AquaB has been announced as one of the recipients of a highly sought after Accelerator grant from the European Innovation Council. The financial support will assist the company in commercialising low-energy, low-maintenance water aeration based on its breakthrough electric field-based nanobubble generation technology.

AquaB is one of 75 innovative start-ups awarded support in this year’s EIC Accelerator. The companies were selected through a highly competitive process, in which 232 companies were interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs out of a total of more than 1000 applications. 

The EIC Accelerator offers start-ups and SMEs grants of up to €2.5 million combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund ranging from €0.5 to €15 million or more. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Professor Niall English of AquaB welcomed the support. He said: 

“This is a big endorsement of the commercial potential of AquaB’s technical innovation, as well as recognition of the potential for energy efficient nanobubble generation to catalyse sustainability leaps forward in some of Europe’s most important industrial sectors. I’m thrilled that AquaB has secured this EIC Accelerator support, and I’m looking forward to delivering our exciting programme of innovation-led business development.” 

Since its launch in March 2021, over 7,000 start-ups and SMEs have sent their ideas and over 4000 have submitted full applications. The companies announced today were among the 1006 that submitted to the second 2022 cut-off on 15 June, and they join the 238 companies selected for funding by the EIC in 2021 and 2022.

The generation of biomethane for grid injection into the gas network and for road transportation is a crucial element of the 2030 Climate & Energy Framework and future low carbon strategy. Biogas can be generated using the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) process and historically it has been used to generate heat or electricity via a combined heat and power cycle (CHP). However, to achieve its maximum potential as a universal renewable fuel it must be purified to “fossil grid” specification (EN 16723).  At AquaB, we have developed a NB-enabled technology that will allow for the economic purification of biogas into biomethane for injection into a gas grid – capturing CO₂ preferentially in water. We can also capture flue-gas carbon and other pollutants for water-wash and gas-absorption columns.

Currently there are a number of techniques used to separate CO₂ from methane, including cryogenic separation, membrane technology, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and solvent scrubbing. However, these technologies are designed for large volume separation (>1000NM3/Hr) and not for small scale applications. Some of these technologies are reasonably economically efficient for capacities in excess of 300 NM3/Hr and indeed membrane separation and chemical scrubbing technologies are also adequate in excess of 100 NM3/Hr. However, the trend throughout Europe is for smaller (20-200 NM3/Hr) biomethane purification capacities, and this is where the NBF technology offers a competitive and key advantage. The same applies to smaller point emitters of carbon, e.g., smaller cement works.

We purify bio-gas, by generating nano-bubbles using our additive-free and energy-efficient breakthrough patented technology. This is done with the bio- or flue-gas in contact with liquid water (whether batch or continuous mode, or fed-batch, etc). The reason for differential take-up of gas, in nano-bubble (NB) form, into the water is that, even though de-facto methane solubility is around 30 times higher than its Henry’s-Law level in nano-bubble form, this is still very small in terms of mass per volume in water (mg/l) in absolute terms. With CO₂ and H₂S’s conventional (standard molecular-solvation) Henry’s-Law solubilities offering at least 40-50 times higher than CH₄ in terms of absolute mass-per-volume level in water (i.e., in mg/l terms), a ~2-fold increase for CO₂ solubility with NB creation from our breakthrough method leads to much more high absolute level of CO₂ and H₂S uptake into water – purifying very substantially the methane in a single-pass design.

AquaB has today won the 2020 IChemE Global Award in the Water category. This reflects strong international demand in our core nanobubble-generation technology, and big advances in nanobubble aeration for the activated-sludge process, as well as advances in DAF and ozone nanobubbles for disinfection.

This follows the announcement from October 2020 where AquaB was shortlisted for the 2020 IChemE Global Award.

AquaB was established earlier this year to commercialise a new energy-efficient method to generate and release substantial volumes of metastable, nano-scale gas bubbles in the water. This method is based on research carried out by Professor Niall English and Dr Mohammad Reza Ghaani at UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, who are the co-founders of AquaB. AquaB has been shortlisted in the Water Award category.

Professor Niall English, a co-founder of AquaB and a Fellow of the IChemE, said, “I am delighted that AquaB has been shortlisted for the prestigious IChemE Global Awards, and will now compete against other companies and research institutions on a global stage. AquaB is one of the two Irish entrants included in the shortlist is a reflection of the quality and global potential of the chemical-engineering companies emerging from UCD. I now look forward to pitching both companies at the Award webinars in November.”

