municipal wastewater treatment plant pilot site at a municipality near Montreal, Quebec, for the past 18 months. The purpose of the pilot was to test whether the AOS could remove certain pharmaceutical micropollutants from the municipality's wastewater more effectively than the plant's current equipment, as well as to verify that the AOS could operate in a real-world wastewater treatment plant over long periods of time without issue.
Over the course of the pilot, the AOS system improved removal of pharmaceuticals from the plant's municipal wastewater. Currently, the treatment plant (which does not include any equipment specifically designed for pharmaceutical removal) is able to remove only a portion of each of the targeted contaminants. When the AOS was added to the treatment train, removal efficiency increased to between 84 percent and 100 percent (depending on the particular targeted contaminant).
On Nov. 7, 2022, BioLargo Water's Lead Research Scientist Laura Patterson-Fortin presented the results of the municipal wastewater treatment pilot at the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association's flagship annual event, the National Water and Wastewater Conference, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Patterson-Fortin presented the results alongside the company's academic partners from the Centre des Technologies de l'Eau (CTE) in Montreal, who oversaw the pilot project's operation and analyzed its results.
