(don't) Waste Water!

Teague Egan is the CEO and Founder of EnergyX. EnergyX is on a mission to become a worldwide leader in the global transition to sustainable energy with breakthrough direct lithium extraction and refinery technologies, as well as more effective battery and energy storage solutions.

Imagine you're listening to "The End" - the famous hit of The Doors. You vaguely remember there's something pressing on your to-do list, but hey, who can resist the captivating voice of Jim Morrisson, right? 11'44 passes by, and you return to that to-do list. What's on top? Oh yeah, submit that folder for Bolivia's Direct Lithium Extraction tender.

But... 11'44 was 1'44 too long, and time is over; you're out. Kind of bitter, right? I obviously romanticized the anecdote, and I don't know if Teague is a fan of The Doors, yet one part of that story is true: EnergyX got kicked off of Bolivia's DLE tender for submitting 10 minutes late. 

I wouldn't allow myself to joke about it if Teague wasn't seeing the positives in it: EnergyX leverages 60 patents across the lithium value chain, and they've leveraged Bolivia and Uyuni as a great proof of concept! Their technology suit stands the field test, and they're able to produce lithium in a country that maybe boasts the World's largest lithium reserves, but also a quite demanding 25 to 1 magnesium to lithium ratio that defeated many challengers in that race to get Bolivia's white oil off the ground.

In today's conversation, you'll get to explore how a Direct Lithium Extraction pure player builds its path to a future EV supply chain vertical, how there may be bumps on the road, but also how exciting it is to move an Idea from the lab to a pilot then a demonstration stage and down the line, a first commercial reference. 

You'll hear of the lithium godfather and Nobel Prize recipient, John Goodenough, which is the second Nobel Prize winner we get to hear in this lithium series after Barry Sharpless that collaborated with Standard Lithium; you'll understand how an investment fund committed 450 million dollars on EnergyX and how Teague won his crown as Shale Magazine named him the Lithium King. 

➡️ Check out the entire article on how the Lithium King got 60 patents  for its battery vertical pure player, including a teaser, a slider, and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Jim Rieke - VP of Process Engineering at Veolia Water Technologies 

💧 Veolia Water Technologies specializes in water treatment solutions while providing a complete range of services for industrial & public authorities

What we covered:

👷 How HPD onboards all its hires through its service and commissioning groups and how that's the best learning experience to Veolia Water Technologies' portfolio 

🤝 How the milestone Naraha Lithium Refinery reference started through a collaboration between Orocobre (now, Allkem) and HPD and what was the step by step road to success 

🚢 What's the magic that turns Lithium Carbonate in South America into Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate in Japan 

🧩 How there might be standard building blocks but how every lithium carbonate is slightly different and hence requires a tailor-made lithium refining process 

🏭 Where do impurities appear in a lithium refinery process and how to remove them to guarantee a battery-grade output 

🧰 How extracting lithium from clay is still a very new process and what it changes in the lithium refinery set up 

🛠️ How Veolia Water Technologies' holistic approach is a key differentiator in the development of a lithium refinery 

🌍 How geopolitics and government incentives play a role in the economics of a lithium refinery 

👰 How the newly wed SUEZ and Veolia offer an even broader portfolio of complimentary technologies to better serve the lithium market 

📈 How DLE "suddenly" makes much more lithium available and how HPD's lithium refinery process copes with the source's specificities 

♻️ How batter-grade lithium is just one of the outputs of a lithium refinery: Veolia Water Technologies' expertise also allows to valorize several more by-products along the way 

💰 How Veolia Water Technologies' involvement in projects can help get junior lithium companies get financed as a valuable reference partner 

🗺️ Building a Lithium Refinery step by step; leaching, evaporation, crystallization, ion exchange: the lithium refinery keywords; lithium refining in the broader scheme of the EV battery vertical; turning sodium sulfate into sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid; empowering circularity... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Jim on Linkedin  

🔗 Check Veolia's website 

➡️ Check out the entire article on How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert 

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

Jim RIeke is Vice President of Process Engineering at Veolia Water Technologies. Within the Veolia Galaxy, we focus today on HPD: Large-scale, highly-integrated process solutions utilizing evaporation, crystallization, and more.

If you recall what Tony Strobbe shared on this microphone a couple of weeks ago: "if you ship spodumene concentrate across the ocean, you ship 6% what you want, and 94% what you don't want."

6% is the highest you will get in lithium from hard rock, after onsite concentration from the natural 1.5% lithium content in the best spodumenes. 

