MIT Water Innovation Prize
Power plant condensers, rain water collection, kelp, and more!
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Happy Tuesday!
Last night I attended the annual MIT Water Innovation Prize. It was a great event, and I want to give a huge shoutout to the student organizing team for bringing together so many people around this important topic.
The MIT Water Innovation Prize is a startup competition focused on water innovation and awards up to $50K annually to student-led teams from across the country and internationally. The Prize started in 2015 and has since awarded $225K across 21 winning teams!
Starting with the winners and in no particular order following, below are the finalists from this year’s MIT Water Innovation Prize.
Mesophase
Coming in first place and winning the $20k grand prize was Mesophase! Mesophase has been on an amazing run this spring across competitions in the MIT ecosystem. They won third place in the MIT 100K Accelerate Finals, and won audience choice at the MIT Climate & Energy Prize. I’ve watched this pitch three times now and each time I am impressed by something new. It was great to see this exciting team take first place this time in the Water Innovation Prize pitch competition.
Mesophase is building technology to more efficiently meet growing energy needs. Over 1 billion people live without electricity, and global energy demand is expected to increase by half over next 30 years.
Mesophase is commercializing a highly efficient surface design for power plant condensers. Their technology uses nanotech and scalable materials to enhance condensation by over 700% compared to traditional condensers. This improvement unlocks over 80 GW power capacity from existing power plants, eliminating the need for ~100 fossil plants and reducing CO2 emission by 0.5 GT/year globally.
Mesophase is targeting geothermal power as their beachhead market due to the strong need for efficiency in this category and a a 13% YoY growth in geothermal power. For GTM, Mesophase plans to partner with existing condenser producers and leverage their sales channels to achieve scale. Geothermal power alone represents an $800M market, and Mesophase is on a mission to bring enhanced condenser technology to every power plant.
LivingWaters Systems
In second place, taking home $15k, was LivingWaters Systems! LivingWaters Systems has built the first portable rainwater collection system for off-grid families. Their solution provides portable, low-cost rainwater harvesting systems to ensure displaced and other off-grid families have access to freshwater. These systems allow refugee families to capture and filter rainwater from the roofs of tents and other existing shelters, allowing access to potable water at their doorstep.
Rainwater is naturally clean, but the LivingWaters Systems solution includes basic screening filtration process as well. A mesh guard sits on top of the gutter to block leaves, sticks and other larger detritus, after which the water then encounters a two stage filter at the entrance to a collapsible storage container.
NGOs and other organizations have tried to provide relief for those lacking clean water, but these organizations are still in need of an inexpensive and sustainable solution. Today, existing systems can come with installation costs of up to $9,250. LivingWaters Systems meanwhile offers a low cost, $60 solution that saves money for NGOs. What’s more, the entire solution fits inside a standard student backpack and can be used on any pitched housing structure.
LivingWaters Systems recently completed a pilot in India, and has a paid pilot with the World Food Program slated for this fall. I’m excited to see the impact this company makes in the coming months! (livingwaterssystems.org)
Algeon Materials
Taking home both third place ($10k) and audience choice award ($5k) was Algeon Materials! Algeon Materials is a biotech materials company on a mission to fight climate change and reduce plastic pollution. They are creating sustainable and environmentally friendly bioplastics for leading consumer brands, using kelp!
The average useful life of plastic bag is 15 mins, but takes five hundred years to break down in the environment. Algeon Materials is on a mission to heal the earth and fight climate change by creating sustainable plastic alternative materials and packaging from macroalgae. They are creating biodegradable and sustainable bioplastic from kelp, a highly sustainable material. This is because Kelp requires almost zero inputs to grow - no fresh water, no land, and no fertilizer.
While competitors in this space are focused on flexible plastics such as plastic bags, Algeon is focused on harder plastics made by manufacturers and used by consumer brands. Algeon materials is targeting injection molding manufacturing, and plans to sell initially to smaller brands with custom packaging. Eventually, they plan to sell direct to manufacturers. These plastics only cost slightly more to more create, but this increase represents a small fraction of the customer purchase price of these goods. (algeonmaterials.com)
Flowless
Flowless is supporting farmers and utility companies in enhancing water efficiency. Their system utilizes IoT and AI technologies to optimize operations and automate processes in the water network.
The Flowless system helps solve for pipe leaks and other issues faced by farmers and utility companies. Their system collects real-time data from the field, then analyzes it and provides robust tools for automated leak detection and process optimization, ultimately contributing to cutting water losses and enhancing water supply. The data they collect is organized by Flowless software which analyzes the data and provides dashboards, graphs, and heat maps.
Flowless has had some amazing traction already. They’ve earned over $60k in revenue, have served 23,000 people and realized 200k m3in water savings. They currently have thirteen team members, and are looking to expand internationally. (flowless.co)
HydroIQ Africa
HydroIQ is on a mission to create a gateway to modern water access, utility and distribution of water for emerging markets. Their solution is a virtual water network that gives consumers and utilities a single, transparent platform to manage their water consumption and management.
In Africa, 50% of water supplied is lost before reaching consumers. What’s more, over 45% of revenue is lost as a result of unmetered and unbilled consumption. Household spend on water in Africa is also quite unique — according to the team, approximately 11% of African household income is spent on water, versus 3% in the US.
HydroIQ helps homes, utilities, businesses and industries use, manage, report, bill and pay for water efficiently. They see themselves as a water intelligence platform, and are the first virtual water network operator. They have some amazing traction too, including over 100M liters of water managed and 8,700 residential customers. They are also in the process of partnering with banks to create the first buy-now-pay-later option for utilities. (hydroiq.africa)
Watabot
Watabot is solving the problem of harmful algae using robotics.
The health of our reservoirs, lakes, rivers, and oceans has been jeopardized, and Watabot wants to help. As a robotics and biosensor startup, Watabot provides autonomous, AI-powered solutions for real time harmful algae (HABs) monitoring and prediction.
I hope you enjoyed reading about each of these startups! If you want more of these recaps directly to your inbox, subscribe below. In addition to some more exciting pitch competitions in the coming weeks, I’ll also be publishing some of my first startup deep dives. Stay tuned!
Thanks for writing it up!