BioLargo Inc () has unveiled that the first municipal wastewater trial of its water treatment technologies will take place at a plant near Montréal in Québec, with experts in water treatment and technology development from the Centre des Technologies de L’Eau (CTE) to supervise and validate the performance of the pilot on-site.

The purpose of the pilot is to assess BioLargo’s Advanced Oxidation System (AOS) and Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator (AEC) water treatment technologies as effective, cost-efficient, and complementary solutions for disinfecting and eliminating a broad range of recalcitrant contaminants from municipal wastewater in an operating treatment plant.

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The company said AOS and AEC have previously been shown to effectively remove hard-to-treat contaminants such as pharmaceutical pollutants, as well as other micropollutants like per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), respectively.

The new pilot also follows the successful conclusion of the company’s first demonstration pilot for the AOS technology at a poultry farm and processing facility near Edmonton, Alberta, where the technology was proven capable of providing effective and affordable treatment of poultry wastewater to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s safe water discharge standards.

The joint AOS/AEC demonstration pilot is funded in part by the Canadian Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) through an Applied Research and Development (ARD) program grant which will provide $225,000 for the project.

BioLargo said its engineers and scientists are currently building the AOS and AEC units for the pilot, and hope to have them installed and running by the end of October. Initial results from the pilot are expected in the first quarter of 2021.

“This is an extremely exciting pilot for us. The BioLargo AOS and AEC technologies have the potential to provide myriad benefits to municipal wastewater treatment operators, including reducing operating costs, greater breadth of treatment capabilities, and greater energy efficiency”, BioLargo president Richard Smith said in a statement.

BioLargo is an innovator of technology-based products and environmental engineering solutions including what the company says are “unique disruptive solutions” to deliver cleaner air, water and a “clean, safe environment”.

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