Small municipalities may hold the key to scaling next-generation water treatment solutions, according to AirBuild CTO Ejike Ken-Opurum, who says these communities offer ideal conditions for testing and implementing new environmental technologies.
“The best use cases for our product right now in these early stages would be small municipalities,” Ken-Opurum says. “Smaller communities have larger land masses and are typically around aquatic environments, making them ideal early adopters.”
Ken-Opurum points to several factors that make smaller communities particularly suitable for innovative water treatment approaches. “Smaller cities tend to use what would be considered as a sewer lagoon,” he explains. “These are essentially open-skill ponds where you remove the grit, let the waters basically sit there over multiple days with a larger retention time.”
This existing infrastructure, combined with available land and lower daily treatment volumes, creates opportunities for new solutions that might be harder to implement in larger urban areas.
The economics particularly favor smaller communities, according to Ken-Opurum. “Cost-effective wise, it’s less expensive compared to a wastewater treatment plant,” he says, noting that the system’s ability to generate agricultural byproducts creates additional value streams.
AirBuild CEO David Gory emphasizes the broader implications of this approach. “There are municipalities here that just wait for the water in those lagoons to evaporate. We can serve as that solution that cleans that water, thereby alleviating that load.”
The technology offers several advantages beyond basic water treatment, according to Gory. “Our system produces energy with improved efficiency due to the cooling effects,” he explains. “Having the cooling bed of water under the solar cells boosts the efficiency of those cells by roughly 12.5%.”
This self-powering capability makes the system particularly suitable for rural markets where energy infrastructure might be limited.
The company’s first major deployment in Green River, Utah, will test this small-town approach. “With full deployment in all 37 acres we’ve secured, we’ll be able to treat 50% of the river flow on average,” Gory says. “The Green River links to the Colorado River that supplies water to the states of California, Arizona and Nevada.”
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