The Benefits of Algaesys

Our first commercial facility has been operating continuously since 2014, high quality water reuse is now affordable to businesses and smaller communities.

The ALGAESYS system

  • removes nitrogen, phosphorus and carbonaceous pollutants

  • absorbs micro-plastics and heavy metals

  • destroys trace persistent organics

  • absorbs trace silica and boron

  • disinfects

  • absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide

Phototrophic biofilms are especially interesting for wastewater treatment and are a more sustainable alternative to existing bacteriological wastewater treatment systems due to robustness and energy efficiency. 

In existing wastewater treatment systems, the organic pollutants are oxidised by heterotrophic microorganisms, a process that requires energy consuming oxygenation through aeration and costly additional process steps for disinfection and removal of persistent organic chemicals. 

ALGAESYS uses naturally occurring colonised phototrophic biomass that

  • Produce reactive oxygen species to remove pathogens and oxidise persistent organics such as trace organics, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and endocrine disruptors.

  • Produces extracellular polymeric substances that provide far more effective toxic shock event survival than conventional bacterial systems. These polymeric substances also enables establishment of the colony that attaches to our rotating logs, inducing optimal conditions to maximise biomass efficacy in breaking down and oxidising pollutants.

The patented ALGAESYS technology has been developed and extensively demonstrated at full-scale in the USA and further optimised in China and our EU demonstration facility is being implemented. 

This mechanism results in considerable savings on energy, equipment, labour and maintenance. 

Power Consumption.

The photosynthetic process, harnessing energy from the sun can reduce electrical power requirements by up to 80% compared to conventional processes. The small amount of power required can be provided using small scale photo-voltaics for energy autonomy, working off-grid.

Efficacy.

The ten years of research and refinement that have gone into our system have resulted in an optimised, efficient system design. This has resulted in short retention times in our photo bio-reactors, greatly reducing the system footprint.

Resilience.

Despite being a biological system, our photo bio-reactor colonies have proven to be resilient to toxins and shocks. Our longest operating facility in Indiana has performed for eight years (so far) without incident, despite significant variations in load, flow and composition.

Life-cycle Cost.

Up to 80% less lifecycle cost is possible from the greatly reduced electrical power consumption, the lack of chemicals and the very low operational and maintenance requirements.  Most components of our system can be procured in the local market.

Lead time.

ALGAESYS installation is simple and requires no specialist knowledge with minimum civil works. With low construction risk, our pre-fabricated, self-contained, modular design, we can be ready to operate in 4 months from start of build.

Reuse at source.

This affordable decarbonised system is what communities with limited resources have been waiting for. Every cubic meter of ALGAESYS water and biomass provides opportunities for local wealth creation.  The safer, reliable and cost-effective reuse of water for irrigation and biomass as soil conditioner, due to robustness of algae with higher protection from toxins entering the food chain.

 

Since ALGAESYS also absorbs silica and boron, as well as removing nitrates, the output is amenable to more efficient downstream ultra-filtration / RO performance for high grade industrial water.