Purafy Clean Technologies, a company (linked to Grafoid) that provides advanced solutions to the world's water challenges, has announced that it is collaborating with teams at both St. Lawrence College and Queen's University on a project that includes of both applied- and academic-level research and development for a made-in-Canada greywater recycling technology.
The multi-dimensional research and development project is set to last at least three years, with funding support in place from both federal and provincial government channels. The greywater recycling system will be installed at Kate's Rest Foundation, a property that provides permanent housing geared towards people who were once homeless or were at risk of homelessness in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
"Climate change is impacting our world today, creating millions of climate change refugees in the most affected areas", said Fr. Brian Hart, Executive Director and Founder of Kate's Rest Foundation. "Kate's Rest Foundation's mandate is to provide permanent supportive housing for homeless people in a way that minimizes our eco-footprint. This project with Purafy, St. Lawrence College, and Queen's University helps us protect our valuable water resources while simultaneously meeting new wastewater volume discharge restrictions imposed on our site by the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks for Ontario".
The Purafy-led team is focused on maintaining alignment within the newly unveiled Canadian Water Network (CWN) Strategic Plan for 2022-2027 2, so that at the conclusion of the project, the design enables existing small businesses to become new water leaders at the community level as partners of Purafy. "We foresee small businesses in both rural and urban regions playing a significant role in helping Purafy bring this new water conservation technology to market, to both implement and maintain these novel systems within our decentralized treatment network", said Cameron Runte, VP of Product Development at Purafy.
The design of Purafy's multi-stage, graphene-based electrochemical water treatment technology is set to achieve lower energy costs by reducing electrical power demand as well as reducing the volume of water used by homes and businesses every day. This principle will continue to be assessed and validated throughout the duration of the collaboration between Purafy, St. Lawrence College, and Queen's University onsite at Kate's Rest Foundation.
The Applied Research group at St. Lawrence College (SLC) will collaborate with Purafy's technical staff in the test and performance evaluation of a novel system to clean greywater waste streams. This system, designed for decentralized applications, uses a series of filter stages in addition to an in situ electrochemical aeration process to clean greywater streams to drinking water quality standards. Research staff, research assistants, and student researchers from both the SLC Cornwall and Kingston campuses will be involved in the project.
Another research group from Queen's University will independently investigate ways to optimize the electrochemical aeration process aspects of the project. "We are enthusiastic about our role in the project and believe that the involvement of our graduate students in this collaboration with Purafy will lead to advancement of process knowledge and technical skills that will benefit our students, the company, and Canada", said Dr. Cao Thang Dinh and Dr. Dominik Barz from Queen's University.