Keith Batchelor, Chair of the IChemE Global Awards volunteer judging panel, said, “Our peer-reviewed awards recognise the high standard and significant achievements made by chemical engineers around the world providing solutions to some of toughest challenges faced by society.”

“With the skillset and flexibility to adapt to challenges as they occur, during this pandemic we have seen the unwavering efforts of chemical engineers to continue innovating and maintain safe practices. Our judges felt it especially important to recognise these efforts this year, just in a virtual way.”

“Thank you to all those who submitted your remarkable entries and thank you to my fellow judges for your dedication and rigorous assessment. Congratulations to all the finalists and we look forward to sharing your stories and celebrating your success in our first-ever IChemE Global Awards webinar series.”

The winners of this year’s IChemE Global Awards will be announced in a series of webinars, showcasing the finalists, from 2 to 19 November.

AquaB (AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd) has announced its successful development of a novel and exciting technique of generating ozone nano-bubbles in water.

Ozone (O₃) is an inorganic gas molecule which has been used for over 100 years as a safe and effective disinfection agent in many industrial and consumer settings. It is a powerful disinfectant, as it oxidises directly and penetrates a pathogen’s cell wall, thereby destroying the pathogen.

Nano-bubbles are minuscule gas bubbles on the nanometre (nm) scale; for reference, a human hair is circa 60,000 – 100,000 nm in width. For many gases, such as oxygen (O₂) and methane, they are thermodynamically metastable for many months, or indeed even longer, and due to their enhanced gas-transfer properties and higher de facto gas solubility which they offer, they have many industrial applications – including use in sterilisation or in disinfecting.

In any event, turning to AquaB’s recent generation of ozone nano-bubbles, ozone lifetimes in the nanobubble-aqueous form are substantially increased over and above traditional ozone solvation in water, by an order of magnitude. The ozone concentration may also be set at essentially arbitrarily low or high values by appropriate bubble-generation settings and/or dilution strategies, etc – to comply with all ozone-concentration/exposure guidelines. Ozone-nanobubble generation may be deployed either directly in bulk liquid water (e.g., disinfection of hospital/clinic wastewater), or, interestingly, in the form of aerosol-spray water droplets. The spray constitutes a more effective and energy-efficient way of ‘ozonating’ indoor spaces for prolonged periods in between spray campaigns. This kills bacteria and viruses rapidly and effectively, thereby ‘liberating’ indoor (and crowded outdoor) spaces for gatherings – whether professional, social or sporting. In this case, droplets adhere to surfaces much more, such as chairs, desks, etc. Such spaces would include, inter alia, hospitals, factories, gyms, public transport and stations, classrooms, etc.

These ozone nanobubbles serve as “batteries”, or “reservoirs”, to replenish continually solvated-ozone levels for hours, and their gradual diminution and depletion over these much longer timescales (compared to ozone in the gas phase or traditionally solvated state) affords this “nano-bubbly” water very potent steriliser/disinfectant properties – even more effectively so than chlorine.

Prof. Niall English, AquaB’s CEO said, “After direct ozone-gas generation, we apply our patented, energy-efficient nanobubble-generation method in water by electric-field exposure, giving rise to a combination of ozone (O₃₎ and oxygen (O₂) nanobubbles in solution, which act as gas stores to maintain solvated-ozone concentrations at elevated levels for many hours – about an order of magnitude longer than traditional auto-decay timescales of O₃ to O₂.”

He added, “By deploying these in aerosolised-spray form indoors, and even in crowded outdoor spaces, ozone-nanobubble water droplets tend to adhere, by gravity and direct-spray contact, to surfaces more effectively,  thus ozonating or disinfecting the spaces and killing bacteria and viruses, including potentially SARS-CoV-2. Importantly, for operational considerations, this will allow for more prolonged periods of time in between spraying campaigns.”

Dr Mohammad Reza Ghaani, CTO of AquaB said, “We now plan to collaborate with colleagues to test specifically our ozone-nanobubble technology, focusing especially on aerosol-spray mode as water droplets, as an effective disinfectant/elimination agent vis-à-vis SARS-CoV-2. The company is also in discussions with industry to accelerate the technology’s commercialisation, and we shall also liaise with public bodies.”

Professor English concluded, “We would like to thank Enterprise Ireland for ongoing support, including technology-development funding.”