With one of the trio departing a few years after its founding, the business today is under the leadership of President and Chief Executive Officer Derek Inglis, Chief Technical officer Gareth Hoar, and Vice President and General Manager Geoff MacIntyre.

Track, monitor, control
Xeos Technologies is a leader in designing and manufacturing low-power telemetry tracking equipment, solutions, and service. From state-of-the-art beacons and flashers to data relays, wave height sensors, remote head beacons, asset trackers, current drifters, and accessories, the Nova Scotia-based business provides highly reliable products for tracking, monitoring, and controlling assets at Sea.

“Derek and Gareth are the ones who have taken Xeos to where it is now,” says MacIntyre of the company, which sees Derek Inglis handling commercial aspects, with Gareth Hoar responsible for the technical side of the business.

In May, Xeos announced the purchase of the REF TEK seismic monitoring portfolio from U.S.-based Trimble. REF TEK is active in seismometers, accelerometers, seismic recorders, and software for earthquake hazard mitigation and scientific studies. Originally acquired by Xeos in early 2020, REF TEK spun out and became a separate company in November 2020.

With a staff of about 20, Xeos’s team includes engineers, electronics technicians and scientists. With all products made in Dartmouth, the company supports the local economy, including CNC machining and printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers.

With products ranging in price from about $800 to $5,000, beacons, wave height sensors and other items are distributed through many marine and data telemetry businesses worldwide from the United States to South Africa and everywhere in between. Selling direct to Canadian customers, Xeos is proud to serve clients wherever they are located.

Over 90 percent of Xeos’s sales are exports outside of Canada. “A big part of our business is in the United States, a big part is in Europe, and a big part is in Asia,” says MacIntyre of the company, which has a strong Internet presence. Representatives of the company are also regularly seen at international trade shows and scientific conferences. “A lot of our clients are scientists themselves,” says MacIntyre.

Built for brutal treatment
Xeos’s customers primarily include scientists, engineers, and technologists, people who are putting together platforms and robotic systems designed to go in the oceans either for scientific research or for marine operational projects, including oil and gas, offshore wind, and other marine renewable energy projects.

Unlike products made for use on land, Xeos Technologies’ beacons, asset trackers, wave height sensors and other items are created to withstand Earth’s most brutal environments, from sub-zero temperatures to highly corrosive salt water, and almost unimaginable ocean depths.

Some products remain on the surface, while others are submerged hundreds or even thousands of meters deep, often in remote areas, where they will sit on the floor of the ocean collecting data and performing their monitoring activities for up to two years before being recovered.

“Our products are made to go to the deepest parts of the ocean, which can be 11,000 meters down – at pressures of about 16,000 psi – and have to work when they get back to the surface,” says MacIntyre.

When it is time for the device to be retrieved, an acoustic ‘ping’ triggers a release. This releases the instrument package from its mooring, and it rises to the surface. From there, the beacon, by means of the GPS network and Iridium® – a 66-satellite voice and data communications system – sends a message to the user showing its exact location.

“That,” says Macintyre, “is one of the engineering challenges of making beacons that need to communicate with satellites, and then come back up. The antennas and all the systems need to be able to withstand extreme pressure, and still work.”

To protect the inner workings in punishing environments, cases are made from titanium. Much lighter and stronger than steel, titanium can handle deep oceanic pressures, and doesn’t corrode in salt water.

The size of Xeos beacons often depends on the reserve power capacity of batteries. Smaller beacons are about the size of a soda can, while larger ones are comparable to a large flashlight. “They are designed to be energy efficient and to last a long time,” MacIntyre notes.

Beacons are reusable once batteries are replaced. It is not uncommon for beacons to be alternately out in the field – that is, the depths of the ocean – and en route back to Xeos. This can be the life of a beacon for over a decade, returning from the deep blue every so often to be inspected and tested.

Anywhere technology
Much has changed since Xeos Technologies was first founded. Alkaline and lithium battery technology has evolved. Early beacons used radio signals and flashing lights to communicate which worked, but required someone to be on the deck of a ship with a handheld receiver and a radio beacon and antenna to pick up the signal.

Today, satellite communication networks have developed and evolved. “Most of our beacons now have satellite communication modems in them so they send the location back remotely. They can be anywhere in the world and you can track things from your office,” says MacIntyre.

