GE and partners bet on Israeli wastewater-to-energy firm

An Israeli company that uses microbial fuel cells to turn wastewater into an energy source has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Energy Technology Ventures, a joint venture of GE, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips.

The investment in Emefcy Ltd. is the venture’s first to go to a non-US-based company. It’s also the first related to water.

Unlike other systems that use aerobic processes or anaerobic digestion to produce methane (natural gas) from the decomposition of organic material in wastewater, Emefcy’s technology uses the principle of a fuel cell to generate electricity directly from the water. Its “electrogenic bioreactor” features an anaerobic anode chamber connected to a cathode chamber by an ion exchange membrane, and produces electricity as organic matter in wastewater decays and drives a current through the fuel cell.

In addition to generating electricity, the technology also produces treated water as a by-product. The result, according to Emefy, transforms wastewater treatment “from an energy-intensive, cost-intensive and carbon-intensive process, into an energy-generating and carbon-reducing process.”

Emefcy expects to apply its process initially for wastewater treatment in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. That market alone is potentially worth $10 billion a year, according to the company.

“We will use Energy Technology Ventures’ investment to continue development of our technology into full-scale commercial implementation by the end of this year for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment,” said Eytan Levy, CEO of Emefcy.

GE, an Energy Technology Ventures partner that’s active in wastewater treatment, has been expanding its technology focus on Israel, which is sometimes called the “Silicon Valley of water technology.”