Aquacycl
Organization Details
Aquacycl helps industrial companies reduce costs, achieve permit compliance and climate and water goals by improving water quality of discharged effluents, reducing freshwater demand through enabling reuse, and minimizing GHG emissions. Aquacycl BioElectrochemical Treatment Technology (BETT) systems are deployed as a service, which includes real-time, remote monitoring and control, maintenance, and sludge management. BETT uses locally-sourced bacteria to clean the wastewater, reduce sludge and produce direct electricity. As the bacteria break down organic matter, they release electrons which are captured as direct current and used to offset the power consumption of the system and accelerate treatment rates.
Impact Story
Aquacycl was founded with a mission of Sanitation and Clean Water for all.
Our impact crosses water scarcity, water quality, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, gender equity and access to safe sanitation.
Today, 80% of wastewater is discharged with minimal to no treatment and treating it with conventional technology consumes massive amounts of energy, emitting 4-5% of global GHG emissions. This doesn’t even consider the 2.2 billion people that don’t have access to safe and reliable sanitation.
Aquacycl’s BETT system can mitigate up to 90% of GHG emissions and by treating at the point source, the water can be reused onsite for applications that require lower-quality water (such as cooling towers, boilers and washing). When looking at our customer pipeline and growth targets, we expect to mitigate 124,200 tons of GHG emissions annually from the wastewater that we are treating.
Access to sanitation and clean water is the foundation for solving climate change, food security, gender equity and all other sustainable development goals. The lack of access is felt disproportionately in developing countries, low-income, ethnic minority communities and by women and girls.
As we scale the technology and bring down manufacturing costs, we will provide off-sewer and electric grid sanitation in underserved communities, disaster areas and refugee camps. We aim to provide a higher standard of living, which we will measure by assessing the number of individuals that we impact with improved sanitation.
Decentralized wastewater treatment is one element that can help us as we are forced to adapt to increasing extreme weather events. By augmenting or replacing centralized treatment facilities with smaller, decentralized systems we can provide cost-effective sanitation and water in rural areas, as well as reduce strain and build in redundancy to existing infrastructure.
Diverse Social Enterprise
The TRANSFORM Support Hub is committed to accelerating diverse owned and led enterprises to build more equitable and resilient supply chains.