“Those networks have improved drastically over the past 17 years to the point that they are much more reliable, with greater coverage. The use cost has gone down because they have many more applications now, and many more users.”

Xeos primarily uses the Iridium satellite system, owing to its reliability and years in business. Xeos became an official Iridium partner in 2012 and has been developing products and services with Iridium technology ever since. “It basically has 100 percent coverage of the entire planet and has very advanced technology. It can provide near-real-time communications anywhere in the world. So when a beacon pops up in the southern ocean, we can hear about it five minutes later.” Messages from less advanced systems can lag several hours due to the isolated nature of their satellites and inability to relay messages in real time.

To provide the highest level of access, Xeos created XeosOnline™, a cloud-based portal used by customers to manage all the beacons they have out in the field. A web-hosted application, XeosOnline streamlines management of beacons, including Iridium, Argos and cellular. Through this ultra-convenient platform, clients have everything in one place, from data collection and analysis to configuration tools. Accessible through a computer or mobile phone, XeosOnline alerts customers when a beacon surfaces. When a beacon reaches the surface of the ocean, it immediately acquires a GPS fix, determines its location, then sends a message through the Iridium satellite network to XeosOnline. From there an alert is sent by email to the customer, informing them of what happened, where it is and where it is headed.

Ocean Supercluster
One of Xeos’s current projects is with Canada’s Ocean Supercluster.

A large federally-funded organization, Canada’s Ocean Supercluster includes over 275 industry and associate members focused on sustainable ocean growth. A unique endeavour, it is focused on growing the nation’s ocean economy “in a digital, sustainable, and inclusive way,” according to https://oceansupercluster.ca.

With the support if the Ocean Supercluster, Xeos has teamed up with a small group of local Ocean Tech companies to produce a brand-new set of optical water quality sensors for aquaculture and environmental monitoring. The new sensors will measure critical water quality parameters like turbidity, algal fluorescence and pH to help inform aquaculture operators about the health of the environment within which their fish are growing.

While much of the company’s work centres on beacons to help locate platforms and instruments and buoys, Xeos is seeing an increase in devices attached to robotic autonomous vehicles in oceans used for exploration or inspection.

“All of these autonomous vehicles need to know where they are and operators need to communicate with them, so that’s a good market for us as well,” says MacIntyre. Other more unusual uses include dropping beacons from helicopters onto ice flows, monitoring shipping containers around the world, and even tracking oil spills and surface currents.

From measuring wave heights in real time to serving the aquaculture industry, Xeos Technologies maintains its position at the front of the pack.

“We are very responsive to customer needs and as such do a lot of customization. We pride ourselves on being flexible and agile,” says MacIntyre. “We are not like a big organization that’s difficult to turn – the key advantage of being small is that we can change direction pretty quickly. This happens a lot in the science and marine technology markets because the applications are evolving constantly – you have to keep up,” he says.

“We enjoy collaborating with customers on new projects, and developing something they might need if it doesn’t exist,” he shares. “We like to position ourselves as partners in customer projects, not just vendors.”

The post Keeping in Touch from the Middle of the Ocean<p class="company">Xeos Technologies Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Every day, the world’s rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans take a beating.

From disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill of a decade ago – the biggest oil spill in the history of the industry, spewing over 200 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days – to billions of plastic bottles, bags, and bits of packaging clogging waterways, the planet is struggling. And far from just being an issue confined to developing nations, pollution aggressively impacts Canada and the United States, where cities from Montreal to Vancouver continue dumping millions of litres of untreated sewage directly into lakes and rivers.

Making pollution even worse are accidental waste spills like the one last July at Seattle’s West Point Treatment Plant. Backup pumps, instead of kicking in during a power outage, failed to work, resulting in about three million gallons of raw sewage flooding Puget Sound. Although the untreated waste flowed for only 30 minutes, the contamination was enough to close several beaches for days.

The unthinkable
As inconceivable as it seems, some large companies have been caught knowingly and wilfully polluting oceans. Back in 2016, Princess Cruise Lines agreed to pay a staggering $40 million penalty – “the largest-ever criminal penalty involving deliberate vessel pollution” according to the United States Department of Justice – for illegally dumping contaminated oil from its Caribbean Princess cruise ship.

