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UK filtration company seeks partners to improve efficiency and carbon reduction in textile manufacturing water treatment

Summary

Profile Type
  • Technology offer
POD Reference
TOGB20241128016
Term of Validity
28 November 2024 - 28 November 2025
Company's Country
  • United Kingdom
Type of partnership
  • Commercial agreement with technical assistance
Targeted Countries
  • All countries
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General information

Short Summary
UK technology company has developed an innovative filtration system for removing micro-plastic and micro-fibre pollution from water systems. This technology has great potential value for textile manufacturing companies. The company is seeking global collaborations under a commercial agreement with technical assistance partnership.
Full Description
This UK company develops technology to capture and recycle micro-plastic for the good of our planet.

Over 1.5 million tonnes of micro-plastics enter the oceans every year. Over 35% of this comes from textiles (laundry and textile production), while other sources such as car tyres and city dust are released into their immediate environment and have a large amount of run-off into municipal wastewater systems.

Established in 2018, the company successfully secured funding from Innovate UK, which has facilitated the development of its core technology.

The company employs 45 people, approximately 75% of whom are engineers with over 60 years of combined R&D experience. The company has a robust IP portfolio which includes 12 patents and is continuing to grow

Sustainability and circular economy are central to the organisation’s values, developing technology under circular, cradle-to-cradle principles. The company became B Corp certified in 2024.

The novel core technology has been designed to:

- Capture micro-plastic from water systems
- Require no replacement filters or disposable parts
- Have low energy consumption
- Easy to use and require minimal maintenance
- Capture material to enable recycling, returning material to the circular economy

The system has also been designed to scale to different applications, unlocking benefits in different markets.

They have established value markets for their technology in domestic and professional laundry, and industrial and municipal water treatment. They launched their first consumer product to market in 2023, and commercialised with one of the largest domestic appliance manufacturers in the world. In September 2024 they announced the first installation agreement with a high-profile textile manufacturer who are recognised as leading industry on sustainable material and production initiatives and have a strong client list of high-profile apparel brands, with the install planned for Q4 2025.

The company sees industrial and municipal water treatment markets as an opportunity to drive large-scale impact. The value that the company’s technology can deliver to these markets are both environmental and financial, by capturing micro-plastics and reducing facility OPEX. The financial benefit can help to drive widespread, global adoption with stopping micro-plastic pollution becoming a byproduct from a cost-saving technology.

There is also a future potential benefit of carbon and plastic credits and a value from recycling the captured material. These would provide additional value but are not critical for the value proposition to work today.

The company’s technology for textile manufacturing is at demonstration stage. While they have their first customer in this sector, they are seeking support to refine and validate the offering in readiness for market rollout.

With strong R&D capabilities, the company seeks partnerships with effluent treatment equipment makers and providers in the textile industry. These collaborations will help the company to be able to drive the adoption of their technology at a faster pace and drive impact more quickly. Partnerships are sought under commercial agreement with technical assistance.
Advantages and Innovations
Existing technology, often called advanced or tertiary treatment, can capture to micro scale, however they have high energy consumption and they are high CAPEX, high OPEX systems. These systems are intended for water reuse, with multiple stages of filters that progressively filter to a smaller size. These have a high cost to maintain and replace filters.

Typical conventional effluent treatment systems include primary and secondary treatment stages, which remove suspended solids from water (larger than micro-particles). Chemicals can also be used in these processes to help facilitate the removal of suspended solids and also for PH adjustment, etc. The advanced or tertiary system must always come after these conventional stages, otherwise they would block and become damaged.

The company’s novel technology can be easily integrated within the conventional stages to remove micro-plastics ahead of biological and chemical treatment, rather than after. This captures micro-particles from wastewater, putting a cap on the facilities micro-plastic pollution. The company’s technology also removes suspended solids earlier in the effluent treatment process, which brings a number of operational benefits:

- Reduces aeration in biological treatment (typically 60-70% of conventional effluent treatment energy consumption)

- Reduces chemical requirement (such as coagulants and flocculants). Chemicals can be 70% of the cost of conventional effluent treatment.

- Reduced maintenance on conventional effluent treatment stages

- OPEX savings from the reductions above provides return on investment (ROI) of less than 5 years.

- If advanced or tertiary stages are installed, there is also a reduction in energy and maintenance benefit as micro-particulates are removed early in the process.

The company’s technology has low energy consumption itself and reduces the effluent treatment energy consumption bringing a net reduction in energy, and thus a reduction in CO2 footprint.
Stage of Development
  • Available for demonstration
Sustainable Development Goals
  • Goal 14: Life Below Water
IPR description
The company are seeking technical expertise from effluent treatment equipment makers/providers, with a focus on the textile manufacturing industry.

Support would be in two key areas:

1. Industry expertise that can help review/improve the current design/specification, in regard to the technology design, manufacturing, installation and distribution.

2. Industry expertise that can help validate the energy, chemical, and maintenance reductions that the company’s novel technology can bring to the textile manufacturing market.

Expert advice in relation to the company’s technology and municipal markets would also be useful, however the technology for textile manufacturing is nearing market launch and therefore would be the higher priority to benefit from industry expertise.

Partner Sought

Expected Role of a Partner
Type of partner sought
• Effluent treatment equipment makers/providers

Target sector
• Textile manufacturing
• Fashion/apparel brands

Role/tasks to be performed by the partner

•The partner would provide a 360 perspective on all aspects of design, manufacturing, installation and distribution.

• Joint development agreements - The company is looking for textiles manufacturers to deploy their technology in their operations.

• Seeking 3+ year collaboration on joint development agreements with effluent treatment equipment makers. With a view to license technology globally.
Type and Size of Partner
  • SME <=10
  • Big company
  • SME 50 - 249
  • SME 11-49
  • R&D Institution
Type of partnership
  • Commercial agreement with technical assistance

Dissemination

Technology keywords
  • 05004001 - Filtration and Membrane Processes
  • 05004006 - Other Processes
Market keywords
  • 09004003 - Textiles (synthetic and natural)
  • 09008002 - Water, sewerage, chemical and solid waste treatment plants
  • 08004003 - Water treatment equipment and waste disposal systems
Sector Groups Involved
  • Textiles
  • Energy-Intensive Industries
Targeted countries
  • All countries