NEWS Contact: Siemens Water Technologies Corp, 2501 N. Barrington Road, Hoffman Estates, IL 60192, USA. Tel: +1 847 713 8458, www.siemens.com/water
Bluewater Bio completes acquisition of Water Innovate
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luewater Bio International, a UK company that specialises in cost-effective wastewater treatment, recently completed its acquisition of Water Innovate, a technology transfer spin-out from Cranfield University’s School of Water Sciences. Bluewater Bio says that with the acquisition now complete, it is planning to roll out Water Innovate’s technology portfolio commercially. Water Innovate’s N-Tox toxicity monitoring system, for example, provides early warning of plant stress or failure, enabling water company customers to meet their legal responsibilities for monitoring and controlling water and wastewater treatment performance, while minimising waste, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Bluewater Bio is additionally developing N-Tox into a range of products for wider biological process monitoring and control and minimisation of a range of greenhouse gases arising from wastewater treatment. While the Water Innovate transaction delivers benefits, with immediate potential from the acquisition of its existing technology portfolio, it also strengthens Bluewater Bio’s research and development platform – both in terms of the addition of Water Innovate’s own technical capabilities and also the ability to undertake technical studies with Cranfield collaboratively. This is pertinent to further improvement of products in Water Innovate’s portfolio, to further process optimisation work on Bluewater Bio’s HYBACS (Hybrid Bacillus Activated Sludge) wastewater treatment process or, indeed, to any water and wastewater technologies that may be the subject of future acquisitions by Bluewater Bio. Furthermore, under the terms of the agreement, Bluewater Bio benefits from a right of first refusal for five years on the commercialisation of water-related or wastewater-related technologies that may be independently developed pre-commercially by Cranfield. Daniel Ishag, Chief Executive Officer, Bluewater Bio, commented: ‘Completing the acquisition of Water Innovate and attendant agreements with Cranfield has been an important milestone for us this year. We are already
December 2010
starting to integrate the teams and technologies and can see many promising areas for further innovation in water and wastewater technology. It is a pleasure to welcome Professor Tom Stephenson, Chairman of Water Innovate, into the Bluewater team.’ ‘This acquisition brings great benefits to Bluewater in terms of the commercialisation of Water Innovate’s developed products, the great and near-term potential for their broader application, and the relevance of Professor Stephenson’s involvement with Bluewater Bio’s flagship HYBACS wastewater treatment process and a close relationship with Cranfield.’ Professor Stephenson, Chairman, Water Innovate, said: ‘We are thrilled to now be working with Bluewater Bio and are already engaged on exciting product developments which promise to help Bluewater Bio’s customers achieve appropriate water quality standards, with reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.’ Contacts: Bluewater Bio International, 105 Wigmore Street, London W1U 1QY, UK. Tel: +44 20 7518 1720, www.bluewaterbio.com Water Innovate Ltd, CUBIC, Building 45, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK. Tel: +44 1234 758054, www.waterinnovate.co.uk
GLV’s revenues increase substantially
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LV Inc’s financial results for the three-month and six-month periods ended 30 September 2010 reveal that the company’s revenues increased substantially – driven mainly by the inclusion of Christ Water Technology Ag’s (CWT) results. However, the combined effect of a series of factors resulted in the firm making a net loss for the second quarter and first six months of the fiscal year. ‘As we announced during October, the results of two European divisions of the Water Treatment Group (Ovivo) had significantly impacted our consolidated results for the quarter as a result of expenses caused by steps taken and additional costs to complete certain contracts,’ explained Richard Verreault, President and Chief Executive Officer, GLV. ‘Turnaround plans are under way (see ‘In Brief ’ on page 3) at these two divisions to provide, in particular, for more stringent approval processes and contract management, especially
In Brief HTI exhibits FO technology at WEFTEC 2010 Hydration Technology Innovations Llc (HTI) of Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, exhibited its forward osmosis (FO) technology at the 83rd Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC). The company used this event as an opportunity to present details of its newly launched line of OsMem high-performance FO membranes and modules for municipal and industrial customers. Pall’s Oenofine wine filtration system wins award A filtration system from US-based Pall Corp that streamlines the wine production process and enhances producer profitability margins, has been awarded the Bronze Trophy in the Vinitech Siefel 2010 Innovations Award Program. Pall’s Oenofine XL cross-flow filtration system was honoured in the category of new innovations for wine production and packaging. Pall says that the system uses it hollowfibre filtration technology and a proprietary stabilisation agent to combine two critical production steps into a single, cost-saving process. Professional Water Technologies completes factory upgrade H2O Innovation Inc, a water-treatment technology company based in Canada, has announced that its business unit in California, USA, Professional Water Technologies (PWT), has completed the upgrade and renovation of its environment-friendly dendrimer anti-scalant production facility in Vista. Stephen Dunham, Vice President, After-Market Consumables, H2O Innovation, and PWT’s founder, commented: ‘New upgrades to our production facilities enable us to be 15 times more efficient in our dendrimer synthesis and production operations, generating greater economies of scale and a quicker turn-around time for our customers.’ Plant in China uses Energy Recovery’s PX devices Energy Recovery Inc of San Leandro, California, USA, which designs and develops energy-recovery devices for desalination, reports that its PX Pressure Exchanger (PX) isobaric energy-recovery devices will be implemented at the large sea-water reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination facility that is to be built by Befesa in Qingdao, China. The firm’s PX devices will significantly reduce the energy consumed by the RO process by enabling 100 000 m3 of potable water per day to be delivered to more than 500 000 people, efficiently and cost-effectively. Energy Recovery says that the Qingdao plant is Befesa’s seventh massive RO plant to incorporate its technology.
Membrane Technology
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