Wastewater tech company gets government boost

The federal government is kicking in some funds to help an Orangeville, Ont. company move its wastewater treatment technology closer to commercialization.

Xogen Technologies Inc. will receive up to $2-million in grant money from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)—a federal foundation that supports innovative technology solutions—to help fund a pilot project at the Orangeville Water Pollution Control plant.

Established in 2004, Xogen has developed electrolytic process that fires an electric signal into raw wastewater, creating hydrogen and oxygen species that degrade organic materials, destroy micro-organisms and eliminate sludge (biosolids)—one of the biggest problems for biological wastewater treatment plants.

Conventional treatment processes involve multiple steps of filtering and treating raw sewage and separating the organics and solids. This procedure creates large amounts of sludge that requires additional treatment before it can be incinerated, landfilled or used for agriculture.

Sludge treatment often accounts for half of a facility’s capital and operating cost.

“Our process kills all micro-organisms, so that at the end of the process the remaining solids are inert and can be landfilled or used as a filler in construction materials,” says Angella Hughes, Xogen president and CEO.

Xogen’s technology also creates hydrogen and oxygen, which can be used to generate energy or sold as an industrial gas.

The pilot project, Hughes says, will be the first demonstration of the technology in a real-world setting.

Xogen’s pilot will divert a small portion of raw sewage through its reactor on a continuous flow basis to demonstrate its capabilities in a municipal wastewater setting. The treated wastewater will then be discharged to the receiving stream by the Orangeville plant.

To assist in the design, build and testing of the pilot, Xogen has put together a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and specialized companies.

The University of Toronto (U of T)—partnered with Xogen through Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE)—designed a DC power supply that will operate the technology.

Developed by Professor Francis Dawson and a student at U of T’s Electrical Engineering Department, the basic design of the power supply was completed about a month ago.

“The work is still ongoing, but the basic principals of controlling it are pretty well understood now,” says Dawson. “We’re just in the process of finishing a small prototype, which will run at about 500 watts.”

According to Hughes, U of T’s department of material science and engineering is also doing development work on electrode materials.

Orangeville Hydro will meter and monitor the electricity usage. And Linde Canada Ltd.—an industrial gas and engineering company—will analyze the hydrogen/oxygen output gas and assess the potential energy uses.

For example, Hughes says, “If the plant is in a large urban center it could more economically positive to recover the gas and sell it to Linde’s distribution network. But if the plant is in a rural setting, it might make more sense to reclaim the gas onsite and use it to generate energy through combustion or a fuel cell and sell it back to the grid or use it to run the process.”

The company estimates that once this technology is commercialized it will have a much smaller footprint—about one quarter of the size—than conventional treatment setups.

What’s more, Hughes says the total cost of ownership—capital cost savings combined with operating and maintenance—is about 40 per cent less when compared to conventional biological treatment approaches.

The design and construction of the pilot will take approximately nine months, putting the start-up of this project in late 2010.