If you love your celery and leek, there’s a good chance that your produce will be treated with even cleaner water than before thanks to new nanofiltration technology supplied by Clean TeQ Water (ASX: CNQ) to Schreurs & Sons, one of Australia’s largest and most prominent celery and leek growers. 

The deal comes in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between wholly-owned Clean TeQ subsidiary NematiQ, and Schreurs which will install Graphene Membrane Nanofiltration technology to treat and recycle process and surface water for use in their manufacturing and packaging facility in Clyde, Victoria. 

The filtration technology employs graphene oxide to filter bacteria, viruses, and micro-organics. Differing to other filtration systems, the Graphene Membrane can achieve very high flux rates at low pressure. This in turn provides energy savings and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for Schreurs compared to traditional filtration systems. 

“After eight years of internal development, it is satisfying to see real interest from Australian companies in recognizing the benefits that the NematiQ Graphene Membrane technology can bring to their operations,” said Clean TeQ Water CEO, Willem Vriesendorp. 

“The market for the technology is very large and commercial pilots are a key milestone for technology commercialisation.” 

The MOU was signed after preliminary testing was conducted at the Schreurs facility where feed water was taken from the on-site dam, and filtered to produce feed water amd rejected wastewater. 

The resulting feed water showed substantial improvement across all water quality parameters, appearing crystal clear while remaining wastewater appeared dirtier than the initial feed sample.

A larger scale pilot trial will now take place which is expected to be completed before the end of CY 2022. 

Chris Schreurs, Schreurs & Sons Director, commented “We are committed to reducing our energy and water footprint to be a leader of sustainable production in the food sector. The results from the NematiQ filtrations of our wash waters are very exciting.” 

As the MOU progresses, each party will bear its own costs and expenses while third party testing will be split equally between the two. 

In FY22, Clean TeQ Water released its first Annual Report since demerging from Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX:SRL) in July 2021 to create a stand‑alone water technology company. The Company reported $11.4 million in revenue and a net loss after tax of $11m with $5.5m cash on hand as of 30 June 2022.