To get to the battery grade 99.95%, you hence need to refine that lithium, a quite specific and key process along the EV material supply chain, in which HPD specializes - in a way Jim will explain in a minute.

That said specialization doesn't stop at lithium from hard rock, though, as we'll discover with use cases from clay, Direct Lithium Extraction, and maybe the most spectacular example, with Veolia's latest reference in refining lithium from evaporation ponds.

The way these projects are built is quite revealing of the pace of this sector as well, as Jim will describe how it can sometimes take up to seven years to freeze the process design. It's also a fascinating blueprint for circular economy and resource recovery, as by-products can be upcycled and sometimes even directly used again in the refining process. 

From a business perspective, it's also an interesting configuration at the edges of the traditional EPC approach, an integrator path, and sometimes a service and operation play. 

Wanna get how a 200-headcount division of a Water Giant became a leading lithium refining actor? Then you're at the right place

➡️ Check out the entire article on how 'reverse ZLD' perfectly defines the Lithium Refinery process including a teaser, a slider, and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

😮 Anaergia's flagship asset, the Rialto Bioenergy Facility, just filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. What happened? What are the problems? What's next? Let's review ⬇

Last year, I spoke with Andrew Benedek and Kunal Shah on this podcast, and I came out of those two episodes deeply convinced that Anaergia was changing the World for the better.

🏆 Last month, that feeling got comforted at Global Water Intelligence (GWI)'s awards ceremony, when the company won two trophies as "Net Zero Carbon Champion," but also indirectly as a contributor to the "Wastewater Project of the Year."

So I was shocked when reading GWI's last weekly briefing and discovering North America's largest organic waste-to-energy plant was in deep trouble!

But when analyzing what happened, I started noting some very familiar patterns to anyone deeply involved with the Water Industry.

To me:

3️⃣ Rialto has 3 Problems (which I detail in this episode)

🤦‍♂️ It's not the first time Regulation has come in the way of Water Companies

📜 Paul O'Callaghan's thesis on the Dynamics of Water Innovation once more helps us understand what's going on

🕯 I think Anaergia will get to the light on the other end of that tunnel

... and frankly speaking, I hope so!

▶️ Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube    

with 🎙️ Robert Mintak - CEO of Standard Lithium

💧 Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company. They're expected to become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado

What we covered:

5️⃣ How Standard Lithium built a plan to grow to commercial direct lithium extraction (DLE) scale in five years

🔁 How you can't take lithium extraction processes off-the-shelf and how you can't copy-paste what works on a lab scale for a commercial scale

💧 How there's an overlooked part of DLE: managing high brine volumes and flows

🎁 How Standard Lithium "surprised" Lanxess with a lithium add-on to their bromine business

🤝 How you need to know what you know but also know when to team up and get support to take your project off the ground

💰 How Standard Lithium used a simple trick most companies wouldn't dare to apply: paying their partner to kick things off

🗺️ How the Lanxess project will serve as a Blueprint for replication across Arkansas' Smackover formation

⚔️ How there's no silver-bullet universal lithium extraction process and how you need to tailor it to your regional parameters

⚡ How to be future-proof and keep all options open to the evolutions in battery technology

📍 Why El Dorado, Arkansas is the absolute best place to build a lithium chemical business in North America

👍 How having a positive impact and walking the talk is key to be serious about supporting the energy transition and the EV Revolution

🌇 Fluid handling as a boring but necessary evil, developing win-win agreements, relationships to Koch Engineering and Lanxess, California and further Arkansas projects... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Robert on Linkedin 

🔗 Check Standard Lithium's website 

➡️ Check out the entire article on Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success  

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert 

Robert Mintak is the CEO of Standard Lithium. Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company, and indeed, they shall become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado.

What's not to love about Direct Lithium Extraction or DLE? We've seen in the first two episodes of this series how the World needs to scale from about half a million of yearly Lithium Carbonate Equivalent to 2, 3, or maybe even 5 million by 2030. And sure, you can probably extract more spodumene in hard rock mines. You can probably also evaporate more lithium-rich brines in the south american lithium triangle. But will that be enough? For many, that's still an open question, and not the only one.

How and where do you refine that lithium? Who does it? Where and how do you ship it around? And what if the ones with lithium don't want to sell to the ones with battery gigafactories. 

