Water cleaning research heads to the farm

An entrepreneur based at Ara Polytech in Christchurch has secured funding to complete a second phase of testing a technology touted to be a game changer for cleaning up rivers and waterways.

] by Kent caddick

Ngarie Scartozzi, founder of eClean Envirotech has spent the past year in the Department of Applied Sciences and Social Practice lab developing her eClean Bioreactor which is being designed to remove nitrates, heavy metals, E. coli and other contaminants from urban waterway samples.

Her ground-breaking work is backed by Te Ohaka Centre for Growth and Innovation (a partnership between Ara, the Ministry of Awesome and Christchurch NZ) and HTK group which specialises in working with Maori and indigenous groups to build better futures.

Now she’s taking her refined systems into a rural setting, focusing on the bacteria in farm waterways which is a step closer to her dream of having a real impact on water quality in low-flow environments such as drainage channels, streams, and lakes.

“After a massive year of learning we’re taking the technology to the red-zone,” Scartozzi said.

“This is a chance to optimise all we have learned by taking our testing to areas with some of the highest nitrate levels in New Zealand and aiming to show we can reduce levels by up to 85 percent.”

Scartozzi said the site, based in the Ashburton-Hinds area, is dairy farming and cropping intensive.

“The government has given the region until 2035 to reduce nitrate levels by up to 30-percent before facing heavy restrictions on applying fertilizers, so everyone in that area is keen to solve the problem,” she said.

The half-million-dollar research trial made possible through the Ministry for Primary Industry’s Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund, as well as industry funding from Waiora Research Limited is once again drawing on the skills of Ara students and engineering teaching staff.

Scartozzi said the value of such expertise at her fingertips is hard to measure.

“When we have technical problems, we can use expertise of supervisors to troubleshoot which costs us little. In the ‘real world’ we’d have to bring in expensive consultants or specialists,” she says.

She’s been training new recruits to assist with the laboratory work and says, while it’s economical working with students, they also lift the energy of the project bringing their creativity and innovation.

Diploma of Civil Engineering student Jack King said he is enjoying the hands-on work.

“This has potential to be a game changer for the industry for dairying and farming but there are civil applications in water treatment too so it’s exciting and refreshing,” King said.

While Scartozzi is underway with phase two of her trial, she’s simultaneously working on patents and commercializing her technology in the hope she will be able to open a sales and marketing pipeline in the next 12 months.

“Ara-Te Pukenga has certainly helped connect the dots,” Scartozzi said.

“I’m in the lab with students and we’re conducting research to help me commercialise the product. But I’m also able to have my finger on the pulse of the business arena and being part of the start-up community is cool as it gives me heaps of connections,” she says.