AQUA BUBBLES: Nanobubbles for water treatment · Nano-oxygenation in water treatment by ambient-pressure air-fed, ultra-low-energy nanobubble generation

Spun out of UCD Chemical Engineering, AquaB's ambitious mission is to no less than clean up the world's water. The ‘intellectual machinery’ embedded in our nanobubble-generation and controlled release. This is based on an electric-field-inducing electrostriction, which serves to create a transient negative-pressure region, thereby 'sucking in' gas into the liquid in the form of many nano-bubbles, which are kinetically metastable, typically for many weeks and longer. The energy costs of this additive-free, non-contact method are an order of magnitude lower than 'classical' approaches, e.g., involving massive pressure drops from pumping across Venturi tubes, etc - with a far longer lifetime and smaller, more uniform size range. In this project, we will revolutionise the low-energy and low-maintenance aeration of water. The novel NB generator will be tested in three use cases - wastewater treatment, aquaculture and agriculture, and prepared for full commercialisation.