The vessel, which visited ports in Florida, Puerto Rico and other places, used a so-called ‘magic pipe’ to illegally dump “oily waste off the coast of England.” Even more appalling was the revelation in court documents that the same cruise ship was making “illegal discharges” going back to 2005.

The damning 92-page Plea Agreement (United States of America v. Princess Cruise Lines, Ltd., Defendant) states reasons for the landmark penalty against the cruise line, ranging from knowingly discharging and disposing oily mixtures, “including oily bilge water and slops from bilges,” to making false entries in the Caribbean Princess’s Oil Record Book and failing to maintain discharge records.

Most appalling of all is that the ship’s Chief Engineer and Senior First Engineer knowingly made the discharge, involving several subordinate crew members in this before an unnamed whistleblower took photos and videos of the ‘magic’ bypass pipe used for illegal discharge.

When the decision was handed down, U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer stated that the $40-million penalty sent a strong message to all companies about the need to protect the environment, saying that “the U.S. government will continue to enforce a zero tolerance policy for deliberate ocean dumping that endangers the countless animals, marine life and humans who rely on clean water to survive.”

As just one example, the Caribbean Princess reinforced the urgency of the need to protect the world’s oceans. Water covers about 71 percent of the planet’s surface, and oceans are home to at least one million different living species. For everything from adult blue whales weighing up to 300,000 pounds (136,077 kg.) to microscopic phytoplankton providing food, maintaining the health of our oceans is vital to all life on earth.

Protecting the cradle of creation
Despite humankind depending on the world’s oceans as a valuable source of food and commerce for thousands of years, it wasn’t until shortly after the Second World War that the present-day version of marine conservation took hold. Recognizing the tremendous importance oceans hold for the entire chain of living things, the rise of marine protection coincided with new technologies, sparking an increase in resource-sector activities including underwater oil exploration and mining.

Awareness of the need to protect oceans grew throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies with explorers and filmmakers like Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his influential first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure. This was soon followed by other landmark books supporting conservation and protection, most notably Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring. While focusing primarily on the harmful effects of pesticides, Carson’s landmark book triggered a movement leading to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States in 1970.

Awareness of pollution and the need to protect biodiversity – particularly in designated hot spots – grew sharply in the 1970s and 1980s, and has continued to grow, along with the rise of marine conservation and management organizations, to this day.

Documentaries and books including 2014’s Marine Conservation: Science, Policy and Management, and the Handbook on Marine Environment Protection, published in 2018, have been influential.

Worldwide, many organizations are dedicated to protecting the world’s lakes and oceans, including the Nature Conservancy (one of the oldest, founded in 1951), Greenpeace, the Project AWARE Foundation, Oceana, the Ocean Conservancy, and the Environmental Defence Fund. Perhaps the largest and best-known of all is the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Operating in 100 countries and with some five million members, the WWF is extremely active in marine protected areas (MPAs). Encompassing not only oceans but Great Lakes, seas and estuaries, MPAs vary in size, and can include wildlife refuges, fully protected marine areas, parks, sanctuaries, and research facilities.

Restoring and replenishing
With so much contingent on the protection of these areas, it’s disappointing that a total area of less than four percent of our oceans is protected.

Defined by the WWF as “an area designated and effectively managed to protect marine ecosystems, processes, habitats, and species which can contribute to the restoration and replenishment of resources for social, economic, and cultural enrichment,” Marine Protected Areas are crucial to safeguarding marine and human life alike, since depleting stocks of fish means less food available in the ocean, and less for humans.

Operating in 14 priority areas globally – from the Gulf of California to the Galapagos, Coastal East Africa, the Southwest Pacific and other areas – the WWF and other organizations acknowledge the many benefits of protecting marine areas, from maintaining local economies and jobs for fishermen to allowing fish to spawn and grow to adulthood in safety.

Worldwide, not only environmental groups but also governments are working hard, ensuring the protection of marine conservation areas, prohibiting mining, oil, and gas companies from operation in select areas.

Old problem, new standards
In April 2019 Canada’s then-Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard (now Minister of Environment and Climate Change) Jonathan Wilkinson announced updates to the standards governing marine protected areas. Following the appointment of “an independent National Advisory Panel of experts to consult Canadians about marine protection acts” and cross-Canada consultations, the new standards governing ocean protection were created.

