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Jonathan Grant: Striking a Better Balance for Wastewater at SENTRY
A SENTRY system is installed at Kelso Lake.
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aving accurate and consistent data is vital for overcoming the challenges faced by wastewater treatment plants, but most monitoring techniques are either vulnerable to fouling or slow. SENTRY’s new bioelectrode sensor avoids both problems. The product improves the monitoring of microbial balance, toxic shock events, and other factors that impede effective wastewater management. In this interview, Jonathan Grant, SENTRY’s chief commercial officer, tells Municipal Water Leader how the product was developed, the benefits it provides customers, and the effect the technology is having on wastewater management around the world. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Jonathan Grant: I wound up with SENTRY because I’ve been consulting with and working with startups for the past decade. I’ve been with SENTRY for about a year and a half. My real strength is in helping companies take an interesting technical idea and turning it into a value-driven message that a layman can understand. I consulted for a number of innovative earlystage companies. Before that, I was with a startup artificial intelligence company that was acquired, and prior to that I was at a water technology accelerator called WaterTAP.
Jonathan Grant: All have been water related. At WaterTAP, it was my job to understand who was doing what in the Ontario water sector, and then help them grow globally.
22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | October 2021
I spent 4–5 years traveling the world, going to every conference, and helping those companies out. That’s how I met Patrick Kiely about 8–9 years ago. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about SENTRY. Jonathan Grant: SENTRY started off about 8 years ago as part of Patrick Kiely’s company Island Water Technologies, which he developed to create innovative water technologies. It’s based on his postdoctoral research into microbial fuel cells. The company has about 12 employees and is growing. We have about 80 clients. At this time last year, we had about 25, so it’s been quite a rapid growth. About half are municipalities; the other half are industrial users in the pulp/ paper, food and beverage, and petrochemical industries. In terms of municipalities, we’ve been installed everywhere from a town of 3,000 in Prince Edward Island called Montague all the way up to Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. We’re now on every continent. We’re installed at the Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo in Brazil; the Singapore Public Utilities Board; the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; and a number of utilities in the UK, including United Utilities and Wessex Water. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your product. Jonathan Grant: Rather than trying to generate energy from biology, Patrick flipped the concept on its head. What we do is apply a small voltage to a flat surface on which biofilm grows, and as carbon is consumed by the biology growing municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SENTRY.
Municipal Water Leader: Of your previous ventures, how many were water related?
The SENTRY probe.