To answer many of these questions and more, Direct Lithium Extraction comes in pretty handy. Indeed, with DLE and the extended CRC (if you don't know that acronym, you probably shall dive into the first episode of this series with Ben Sparrow), you have an all-in-one approach that turns low-concentration brines into battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide. 

Black oil fields can get a second life as a source of white oil. Geothermal projects can now kill two birds with one stone, leveraging the heat AND the lithium content. And existing brine operations, like the one Robert will talk about in a minute at the Lanxxess site in El Dorado, can start to multiply their value by adding an additional revenue stream. 

Hence my question: what's not to love about Direct Lithium Extraction?

Well, yes, it leverages processes we know quite well in the Water Industry, such as adsorption, ion exchange, membrane, thermal or electrochemical processes.

And yes, in a quite specific shape, it's been partially used since the 90s in Argentina and China.

But as an end-to-end process where unconventional brines flow in and battery-grade lithium gets extracted on the other end, it's never been scaled up to commercial sizes. There have been impressive lab studies and pilot plants, and even a handful of demo plants, one of them being Standard Lithium's one in El Dorado, another, Vulcan's one in Germany we'll discuss in a future episode. Yes, that's a spoiler. But never, ever, a full-scale plant. 

So the ability of pioneers such as Standard Lithium to manage the rollout of commercial scale DLE is something that's closely watched by an entire industry. 

How do you pick the right place to roll out? How do you build the right team? What are the decisive parameters to monitor? What's often overlooked? What makes a potential world's first full-scale Direct Lithium Extraction project? I'll let Robert take it from there.

➡️ Check out the entire article on the 10 Simple Secrets of Standard Lithium's probable world-first commercial DLE, including several teasers and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Tony Strobbe - EV supply chain Projects Director 

💧 Every Monday, Tony compiles a dedicated content piece he shares on LinkedIn that covers one aspect of that said supply chain

What we covered:

⚡ How there are no electric vehicles without batteries, no batteries without lithium, and no lithium without some kind of mining, hence you have to build a supply chain 

🤝 How the closer you are to your customer, the higher the margins for your product, and the consequences this has on the lithium mining vertical 

📉 How car manufacturers could well end up being left without lithium if they donc tackle the challenge seriously 

2️⃣ How there are two ways to approach the vertical, from the bottom and from the top and where those two paths cross and meet 

💰 How the large lithium companies currently "printing money" have two paths to continue doing so, and which one is probably the best for them 

🛠️ What are the material requirements to process one ton of spodumene and turn it into battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide 

💧 How ESG considerations will impact the lithium value chain today and tomorrow 

🧮 What parameters to consider when conceiving and building a lithium refinery and where to ideally locate it 

🌍 How geopolitics and history shape the current and future lithium markets 

😈 How there may well be a Powerpoint path to lithium equilibrium, but how the devil lies in the execution 

🍲 How DLE deals with a hot soup, and how this comes with its own challenges 

🚢 Lithium offer and demand, high prices solving high prices, the shelf life of Lithium Hydroxide, shipping spodumene across the World, extracting as much value as possible locally, lithium from new sources... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Tony on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing 

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert 

Tony Strobbe is EV supply chain Projects Director. Every Monday, he compiles a dedicated content piece he shares on LinkedIn that covers one aspect of that said supply chain, so if you like what he shares today, make sure to follow him!

I hope you haven't missed last week's conversation with Ben Sparrow from Saltworks! If you have, shame on you, but let me bring you up to speed: we're diving into the lithium value chain to discuss, evaluate and uncover the opportunities for water technologies and professionals in this rapidly growing application that taps into several layers of the water industry.

Now when you visit a foreign country, it's often a smart move to start by getting the basics of language and culture. So that's the mission I tasked Tony with today: let us break down the fundamentals of lithium processes. Why, where, and how do we refine lithium. What do we need to know on the technical side of the equation, but also on the geopolitical aspect of things. Where does the lithium value chain sit in the greater scheme of the EV supply chain?

Those are just some of the questions we'll get to answer today. And that will give us valuable keys to leverage the next nuggets in this series, such as the company that shall build the first ever commercial scale Direct Lithium Extraction project, or the dedicated team within the World's largest water company that's conceived some of the most emblematic lithium refining projects. 