Addressing the need for safeguarding Canada’s oceans, the new recommendations include conservation areas like marine refuges, and high-level marine protected areas. Following recommendations of the National Advisory Panel on Marine Protected Area Standards, four industrial activities in these areas were prohibited: “oil and gas activities, mining, dumping, and bottom trawling.”

Widely covered in the media, the dramatic marine protection changes drew praise from the public, politicians, and environmental groups alike across the nation, including the WWF and Oceana Canada.

Founded in 2001, the Toronto-headquartered independent charity Oceana Canada is part of the international organization Oceana, dedicated entirely to the preservation and conservation of the oceans and everything that inhabits them. For Canada, the sweeping changes brought in to safeguard some of the nation’s 2.76 million square kilometres of ocean by deeming them MPAs – and so free from mining, and oil and gas recovery – was viewed as a major step towards the future well-being of Canada’s waters.

“Canada is an oceans country,” said Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change at the time. “We are the stewards of the longest coastline in the world. Protecting Canada’s nature and the health of our oceans benefits our communities, our ecosystems, and our wildlife.”

Assessment and urgency
One of the biggest initiatives towards protecting the planet in recent years is the World Ocean Assessment (WOA). Released in 2015, the first WOA was created under the UN Environment Programme. Reporting on the state of our oceans, the WOA involved over 600 scientists in the report, addressing 10 themes including the increasing inputs of harmful material; food security and food safety; and the cumulative effects of human activities on marine biodiversity.

Examining multiple areas, including environmental, social, and economic implications, the findings of the report are dire. “The findings indicate that the oceans’ carrying capacity (their ability to sustain human activities and their impacts) is near or at its limit and urgent action on a global scale is needed to protect what remains.”

Oceans are one of our biggest sources of biodiversity, and represent life itself. Without healthy oceans, the planet would cease to exist. But with increased environmental awareness, stricter laws and penalties for reckless dumping, and a growing sense of urgency, it is possible that we will see the health of oceans restored in our lifetimes.

The post Safeguarding Ocean Health<p class="company">Marine Conservation in a Resource-Based World</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Without ample and dependable supplies of water, the world’s resource sector would cease to exist. In America, mining-heavy states like California, Nevada, Utah and Texas withdraw 201 gallons to 1,140 million gallons of water, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

In Australia, mining remains a major industry driver, responsible for over half of the nation’s total export revenues. Contributing billions of dollars annually to the economy, it is estimated Australia’s mining sector – along with manufacturing and some other industries – consumes approximately 20 per cent of the country’s water. Despite efficiencies in place overseeing how water is used, cleaned, and reused, shortages have historically plagued parts of Australia.

Prone to severe droughts every 18 years, one of the longest-lasting was south-eastern Australia’s ‘Millennium’ drought, starting in 1996 and lasting to 2010, making water all that more important.

Water management
Playing a vital role in virtually every stage of the mining process, water is consumed in large amounts to cool drilling machinery, and used during mineral processing and many other activities. To ensure adequate supplies, water management – tracking how much enters and leaves mine sites – is a necessity.

Certain kinds of mining, like gold and copper, use greater quantities of water than others, such as diamond or platinum, and water scarcity remains an issue pretty well everywhere that mining exists. With much of the planet’s mining taking place in locations where conditions are arid, such as the northern region of Chile, monitoring water intake and output is a science of necessity.

Out of the need for conservation, safeguarding the environment, and corporate responsibility, the world’s mining sector has made great progress in how it uses, treats, recycles and discharges the water it uses daily. A decade ago, the International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) – representing 27 mining and metals businesses and almost 40 associations – created a water working group “to consider water issues that the sector faces and ways in which the industry can respond,” according to its report, Water management in mining: a selection of case studies.

Underlining the importance of responsible mining-company water management, the report discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry in locations including South Africa, Australia, Peru, Japan, Argentina, and the United States.

Since water at mine sites is connected to many pathways, water flowing to and from mines impacts much more than just the mine and immediate areas. Everything from groundwater to surface water must be considered, along with lakes, streams, local communities, businesses and agriculture. These areas can, and often are, impacted by mining activities, including the discharge of water.

