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EnPhytoBox® or Wetlands-in-a-box® uses the power of nature to take the waste out of water and turn it into a useful resource for remote communities, farms, industries, and cities.
About
As droughts, flooding, and the effects of climate change increase, we need water treatment solutions that are nature-based, supporting industry and communities to be water resilient. EnPhytoBox® is a wetlands-in-a-box, a scalable, decentralised water treatment system created by the multidisciplinary experts at Syrinx. Built for a wide variety of applications, EnPhytoBox® can be used to treat polluted water for rural communities, farms, companies, and municipalities. Requiring low energy and low maintenance, the EnPhytoBox® is a flexible solution that can respond to changes in regulatory standards and chemistry/flows and can adapt to react to novel pollutants urgently. The EnPhytoBox® meets the demands of the future, harnessing nature to turn contaminated water into a precious resource.
Key Benefits
The EnPhytoBox® is a mobile, IoT enabled, nature-based water treatment technology that is:
- Climate resilient – distributed units can overcome risks associated with water quality assurance for reuse or environmental discharge.
- Functional – treating up to 100Kl/day, either stand-alone or supplementing other treatment technologies.
- Scalable – multiple units can be used to increase capacity.
- Versatile - treating different pollutant types and wastewater streams from municipal, industrial, contaminated ground and surface waters.
- Adaptable - components/materials are easily adjusted to suit changes in wastewater type or composition.
- Redeployable – can be readily moved to where it's most needed and easily repurposed by swapping out components.
- Remotely Operated - using IoT to remotely control, operate and monitor using sophisticated sensors, an integrated platform and a continuous LoraWAN wifi/satellite service.
- Low cost to operate across its life cycle – with ~40% lower OPEX compared with other mobile wastewater treatment technologies, uses low energy, which can be fully offset with renewables.
- Circular - designed, developed and built using circular economy principles to ensure operation is optimized, that it produces zero waste and the whole unit and/or individual components can be removed/repurposed at 'end of first need'.
Applications
Target markets include:
- Agriculture - each box can supplement irrigation of up to 10 ha of vines, crops, or micro-food vegetable farms. This can be scaled e.g. 10 EnPhytoBoxes could supplement irrigation of up to 100 ha.
- Aquaculture - treatment and recycling of wastewater for improved efficiency and resource management.
- Industry - treatment of industrial leachate for recycling and to ensure that environmental standards are met for local water discharge legislation.
- Remote communities – decentralised treatment & reuse of supply to provide local resilience.
- Regional towns – polishing or pre-treatment to meet high water quality standards for reuse/discharge or drinking water.
- Urban - nutrient enriched urban lakes and wetlands, stormwater, groundwater.
- Resorts and Protected Areas – greywater/blackwater treatment for recycling or safe discharge to environment.
- Mines - Abandoned & active – treatment of contaminated water storages, tailings and recycling of process water.
- Climate Emergency Agencies - can quickly be deployed in climate emergencies such as floods or droughts - to treat stormwater safely, or clean contaminated water to protect community health from waterborne disease.