Six companies have taken part in a virtual heat of the Future Water innovation competition, Water Dragons. The competition was held during the annual WWEM conference and provided an opportunity for entrants to pitch their innovative products, services, and processes to a panel of water sector specialists, in addition to being streamed live as part of the WWEM conference programme.
Each company presented for eight minutes before answering questions from the judges about key characteristics and unique benefits of their innovation.
The judges were very impressed by the calibre of all the entries, and after a period of deliberation announced the overall winner as Proteus Instruments with their real-time quality monitoring equipment.
Commenting on the judges outcome, Alastair Moseley, Water Dragon Judge Chair & Future Water Board Member said: “The overall quality of today’s entrants was very impressive, but in the end deciding on a winner came down to choosing the innovation that is really breaking new ground and doing something that hasn’t been available before. The judges could clearly see the market potential of the Proteus innovation, particularly with its ability to provide real time monitoring of BOD in our water bodies which has not been available to the Industry before now. The Judges also awarded Highly Commended to SEM and their ‘Wee DRAM’ innovation, recognising their ground-breaking work in using waste products from the distillery process to recover precious metals from waste streams from treatment works to help drive a circular economy model within the water sector”
Proteus Instruments’ MD Rob Stevens said: “On behalf of everyone at Proteus Instruments, we are really excited to have won this very public round of Water Dragon’s. Proteus represents an immense amount of hard work, collaboration and teamwork from everyone and its really great for the team to be recognised for this.
“Proteus clearly has a bright future and we really look forward to embarking on new collaborations to help our society to clean up our rivers and water resources. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of the journey so far, including the Dragons!”
The judges also recognised SEM Energy with a Highly Commended award, due to the truly innovative nature of their entry. A Wee DRAM impressed the judges with its potential to bring an opportunity for other sectors to recover precious resources, such as copper, from wastewater in our treatment works, as well as contributing to the circular economy.
Proteus Instruments and SEM Energy will now go through to the final of Water Dragons 2021 to be held in the early part of 2022, along with winners from our previous heat, FloNergia and Aquasensing.
The last heat of Water Dragons 2021 will take place on Friday 12 November during Networks November, a series of forward thinking webinars about all things water, pipes and sewers. Find out more.
Water Dragons is proudly sponsored by Hydrowave
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