While water can be trucked to site through commercial delivery companies, this amount is rarely enough to meet mining needs, necessitating water from other sources.

From initial exploration to mine design and planning, water supply and its concomitant sourcing, water storage tanks, and dams are crucial for operations to be successful. Water asset construction management is necessary at every stage, from mine construction and operation to closure. At the end of a mine’s life cycle, water is required for wastewater remediation and management, drainage treatment, and environmental-impact assessments and studies.

Waste not, want not
Worldwide, mining, and oil and gas extraction and exploration have been under fire for years regarding water consumption, disposal, runoff, and its occasionally disastrous impact on waterways, water tables, farms, animal habitats, and humans.

Fortunately, mining companies today are doing all they can to reduce the environmental impact of their sites. In the United States, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), created by the Clean Water Act (CWA) in 1972, exists to limit water pollution through the regulation of sources such as mining. Authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), permits are required prior to discharge into “navigable waters (waters used for commerce and travel),” and covers organic and inorganic pollutants including earth and rocks, pesticides, heavy metals, and others.

Along with restricting the discharge of pollutants, the Clean Water Act also “requires enforceable water quality standards to maintain overall water quality.” Penalties for violating NPDES permits are severe, ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 per day, three to 15 years behind bars and fines up to $250,000 along with prison time.

Proper water management requires a balance between using enough water to perform necessary functions like slurry transportation and mineral extraction, and ensuring waterways are protected from harmful waste products and the sulfidic minerals found in metallic ore deposits. When present in tailings dams, open pits and other mine site locations, these sulfides oxidize on exposure to air and oxygen-rich water, resulting in acidic water.

Resource sector leaders
Realizing that no water means no business, mining operations are stepping up and changing their stance from water management to water stewardship. Precisely monitoring their own water consumption and balancing how they use water and the impact on surrounding areas, their water stewardship addresses environmental, societal, and economic implications. According to the Scotland-based Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), this encompasses the attitudinal shift of “taking care of something that we do not own.”

Defining water stewardship as “the use of water that is socially and culturally equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial, achieved through a stakeholder-inclusive process that includes both site and catchment-based actions,” the AWS focuses on five outcomes: good water governance; sustainable water balance; good water quality status; important water-related areas; and safe water, sanitation and hygiene for all.

The future of water use
With so much mining taking place in drought-prone areas of the world, the need for better water management and water stewardship will only increase.

Adding to the complexity of water scarcity are a multitude of issues including public attitudes, pressure from stakeholders to do more with less and remain profitable, preservation of wildlife and watersheds, and the minimizing of mining’s impact on agricultural regions. To address these concerns, resource-based businesses will be under relentless pressure to implement water management procedures as they evolve.

More than just measuring water consumption and discharge, mine sites and other resource-sector businesses nowadays must balance how they access water, and how they implement reuse and recycling. They must comply with existing standards, and work with others to evaluate risks and benefits.

Some may think this onerous, but success stories abound, with mining companies of all sizes working diligently to not only reduce the amount of water they use, but also improving cleaning and re-use while lowering discharge.

One of the most dramatic successes involves major mining company Rio Tinto. At its famous Argyle Diamond Mine in Australia’s arid East Kimberley region, the company was able to reduce the water sourced from Lake Argyle from 3,500 megaliters to just 300 megaliters in only four years. To achieve this, Rio Tinto made investments and improvements, including capturing, storing, and recycling water used for processing.

In mining, oil and gas, and other resource-based industries, there will probably always be massive use of water. But with water scarcity increasing globally, new technologies will see water cleaned and re-used multiple times before it’s safely discharged back into rivers, lakes, streams and oceans.

The post Blue Gold<p class="company">Water Use in the Resource Sector</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Badinotti was founded in Italy in 1910 by a retired office worker named Giovanni Badinotti. Rather than settling into his retirement, he decided to turn his love of fishing into a second, late-life career and opened a store in Porta Vigentina, a small district in the heart of Milan, where he sold nets, floats, lines, and other fishing gear. When he was finally ready to retire, Giovanni hoped to pass the store to his son Carlo, but at first, Carlo showed little interest in fishing. Giovanni began to form a plan.

