BioLargo, Inc. is a
company whose technology platforms are all involved in the harnessing and
delivery of iodine as a broad spectrum disinfectant, oxidizer, and nutrient.
The company has structured itself as a science-oriented business with three
primary market segments, a water filtration through its BioLargo Water
business, medical technology through its Clyra Technology division, and
consumer products marketed under the brand names Odor-No-More, Nature’s Best
Solution, Deodorall, and NBS.
The company expects
to tap a huge market with its patented AOS (Advanced Oxidation System) Filter,
which is a new invention that was recently validated in proof-of-concept
testing at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. The validation showed
the technology of the AOS Filter was highly effective at dismantling and
removing hard to manage contaminants from water.
What they have done
is taken an oxidizer and then combined it with well understood technologies
like carbon filter media, ceramics, and membrane technologies to extract
contaminants from the water flow. Carbon filtering uses activated carbon, which
is a form of carbon processed to have small, low-volume pores that increase the
surface area available for adsorption. In other words, the pollutant molecules
become trapped inside the pore structure of the carbon substrates. Ceramic
filters also use small pore size of ceramic material to filter dirt, debris,
and bacteria out of water. Membrane technology based filtering has water
pressured through semi-permeable membranes that trap the polluting molecules on
one side of the membrane while allowing the water to pass through. This
traditional filter media is used simultaneously with an oxidizing technology
and electricity, which then allows the device to provide an oxidation potential
across the surface area of the filter media.
In oxidation, a
chemical reaction occurs in which electrons are effectively removed from the
molecules of a substance and that substance is effectively dismantled. For
example, when iron in moist air oxidizes, electrons are being removed from the
iron which degrades and rust. Likewise, advanced oxidation processes (AOP) can
be used to dismantle and clean biologically toxic or non-degradable materials
such as hydrocarbons like benzene, pesticides, petroleum constituents, and
volatile organic compounds in waste water.
So essentially, the
AOS Filter is a filter converted to a chemical reactor, which operates at very
high rates of oxidation, low-power, high-speed and a continuous flow. BioLargo’s
proof-of-claim work showed that their AOS Fitler performed at greater than 10
times faster and at about one twentieth the power consumption of the closest
competitor to dismantle and remove very hard to get contaminants in a
continuous flow of water.
The size of the
global water market is massive and estimated to be a $375 billion industry.
Environmentalist have become more concerned with the contamination of water
from a huge range of industries, such as agricultural, chemical manufacturers,
power plant, fracking, and so forth. With the growth of industrial pollution
and increasing droughts due to climate change/global warming, a number of
economist from Wall Street even have argued for having water supplies
controlled primarily by private corporations, which is certainly not an idea
that that has a universal acceptance. With the concerns over water
contamination, BioLargo’s technology has a tremendous sized market to tap into.
CEO Dennis Calvert
certainly has decided to move in a highly ambitious direction. The company is
working on a pilot project with the University of Alberta to decontaminate the
waste water that results from the tar sands industry. Tar sands consists of a
mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, which is a very thick viscous high
weight oil. The tar sands extraction being done in the northwest-central part
of Alberta, Canada involves very heavy open strip mining as it requires about
two tons of tar sands to produce one barrel of oil. To extract the bitumen oil
requires heavy usage of water through steam injection as well as various
solvents, and ultimately it takes about 3.5 barrels of water to produce one
barrel of oil.
Currently the waste
water already produced from tar sands oil extraction sits in vast open lakes
called tailing ponds with contaminants including naphthenic acids, polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons, phenolic compounds, ammonia, mercury and other trace
metals. These open lakes cover an area that is 50% larger than the city of
Vancouver which is about 176 square kilometers (67.95 square miles), and
contains about 830 million cubic meters (219.26 billion gallons) of waste
water. It is estimated that these tailing ponds contain: 305,905 kilograms of
Arsenic, 178,200 kilograms of benzene, 756,793 kilograms of lead, 824 kilograms
of mercury, 1,169,000 kilograms of toluene, and the list of toxins just
continues. The water is so deadly that flocks of geese that land in the water
simply die, and it has been estimated by environmentalist that thousands to
tens of thousands of ducks among other animals have died on these tailing
ponds.
Currently tar sands
oil accounts for 40% of Canada’s oil production, and Prime Minister Stephen
Harper’s government’s goal is to double that over the next 15 years. Setting
aside the fact that tar sands oil is four times more carbon intensive than
other common crude oils, they lack the water resources to achieve that goal.
Hence there are a number of stakeholders who would certainly like to see
BioLargo’s AOS Filter technology succeed.
The water treatment
industry is a massive commercial opportunity, and the AOS Filter is a
significant advancement in the way water can be treated.
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