Before kicking off, let me just share with you that I'm back from the Global Water Summit in Berlin and then the BlueTech Forum in Edinburg; it was a great experience to get to meet many of you and to discuss water, wastewater, water entrepreneurship, and much more. I'm so grateful for the many heartwarming feedbacks you gave me on the podcast, it means the World to me, and beyond just an ego-boost, it's critically important for me as I strive to produce you the most useful content every week. If it's the case, I'm glad it is, and you can help me out by sharing the pod with your friends, colleagues, boss, or team. Yet if you feel there's something I shall be doing differently or better, hey, feedback doesn't have to be positive: come share me your thoughts on LinkedIn or by mail: antoine@dww.show.

I also came back from both Berlin and Edinburg with great pieces of content, I spoke with the GWI team and the BlueTech team, I also cut some quite insightful interviews with Xylem, Veolia, Aquatech, Kemira, Evoqua, Gingko Bioworks, and more, I can't wait to share you all of this, once I've digested and edited it, but enough for that sidetrack and all that teasing, I'll leave the floor to Tony, and I'll meet you on the other side. 

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow - CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies 

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

What we covered:

🎢 The current state of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) and its possible technological paths

🤝 How DLE gets paired with Concentrate Refine Convert (CRC) processes and how this takes lithium to battery-grade

4️⃣ The Two main sources of Lithium in the World and their Two Contenders (DLE & Battery Recycling)

📆 The timelines of a lithium mining project and how fast tracks are myths

🏃 How speed to market is going to be a key metric for a new lithium player's success and how to maximize your chances of success

🇨🇦 How regions with a rich mining history, such as Canada and Australia, will lead the charge in the lithium mining revolution

💧 How water processes being massively used in lithium extraction projects will have consequences on lead times and technology availability in the Water Sector

📈 How lithium mining is an industry where everybody is growing and how there is more money flowing into the sector than companies ready to receive it

🚀 Generation 1 vs 2, Evaluating a Surprise Lithium Project, what's important for DLE's Success, Key market players, Growing as a water technology scale-up... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Have a look at Saltworks' website 

🔗 Come say hi to Benjamin on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

Other Episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert 

Here's the full breakdown of the Water Action Agenda pledges (including the Excel table that you can download) ➡️ https://dww.show/the-truth-about-the-water-action-agenda-768-commitments-decrypted/

I fear that the UN Water Action Agenda suffers from what Barney Stinson (yes, the one from How I Met Your Mother) would call... the cheerleader effect.

Many "commitments", but at the end of the day, a lot of pretty vague ones.

So I looked into it and share you some emblematic examples in this video! But I did not stop there.

I also wanted to test out what it takes to be featured on the Water Action Agenda and decided to introduce a commitment myself. To do so, I got a bit of help: the almighty ChatGPT wrote it integrally for me in just two queries.

And guess what? It got adopted!

Now to be clear, it's not so much of a scam at the end of the day: I will really follow my pledge and publish a Water Podcast a week for the next year. And in all cases, I'll submit updates on my pledge, which isn't the norm when you find out that ⬇️

I made an additional short on how a $300 Bn pledge became a $101 Bn commitment ➡️ https://youtube.com/shorts/hc0jeCdaYns?feature=share

Timestamps:

00:00 Csaba Kőrösi presses a mysterious button

01:00 Why was the UN Water Conference happening at all?

01:58 Can the Water Action Agenda save the UN Water Conference's outcomes?

03:02 The problem with the Water Action Agenda: the Cheerleader Effect

04:10 2 Examples of Empty Statements (amongst 146 other ones)

06:37 "Lukewarm Water Commitments" (a problematic UN Water Action Agenda category)

08:22 3 Awesome Commitments (there are good ones too!)

10:08 What's the scam?

11:03 Using ChatGPT to trick the United Nations

12:42 Did it Work? 

14:12 Conclusion

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

Maybe "Lying" is too strong of a word, but at least there's a serious imbalance between what's needed, what's spoken about, and what's really pledged.

Wanna dive deeper into the topic? Check out my full video: https://youtu.be/7gksQHzCYVA

with 🎙️ Karl Michael Millauer, Founder of KMM Consulting and a former C-Level executive in some emblematic water groups like BWT, Christ Water Technology, Aquatech International, and Aquarion AG. 

💧 KMM Consulting helps clients around the globe leverage opportunities in the world of water through mergers & acquisitions, finance & funding, business development, and strategic support.