As an avid fisherman, he knew of a fishing store near the Duomo di Milan that was run by a young woman named Annunciata Colosio who had been born on the island of Montisola. Annunciata learned the traditional art of net making, a cultural staple of the island, early on. Net making and fishing were deeply important to her, and by introducing her to Carlo, Giovanni hoped to awaken a bit of that passion in his son.

His plan worked. Within a few short years, Carlo and Annunciata were married and took over the store in Porta Vigentina. Over its 110-year history, the company’s leadership has been in the hands of new generations of the Badinotti family, but the passion for net-making that Giovanni Badinotti found in Annunciata Colosio remains even now.

Today, more than a century after its inception, Badinotti is still owned by descendants of its founder. The company’s headquarters are located in Milan, Italy, but it has expanded into international markets with locations in the United States, Canada, Chile, Peru, and Slovakia. The Canadian branch of Badinotti employs 133 people divided across a main administrative office in Campbell River, British Columbia and two net maintenance service stations, called net lofts: one just north of Campbell River and the other in Port Hardy.

Those two net lofts are strategically located to support the aquaculture activities taking place from the Campbell River all the way up the coast of Vancouver Island. These operations use enormous nets that often stretch over one hundred metres and weighing many tonnes. Moving them can be difficult and expensive, so having service stations close to where those nets leave and re-enter the water makes the entire operation much more efficient.

Badinotti Services Canada provides a variety of services to its local customers which include providing new or replacement nets, as well as washing and repairing nets at its services stations, called net lofts, and the in-situ washing of nets on-site at the client’s location.

The vast majority of Badinotti’s Canadian employees are from Vancouver Island. “Most of our staff are islanders that have been in this industry for many years. We need people like that. These nets are huge, and being able to move them without damaging them is really an art form,” said Simon Proctor, general manager at Badinotti Net Services Canada.

Cleaning nets might sound like a simple process, but the reality is far more challenging. Specialized vehicles are necessary to move them; giant cranes are needed to lift them. Being able to manage and manipulate these nets to clean or repair them takes a great deal of skill and experience.

Badinotti recognizes the value of its workforce and has invested in it with opportunities for skills and equipment training. The leadership believes that the company’s strength really lies with its personnel first and foremost.

“A lot of our folks have learned these skills over many years. They’re proud of what they do. They’re proud that they’re Vancouver Islanders, and they’re really excited about what aquaculture can do for their communities,” said Proctor.

At the core of Badinotti’s business is manufacturing knotted and knotless nets. Beyond fishing, the company’s product sees uses that include safety nets for various industries and nets for sporting applications such as golf, soccer, and volleyball, and bowstrings for archery. One does not immediately think of archery when thinking about nets, but a core part of making nets is manufacturing a very strong fibre, and that fibre makes a very effective bowstring.

Recently, the opportunity arose for the company to acquire Brownell Archery, and the leadership realized that it would be an extremely good fit. Badinotti is in the process of applying its understanding of fibre manufacturing toward building high-quality bowstrings not only for hunting, but also for the competitive tournaments of one of the fastest-growing sports in North America. The company is excited to be exploring adjacent markets.

One of the most innovative aspects of what Badinotti is doing in North America is the in situ washing service it offers for clients in the aquaculture industry. In situ washing is a cutting-edge process that enables large nets to be washed without ever having to be moved. The company began offering this service just over four years ago, and it has been met with huge success.

The company’s cleaning specialists will take its fleet of state-of-the-art, super-stable catamaran-type vessels out to the nets. From the deck of the vessel, they can remotely pilot small submersible cleaning robots with onboard cameras. The robots are precise enough to move around inside the nets alongside the fish, and the crew are highly trained to operate the equipment without causing any harm or damage. The robots use spray jets to wash the netting with a specialized cleaning product called naphtha without ever physically touching the net itself.

The fact that the robots never come in contact with the nets is an important selling point for Badinotti. Typical cleaning methods make contact with the fibres of the netting which causes wear and tear over time.

“You can imagine that these nets, being so large, are also incredibly expensive. Our equipment never contacts the net, so that means the customer gets more life out of the net, which improves their competitiveness in the marketplace,” said Proctor. By taking a collection of advanced technologies and integrating them into a single, high-end solution, Badinotti has developed the most innovative net cleaning system in the marketplace.

