Boston-based startup Cambrian Innovation turns dirty water into clean energy
Boston-based startup Cambrian Innovation turns dirty water into clean energy http://ht.ly/tVQcH
As drought worsens in the western US, Cambrian Innovations aims to reduce water consumption and cost while making energy. Cambrian has federal and private equity funding, including $365,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s where we will go in the future, where waste is a resource and we don’t just want to get rid of it, we want to get energy out of it,” said April Richards of the EPA’s small-business innovation-research program.
Evolved from technology originally developed at MIT, a standard EcoVolt system can process daily flow rates between 10,000 and 300,000 gallons, depending on the number of modules. The prefabricated system “can be treated like more of a product and less like a project”, Silver claims.
A pilot test of the EcoVolt system already ran at the winemaker Clos du Bois, a division of beverage giant Constellation Brands. California brewer Bear Republic started its own pilot in January. Bear Republic already has a low wastewater-to-beer ratio, and the partnership will try to reduce the brewer’s outside electricity demands by half.
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