What we covered:

▫️ How unlike McKinsey, Roland Berger, or KPMG, KMM Consulting works with small Water Companies and helps them get sold, further distributed or raising money 

👴 How the most common case is to put a water company for sales to solve a succession challenge 

🔨 How some other water businesses have reached a glass ceiling for their growth and how a M&A move is the way to break it 

👐 How healthy water companies can be profitable for 45 years, active in a very good niche and scalable, and still not find any interested investor 

🤑 How founders often overestimate the value of their Water Company, why they do so, and what's a good rule of thumb to determine the right valuation 

⏰ How long a typical due diligence process lasts and what key milestones have to be crossed 

🤝 How marketing is key in selling a water company and how that often boils down to the founder's ability to convey his message and value proposition 

👔 How KMM Consulting packages its relationship to small water businesses and how that's a different approach to what most market players do 

👨‍🏫 How ESG and sustainability investors may need to get educated to the specificities of the water sector when they first step in 

📈 How some water companies are perfectly healthy and profitable and simply don't want to grow, why, and why that's absolutely fine! 

👋 How when acquiring a small water company, new owners may get nervous if the founder leaves too quickly and which kind of mechanisms, such as earn-outs, work the best to please everyone 

🍴 How the freshly created Aquarion AG acquired the established Hager und Elsässer behemoth and what you can learn from it 

💰 Drivers that amend a company's valuation, healthy growth vs. burning money, the biggest hurdles in a water company sales process, how it's a people's business, the importance of risk management, pairing technical and commercial skills, focusing on the smaller end of the water sector's pyramid... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Check KMM Consulting's Website 

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Karl Michael on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

➡️ Reach out to me: antoine@dww.show 

Karl Michael Millauer is the founder of KMM Consulting and a former C-Level executive in some emblematic water groups like BWT, Christ Water Technology, Aquatech International, and Aquarion AG. KMM Consulting helps clients around the globe leverage opportunities in the world of water through mergers & acquisitions, finance & funding, business development, and strategic support.

The water industry features some behemoths that regularly make the news: Veolia, Xylem, Suez... I mean, you know the usual suspects, as I have been featuring them every time there was noteworthy news to share about them.

Then, there's a fascinating wave of cool kids worth several thousands of millions, like 374Water, which I had on this microphone, or NX Filtration, which I should have on this microphone at some point; that's my mistake for not inviting them yet, and a growing pack of high-profile scale-ups raising tens of millions in seed rounds and Series A like my former guests Klir, Epic Cleantec, Source, or ZwitterCo.

Yet the water sector is also one of these typical places where the iceberg metaphor holds true! I see you rolling your eyes because that damn iceberg is overused but bear with me. 

The 50 largest water companies combined only represent 25% of the total market, which by extension, highlights how there's an ocean of small-sized players that support all shades of water applications! How many? I can't tell, and despite looking around, I couldn't put my hands on even the beginning of a statistic that would depict this bottom of the pyramid.

I guess that's one more proof that while big players get a lot of attention, expert support, and coverage when they merge or consolidate, smaller actors have long been left in a no man's land. 

Well, this is the no man's land I'm inviting you to explore this week with Karl Michael. And it's pure serendipity: I wanted to cover that topic for a while, so I got very curious when Global Water Intelligence introduced their opportunity exchange platform, featuring dozens of smaller-sized water companies looking for funding, a new owner, a distribution partner, or a licensee. Why serendipity? Well, the 35 first opportunities listed on this marketplace were all coming from Karl Michael Millauer. So I reached out, and you'll get to discover in a minute all of his openness to share a bit of his work and world!

Right before that, I'd like to thank from the bottom of my heart all the new listeners that came and joined me on this podcasting journey over the past weeks; I'm so happy to see the nice growth of this channel! I'm a one-man band, and I'm running this podcast on my free time and, let's be real, at my own expense as well, I love doing it for sure, but it's good in my long and tiring editing evenings to realize it's not for nothing, and it's bringing you some value.

So here's today's call to action: we'll have a special episode next week to close this season 8, and I have almost finished recording a special mini-season 9 that will look into the depth of the lithium industry and value chain and how that's an incredible opportunity for the water industry. I'm super excited to share this one with you, so stay tuned! This also means that I now have a bit of time to think of the upcoming season 10, and that's where I need you! If you have special wishes, areas you'd like me to explore for you, questions that keep you up at night, or guests you'd like to suggest to me, that's your chance: reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email at antoine@dww.show and I'll make sure that Season 10 serves you well! Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side. 

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Jennifer Möller-Gulland, Water Risk Expert and Water Economist for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme 

💧 Jennifer is the founder of the Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training, a 12-week online course that helps water professionals to know the Water Risks, convince decision makers to consider and address them, be part of the solution, and accelerate their career.