Badinotti believes in the food security and environmental sustainability benefits of the aquaculture industry. One of the most significant challenges for aquaculture companies, and for Badinotti as an auxiliary part of that industry, is the public’s perception. According to Proctor, the general feeling among the public, particularly on the west coast, is that aquaculture has not really changed and that it continues to be a substantial burden on the environment.

In reality, the industry has made great strides to improve its environmental impact and to ensure that the fish are managed in the best possible way to minimize harm to them and to the ecosystem in which they live. “We’ve come a long way, but there’s still work to do. We need to engage with the public at every opportunity and really invite them to see the improvements that are being made. That will be our biggest challenge going forward, to change that perception,” says Proctor.

Badinotti has seen much of success recently, having grown from roughly fifty employees four years ago to 133 employees today. The company aims to continue that growth while maintaining the quality of the products and services it offers.

The willingness to invest, learn, and apply pioneering technology has enabled it to bring value to its customers. A key differentiator for the company has been its capacity to adopt the latest proven technology and incorporate it into its solutions.

Going forward, the company is excited about the growth of the aquaculture industry and anticipates potentially exploring opportunities on Canada’s east coast. “I was in Newfoundland last year listening to industry experts talk about the potential of the Maritimes for aquaculture. I think everything is in place for the industry to take that next step,” said Proctor.

The post Innovations in Net Maintenance<p class="company">Badinotti Group</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

The Richmond, British Columbia-based company started with an energy-efficient desalination technology that the chief executive officer had developed, and the industrial sector soon became the obvious direction for Saltworks because that is where it could make the biggest impact with its technology. In an industrial setting, water can be more technically challenging to treat as a result of potential contaminants and the tightening regulations of how companies must manage, treat, and dispose of wastewater. Saltworks has brought to market novel technologies that helps its customers navigate these issues using less energy and at a lower cost.

Working closely with a broad range of industrial customers over the years has enabled Saltworks to develop both expertise and an understanding of the many unique issues that those customers face. Its original desalination technology was a combination of electrochemical and thermal technology, but since then its offerings have expanded to include a range of products for diverse applications.

While sharpening its skill set and adapting to the market over the course of its twelve-year journey, Saltworks has produced a diverse portfolio of innovative water treatment technologies. “We now have multiple products that do different things, allowing us to deliver end-to-end solutions or unit processes for integration into a customer’s overall treatment infrastructure. All of our products incorporate intelligent automation, modular design, and advanced process engineering that provide treatment capabilities and lower total cost than conventional methods,” explained Joshua Zoshi, President of Saltworks Technologies.

Generally, industrial customers have two primary wastewater treatment needs. The first is to reduce the volume of the wastewater to lower disposal costs, and the second is to achieve regulatory compliance, which may also entail volume reduction or removing contaminants from the waste. A third, less common objective is retrieving any valuable material from the wastewater. In mining operations as an example, there might be minerals of value within the wastewater, and the customer will want to extract these. Saltworks is an expert in helping clients overcome these challenges, with approximately forty patents in different areas of the market to provide solutions for complex industrial wastewater.

Saltworks’ flagship products include BrineRefine, a smart chemical softening system, XtremeRO, an advanced reverse osmosis platform, and the SaltMaker, a modern evaporator-crystallizer.

BrineRefine is an intelligently automated chemical softening system. Its key advantage over conventional chemical softening is the ability to adapt to changing wastewater chemistry – a challenge in many industrial applications. It does this by measuring water chemistry and adjusting chemical dosing in real time. This reduces chemical usage, generates less waste sludge, and better protects downstream equipment from scaling. BrineRefine reduces cost and improves treatment reliability in any industry with scaling wastewaters.

XtremeRO is Saltworks’ innovative solution for reducing volume of saline wastewater, or brine. It is based on reverse osmosis, the most widely used desalination technology. However, unlike traditional reverse osmosis, it can concentrate brine to much higher levels and can treat waters with high levels of organics. XtremeRO is therefore ideal for volume reduction of oil and gas produced waters, landfill leachate, food processing wastewater, and other challenging sources.

