Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups impacting Smart Cities. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising water management solutions.
Heat Map: 5 Top Water Management Startups
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 589 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
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FLUID – Smart Water Metering
Compared to their conventional counterparts, smart water meters possess a vast array of benefits, including leak detection and prevention, energy reduction, real-time information disclosure, higher precision, as well as a description of water consumption patterns. Besides, wireless networking and two-way remote communications with a local utility eliminate the need for any manual checks as well as reflect relevant and accurate online data 24/7. US-based FLUID develops and manufactures ultrasonic smart water meters, which enable intelligent alarms and have no moving parts, thus, they are unaffected by wear and tear. The peculiarity of this solution implies an easy clamping-on of the meter without a plumber. In addition, it allows setting water goals and receiving insights about water usage habits in order to learn more and increase savings.
Lishtot – Drinking Water Quality Control
Maintaining a high quality of potable water is one of the sustainability challenges nowadays and it poses many doubts. Advanced control and testing devices enable smart city residents to get their drinking water’s safety checked based on various important parameters, e.g, conductivity, pH, temperature, or chemical properties to increase awareness and health confidence. Israeli startup Lishtot offers a “testing as a service” solution named TestDrop Pro. This portable device utilizes differential signaling in an electrical circuit that assists in accurate detecting of various contaminants, heavy metals, chemicals and bacteria at different levels of purity. Furthermore, the app presents immediate results, as opposed to lab testing.
Elentec – Onsite Wastewater Reuse
Mass amounts of effluent disposal in many parts of the globe bring attention to the question of water onsite reuse cycle in smart cities. Wastewater recycling and polishing removes all contaminants from residential sewage and industrial waters, includes primary, secondary or tertiary stages of purification, and returns water back in the system for groundwater restoring or onsite reuse in agriculture and industry. British Elentec facilitates the implementation of electro-coagulation (EC) in secondary wastewater treatment and tertiary polishing, which proves to produce less footprint, be more safe and stable, compared to traditional chemical reclamation. Its off-the-grid and modular reactors are mostly applied in the following industries: automotive, municipal sewage, aquaculture, mining, brewing, dairy, etc.
WaterGen – Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG)
Atmospheric water generation systems are a new technology trend called to increase drinking water supply in the world and, especially, in indigenous and water-scarce communities. Typical AWGs convert rain, fog, dew, vapor, and natural air humidity into potable water by continuously replicating a natural process of condensation and carefully storing the outcome. Originating from Israel, WaterGen and its heat-exchange GENius technology provide a room for more cost-efficiency, that is, generating clean water at relatively low energy usage (250Wh per liter) at affordable prices (around 2 cents per liter). The company manufactures scalable AGW products to meet various needs: from a separate household to big smart cities.
WaterFX – Eco-Friendly Desalination
High salinity water treatment is also a crucial trend towards tackling a water scarcity problem in smart cities, increasing freshwater coverage and pursuing zero liquid discharge. As usual, desalination of the sea or brackish waters requires substantial amounts of energy and powerful brine disposal facilities. In contrast to traditional practices, eco-friendly desalination focuses on advanced evaporation with the use of renewables. WaterFX, a startup from the USA, addresses these challenges based on solar energy, which ensures lower operation costs and larger amounts of freshwater received. The company’s solutions spread over the treatment of seawater, groundwater, and impaired salty waters, leaving no liquid byproducts. Besides, WaterFX introduced a beta-version of LQUID, a decentralized platform for desalinated water trade and analytics.
What About The Other 584 Water Management Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 5 startups showcased above are promising examples out of 589 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