What we covered:

3️⃣ How there are three types of Water Risks, physical, infrastructure, and governance, and how one should tackle the assessment of these risks 

👨‍🏫 How water risks shall be understood at all levels, from government to companies and individuals 

📈 How water risks are connected to economic development, social development and gender equality and how ignoring water risks can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and communities 

🚱 How the governance risk in managing water crisis (such as Flint) is often not given the attention it deserves 

😵 How the "40% water availability gap" risk given by the 2030 Water Resource Group is often misused and doesn't consider qualitative risks such as polluted water 

😅 How the UN Water Conference can be taken with a positive spin, assuming you joined with no expectations, and how the outcomes are pretty typical of this kind of multilateral behemoth 

♻️ How political cycles don't match with the infrastructure investments required for long-term sustainability and how decision-makers over-focus on making voters happy 

💰 How infrastructure problems cannot always be fixed incrementally, how they may require complete overhauls and how there's no clear plan on how to finance it 

💵 How linking a water risk assessment to GDP impact can help incentivize governments to take action based on it 

💪 How Jennifer created her water risk assessment training, who it caters to, and what one can expect to learn from it 

✋ Positive reinforcement of Water newcomers, the human right to Water, PFAS and its potential health consequences, the fate of a consultant's report, working for the World Bank or the UN, Water Futures, Water Markets... and much more! 

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

🔗 Check the Water Risk Blueprint Website 

🔗 Get a Water Risk Crash Course 

🔗 Get a FREE Masterclass on how to assess and communicate Water Risks 

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Jennifer on LinkedIn or on Instagram

➡️ Check out the entire article on the importance of Water Risk Assessment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Jennifer Möller-Gulland is a Water Risk Expert and Water Economist for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. Jennifer is also the founder of the Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training, a 12-week online course that helps water professionals to know the Water Risks, convince decision-makers to consider and address them, be part of the solution, and accelerate their career.

Somewhere in Paris' headquarters of the OECD, an independent and diverse group of eminent policymakers joined forces in May 2022 to create the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.

After the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change released in 2006 and the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity issued in 2021, they were about to complete what they called the Sustainability Trilogy with the release of their Pact for Voluntary Commitments - an incredible report that they launched on 22 March 2023 at the UN Water Conference.

Did you hear of it? Well, let's say it wasn't a banger, but they must have a good PR team, so it gathered some mainstream media attention. That's where Jennifer picked it up and looked up their Water Risk Assessment.

The result is history: a nicely crafted, pedagogic, positively toned yet affirmative LinkedIn post shared 113 times, where she calls out their b***s***.

Hey, that intro is not about name and shame. But I'm telling you that story because it seems that even though the World Economic Forum's yearly Global Risk Report has water-related ones all over its top ten, there's a severe deficit in understanding, framing, and running water risk assessments. 

Yet how can we solve problems we don't understand and cannot size correctly? As Jennifer will explain in a minute, that's a challenge that shall be understood at all levels, from the government to companies and individuals, because water risks are connected to economic development, social development, GDP, every facet of the economy and even gender equality so clearly, ignoring water risks can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and communities.

So let's fix that, and let me close this intro and leave the floor to Jennifer, just after reminding you that you still have a couple of days left to book your seats for the upcoming BlueTech Forum, happening in Edinburgh on the 17th and 18th of May under the tagline of Innovation with Impact. 

The agenda is packed with great speakers, mastermind roundtable sessions, "innovation for impact" box design sprints, 5 by 5 partnership case studies, lots of networking opportunities, and BlueTech's signature cherry-picked disruptive water tech innovations. 

Check out the full agenda on bluetechforum.com - the link is in the description - and consider joining me and many former guests of this podcast in Edinburgh this May. If that's of interest, here's the cherry on the cake: with the code Antoine20, like my name, 20, you'll get a 20% discount on your registration if you book before the end of April, so hurry up; the doors are closing!

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

🔗 Check the Water Risk Blueprint Website 

🔗 Get a Water Risk Crash Course 

🔗 Get a FREE Masterclass on how to assess and communicate Water Risks 

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Jennifer on LinkedIn or on Instagram

➡️ Check out the entire article on the importance of Water Risk Assessment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Alex Rappaport, CEO and Co-Founder of ZwitterCo.  

