Future Water hosted this online event in partnership with the High Commission of Canada and the Ontario Trade and Investment Office. Working with them, FWA selected six technologies from across Canada. The water innovations presented by these Canadian companies reflect various aspects of water management, including networks, wastewater treatment, carbon reduction, water efficiency and asset operations.

Canada faces many of the same water management challenges as in the UK, although admittedly having to deal with greater extremes of temperature particularly in winter. So the innovative technologies that they are developing to overcome these challenges are well suited to the UK market and we are sure that these will be of great interest to UK water companies and technology providers alike.

Future Water launched Water Dragons, back in 2008. The competition provides a unique opportunity for companies to pitch their innovative product, service or process to a panel of water industry specialists and sector influencers, or as we like to call them, ‘Water Dragons’.

Introducing the Canadian entrants:

• Watershed Monitoring – cloud based system for generating data sets that support community engagement and regulatory compliance
• RHST Industries – Water Pearls – A nature based solution to improve water efficiency 
• Mixanox – Mixanox-PIJAMA® (increasing oxygen-transfer efficiency to 90% and reduce 95% fugitive GHG emissions)
• RainGrid – Aggregated Rain Grid Outcome Networks
• Pani Energy. – accelerating sustainable water treatment with process optimization software
• Eagleridge Innovation – MicroPoP technology for elimination of waste activated sludge

In an 7 minute pitch, followed by questions from the Water Dragons, entrants:

• Identified the market need – what challenges does the innovation address?
• Explained what makes their product, service or process innovative compared to alternatives.
• Provided evidence on the potential savings and operational benefits their product or service could generate.

And the winner is: Mixanox 

Commenting on the judge’s outcome, Alastair Moseley, Water Dragon Judge Chair & Future Water Board Member said:
““This proved to be a very close competition with all six entrants demonstrating genuine innovation in their products, and all very clear about the business benefits that they would create. However two of the innovations stood out from the rest in their ability to transform wastewater treatment processes without the need for major capital investment and greatly reduce the environmental impact. So our winner was Mixanox’s ‘PIJAMA’ novel aeration system, which literally turns aeration in ASP tanks on its head – injecting air from above rather than bubbling up from below and increasing air take-up to around 95% and dramatically reducing GHG emissions. We also awarded Highly Commended to Eagle Ridge Innovation for their MicroPoP technology which virtually eliminates waste activated sludge from the ASP process whilst nearly doubling the amount of biogas produced for energy generation. These are both innovations with international application and introduce a step change in reducing the environmental impact of wastewater treatment.”

Jason Kee, Trade Commissioner, from Canadian High Commission added  “The Canadian and UK water sectors has more similarities than differences.  We were thrilled to partner with the FWA for the third consecutive year on Water Dragons and look forward to more Canada/UK collaboration in the future”. 

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Water Dragons is sponsored by

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