The SaltMaker product line at Saltworks is made up of modern evaporator crystallizers that further reduce the volume of the wastewater using a novel humidification-dehumidification process. “The SaltMaker was designed from the ground up as a more reliable alternative to traditional evaporators and crystallizers. It will take virtually any wastewater and reduce its volume for much lower cost disposal. It can even squeeze all of the water out, reducing everything else down to a solid,” said Zoshi. The SaltMaker can use waste heat to reduce energy consumption. It also has advanced self-cleaning systems that prevent scaling, corrosion-proof non-metallic materials, and a highly modular design, all of which combine to provide leading reliability for challenging minimal liquid discharge (MLD) or zero liquid discharge (ZLD) applications.

The SaltMaker MultiEffect version of the technology uses a highly energy efficient process that recycles heat internally. This makes it ideal for MLD or ZLD applications with high energy costs, such as remote locations that must ship in diesel. Saltworks sold a treatment plant to a remote mine operating near the subarctic that required an extremely efficient solution.

“They are dewatering their mine, and because it’s so far north, they can’t put that water into a tailings pond. They have to treat it at the mine and then discharge the freshwater directly into the subarctic environment, so it was a very challenging application with really tough environmental regulations,” said Zoshi. Using Saltworks’ systems, customers with particularly problematic situations can operate sustainably and cleanly, and maintain compliance with environmental standards.

The SaltMaker AirBreather is a more recent variation of the SaltMaker MultiEffect. It is a higher capacity version that is well suited to treating waters with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

“Where the AirBreather really shines is that the water being evaporated never directly contacts the atmosphere, so VOCs are safely managed. This is an industry first,” explained Zoshi.

The company tagline at Saltworks is ‘Treating the Toughest Water.’ If a customer can use some type of conventional technology to treat their wastewater, then that is likely the most economic option. However, Saltworks is the answer in cases where customers have difficult-to-treat desalination and wastewater treatment scenarios or have exhausted the more typical alternatives and are not seeing the results they would like.

By focusing its effort on the toughest challenges, the company has built an expert team with unparalleled experience. Saltworks employs roughly seventy people who are dedicated and passionate about delivering solutions for industrial wastewater. The highly technical group is made up of scientists and engineers, and because the company’s entire operation is in-house, it also has a talented team of builders. From research and development to full-scale plant assembly, this is a collaborative effort.

“We all come to work looking forward to solving some of these really challenging problems that the world is facing. And having the opportunity to build some very innovative technology and get it out into the field and actually have it provide benefits to customers,” Zoshi expressed.

Over the years, Saltworks has received recognition from the Canadian Federal Government as well as the British Columbia and Alberta Provincial Governments through technology development grants. As a clean technology company that is focused on water and energy conservation, it is grateful to be located in a country with supportive environmental programs that encourage a real effort toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Going forward, the company hopes to expand into adjacent industrial sectors where it believes its systems can help. For example, because of the usefulness of natural gas as a transitional fuel source between oil and renewable energy, the company is anticipating growth in this industry.

Natural gas extraction releases highly saline water that was originally in the ground. This “produced water” can be reused for further extraction, but when activity slows in an area, the water must be disposed of. Produced water volumes are substantial, and since disposal costs are high in some regions, such as the Marcellus, there is an opportunity to reduce its volume via onsite treatment. Saltworks has the expertise to help those companies reduce their produced water volume and make it easier and more cost-effective to manage.

Saltworks is also advancing technology for the lithium mining sector. Lithium is typically transported to a remote facility to be refined after being extracted from the ground. Moving the raw material to the refining plant is an expensive step in the process. In partnership with another company, Saltworks can provide these operations with technology that enables them to refine the lithium at the mining site, significantly reducing their overhead and improving the profitability of the customer.

Another application is treating for polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Released In 2019, a film titled Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, told the story of a major scandal related to this class of chemical compounds that are extremely dangerous to human health, and are often found in landfill runoff. PFAS is in many household items from carpet to no-stick cookware and is a so-called ‘forever chemical’ because it tends to stay around.

Saltworks is anticipating upcoming regulations related to these compounds and expects that treating wastewater in this area will become a major opportunity to positively impact the health of affected people.

“We’re excited for the future. It almost seems like every month we come across a new inquiry from some industry somewhere in the world. It’s definitely a changing landscape, and we are committed to developing and delivering innovative and economic solutions that enable industries to successfully manage their wastewater.”

The post Delivering Solutions for Challenging Industrial Wastewater<p class="company">Saltworks Technologies</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.