💧 ZwitterCo leverages the benefits of Zwitterions to build Membranes that treat the world's toughest wastewater.

What we covered:

⚛️ How ZwitterCo's unique leverage of zwitterions overcomes membranes' greatest weakness: fouling 

🚀 How Alex Rappaport built a record-breaking membrane scale-up somewhat against the odds and how ZwitterCo was founded 

📅 How improving membranes and wastewater treatment was on the founding team's agenda from Day 1 and how they executed on it 

🦸 How ZwitterCo leveraged the SuperFiltration category to depict the unique properties of their wastewater membrane 

💡 How Water Scarcity and its increased awareness in industrial circles create a massive opportunity for the right set of technologies to address it 

🚚 How ZwitterCo defined its scope of deliveries and how the company decided for the best-suited Go-To Market Route 

🙌 How Alex's company just raised a record-breaking Series A and what this will unlock 

🌱 How the real impact ZwitterCo is aiming for goes beyond numbers - even if we are talking unicorn potential 

🇩🇪 What "Zwitter" actually means, how zwitterions are special animals, extending the range, leveraging real-world cases and feedback

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

🔗 Check ZwitterCo's Website 

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Alex on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the entire article on ZwitterCo's leverage of Zwitterions and how it could revolutionize the World of industrial wastewater treatment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Alex Rappaport is the CEO and Co-Founder of ZwitterCo. ZwitterCo leverages the benefits of Zwitterions to build Membranes that treat the world's toughest wastewater.

Theoretically speaking, wastewater treatment is easy. You have water with stuff inside at the inlet, and you want water with much less stuff inside at the outlet. So you just have to define what has to be removed, and you could size a membrane to do exactly that job.

Let's say, you want everything that's larger than 1 nanometer to be out of the picture. You take a reverse osmosis membrane, you push your wastewater on one end, and whatever comes out on the other end will fit your specification. Easy, the job's done, goodbye!

Well... The problem is that if that system was to work, it would for sure not work long. Your membrane would be clogged, and irreversibly fouled, and after minutes to hours, you would have to throw it away and start fresh.

Now, nobody except me would be stupid enough to try something like that out. So in most cases, you won't go for a one-step treatment; you'll rather opt for a clever combination, where stuff gets removed from water layer by layer with optimized efficiency. 

Stages of this process will probably be done with membranes, and if you want to end up reusing that water, the last step will for sure be done with membranes.

But even if you have this time designed everything right, your membranes will still clog over time, and backwash will lose efficiency cycle after cycle until irreversible fouling is so high you have to replace your system.

So, every 7 to 12 years, you're good to reinvest in membranes, modules, and some peripherals. Unless someone cracks the code for fouling-free membranes... But that's physically not possible, right?

Well, that's before looking into the surprising physical properties of Zwitterions, a special family of molecules that are simultaneously positively and negatively charged. As a result, they're highly hydrophilic and very resistant to non-specific adhesion. 

So wouldn't that make them the best special sauce to pump up a membrane filtration system? I'll let Alex answer this in a minute, as he'll do it so much better than me. 

But you'll swiftly notice that it's a fascinating take at the toughest wastewaters and most difficult industrial reuse riddles.

To that extent, ZwitterCo is a perfect example of innovation with impact. If that's a theme you'd like to explore in greater depth, Innovation with Impact is also the tagline of the upcoming BlueTech Forum, happening in Edinburgh on the 17th and 18th of May. The agenda is packed with great speakers, mastermind roundtable sessions, "innovation for impact" box design sprints, 5 by 5 partnership case studies, lots of networking opportunities, and BlueTech's signature cherry-picked disruptive water tech innovations. 

That's just a bite-sized summary of a packed agenda - if you'd like to know more, check out bluetechforum.com - and consider joining me and many former guests of this podcast in Edinburgh this May. I talked of cherry-picked innovation: well there's a cherry on the cake as well: with the code Antoine20, like my name, 20, you'll get a 20% discount on your registration if you book before the end of April.

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

➡️ Check out the entire article on ZwitterCo's leverage of Zwitterions and how it could revolutionize the World of industrial wastewater treatment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum ➡️ https://www.bluetechforum.com/

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

***

Over the past five years:

- NX Filtration lost $28.56 million

- De.Mem burned $12.14 million

- CleanTeq Water was $18.63 million in the red 

- Aquaporin lost... $67.1 million!

Yet, I'll dare to say I think those four companies are on the right track!

Why? Let's explore.

Then, there's one more company that's lost $39 million over that same period of time, for which I'd be much more worried. Who's that? I'll reveal in the last segment!

00:00 Introduction

00:07 Aquaporin, NX Filtration, De.Mem and CleanTeq Water are bleeding money

00:53 Membrane Companies are "Special Beasts"

02:19 What is disruptive in the Membrane World? 

04:30 What are these Membrane Companies investing their money on?

05:44 Is increased Water Scarcity the path to Profit for these companies?

06:58 Join me at the BlueTech Forum 2023!

07:50 This company is in BIG TROUBLE

09:16 Conclusion

The Ultimate Guide of Membrane Filtration: https://youtu.be/RUpiL_x7680

Graeme Pearce tells us the full story of Membrane Filtration: https://dww.show/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-mbrs-without-daring-to-ask/

Andrew Benedek adds up the story of MBRs: https://dww.show/how-to-be-alone-early-crazy-but-actually-right-the-history-of-zenon/

▶️ Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube   

with 🎙️ Björn Otto, founder, and Managing Director of Interius Solutions. 

💧 Interius Solutions supports Water Technology Companies with outsourced marketing solutions and a very special touch - it's marketing done by water professionals that understand water technologies. 

Marketing is not the Water Industry's forte. I dare you to find one out of the 187 previous episodes of this podcast in which we don't at least allude to the flaws in our sector's marketing. 

We've discussed how it impacts water's value, water's perception, water technology's take-off and market adoption, the general public's understanding of our sector, how it inhibits the fight against water scarcity, how it opens boulevards for bottled water or unsustainable practices and much more and much worse.

But, once we've said all that. What do we do about it?

Sitting on our hands and complaining is not really in the DNA of this sector, so it's about time we apply this forward thinking to marketing as well. That requires some know-how, some understanding of the root causes of the situation we're in, a ton of expertise, and, more important: practical, concrete, and actionable pieces of advice. 

That is why I reached out to my co-host on the Water Show, Björn Otto, and gave him this simple task. Provide water industry decision-makers, investors, and key actors with a blueprint for action. And god, did he deliver on the request! So without further due, I'll let you dive into my discussion with him.

Last stop before that - if you like today's content, consider subscribing and sharing that episode with your boss, a colleague, your marketing manager or that promising young engineer in your team you'd think would make an incredible marketer going forward

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Björn on LinkedIn    

🔗 Check out Interius Solution's website  

▶️ Find the full article on why and how Water Companies shall Better their Marketing Game on the (don't) Waste Water website!

with 🎙️ Paul Gagliardo, Judge and advisor at Imagine H2O, and Principal at Gagliacqua.     

💧 Paul also runs the Water Entrepreneur, an incredibly good water podcast that is one of my personal favorites and which also turns out to be a family business as Paul will elaborate on later on in the conversation.

What we covered:

🚽 How leading the project that infamously popularized the term "toilet to tap" made Paul famous and what his job was in San Diego 

👨‍🔬 How Paul led a research center that tested equipment, gave a brutally honest feedback and assessment and how he rapidly got praised for that 

🈂️ How becoming a consultant engineer, one of his first duties was to translate what utilities said so that his colleagues could understand it 

🏰 How the water sector used to be extremely conservative and somewhat trapped in the 19th century and how things drastically changed over the last decade 

🧑 How the startup founder is almost as important as the technology and the market the company aims for, why, and what to do now that you're aware of that 

🚧 How some inventors believe in their technology despite the fundamental laws of physics and how to overcome their harassing demands 

⚖️ Defining a set of rules to check and assess technology in the most effective manner and how despite all precautions taken to make it a science, there is still some subjectivity in it 

🧑‍⚖️ How the more disruptive your technology is, the more people will want to compare it to things they know and understand to better assess the value you're delivering 

📊 How you need to think of data collection from the onset when piloting and how there are a set of best practices that support your efforts in this endeavor 

🤌 How expertise can be tricky: the more expertise someone has, the less likely that person is to look at something new because they think they already know everything 

0️⃣ Startups having zero experience in the water business, getting paid as a utility and having to figure out what to do with the money, how founders have to be prepared to be replaced when the company grows, being an open book, being smarter than everybody else, seeing the future... and much more! 

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥 

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Paul on LinkedIn  

🔗 Check out the Water Entrepreneur Podcast's Website

🔗 Find the full transcript of my conversation with the inventor of the Toilet to Tap on the (don't) Waste Water website!