Water world: The clean machines

The one thing that stands out when you talk to innovators in the business of reducing water usage is the underlying simplicity of their ideas.

Whether they are helping cut down the laundry bill, improving a building’s efficiency or just pottering around a garden with a hosepipe, Yorkshire’s water-reducing inventors are taking their eureka moments and turning them into commercial realities.

At the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, Xeros Technology is showing the world a new way of cleaning dirty laundry. The listed technology firm is an innovative spin-out from Leeds University.

It all began when Dr Stephen Burkinshaw at the university took a tupperware box, packed it with nylon polymer spheres and added a little water and a dirty cloth. He then put the box into a tumble-dryer.

“What he found when he took it out was that the cloth was clean and the water was dirty,” says Mark Nichols, chief executive of Xeros. “The beads had managed to attract some of the dirt.”

That’s how the idea for Xeros was born and today the AIM-listed company is looking to do good across the world with its innovation.

Speaking at the Xeros Technology Centre in Rotherham, where the firm employs 60 of its 125 staff, Mr Nichols says the company’s aim is to reduce the amount of water and energy that is used in commercial and domestic laundry.

Xeros’s other technologies in leather tanning and textile coloration, which use a similar principle, are also looking to help cut down water and energy use.

“We have a world-leading, highly sustainable, economically beneficial technology which we’re applying into three different areas,” Mr Nichols said.

The biggest challenge for Xeros has been getting a conservative industry to adopt its technology, but the business says it is making significant progress.

“My greatest challenge has been to get the end customers, the commercial laundries, to take on our technology but we’re getting some very significant penetration,” says Mr Nichols.

Earlier this year, Xeros announced that the Hilton Hotel Group had approved the technology for all its hotels in North America.

Mr Nichols added: “The other thing that we’re doing is our machines are very smart so they’re internet-enabled and they have a lot of telemetry and measurement systems within them.

“What that means is you’re now getting real-time data passed back to ourselves, but also that information is really helpful to the likes of hotels.

“We can help them become more efficient in how they run their laundries. We’re providing them with information in terms of sustainability improvements they’re making using our technology.”

While entering an entrenched market has been a challenge, Xeros is also making progress on the domestic laundry front.

The company is developing ways of adapting existing washing machines so that its technology can be used in everyday machines.

“You could buy a Samsung machine costing £1,200 or a Beko machine costing £170, but whatever the cost of the machine it could be adapted to Xeros’ polymer technology,” says Mr Nichols.

But it’s not just washing machines where the region is leading the way with water-saving innovation.

Many people wouldn’t think twice about the water that gushes through their toilet cistern every time they flush.

However, Graham Kelly and David Davis, directors at Leeds-based building services company G&H, spotted an opportunity to save water every time someone flushes the toilet.

The duo recently developed Encore, an environmentally-friendly cistern which uses the condensate from air-conditioning systems.

Condensate that would ordinarily have gone down the wastepipe is diverted and used to flush the toilet, thereby cutting down on water usage. This invention, just like Xeros’s, is based on simplicity.

Mr Davis says: “We looked at lots of different ideas that involved electronics and fancy plumbing. We worked out that we wanted to make it as foolproof as possible.

“We wanted to make it so that anybody could pick it up from the shelf put it into a wall and make it work pretty easily.”

The device doesn’t use any electrics or pumps, meaning that energy isn’t used needlessly.

Encore believes that the system adds two BREEAM (which measures the sustainability of buildings) points to buildings in a quick and cost-effective way.

The business is targeting hotel chains, where air-conditioning units are a prevalent feature, and has already had interest from major players in the industry.

Export to hot countries is also on the agenda at Encore.

Both Xeros and Encore have proven that universities and building sites can provide the base for efficiency.

Yet Wes Sugden-Brook came up with his water-saving innovation while out gardening with his family.

The mechanical engineer and his family had just finished tending to their North Yorkshire garden when it was time for them to wash their hands. He picked up a hosepipe, turned it to the mist setting and as the dirt disappeared he had his eureka moment.

“It cleaned our hands really effectively,” says Mr Sugden-Brook. “Something clicked in my head about surface area and physics.”

Using this as inspiration, while his children slept that night, he disappeared into the garden shed to develop his idea.

Eventually this flash of inspiration gave birth to the Drenched Volumiser – a simple device which fits on to a tap, transforming water into an ultra-fine molecular mist which warms on contact with air and skin, allowing people to wash their hands using just three tablespoons of water.

One of the key underlying themes to all of these innovations is the environment. This is a point that is certainly central in Mr Nichols’ thoughts.

In order to stop its spheres from getting into the waterways, Xeros has developed an effective filtration system.

“We found that our filtration not only stops the spheres going into the outflow but it also traps and collects lint,” says Mr Nichols.

“We were at the United Nations and we made commitments at The Ocean Conference to provide to the world our filtration technologies, which we’re developing further to help stop the release of microparticles into the oceans.

“Simply because our machines have filtrations already, we can enhance it a little bit more and simplify it a bit so that it can stop a major source of plastic pollution coming from synthetic fleeces. We’ve made a commitment to the United Nations to provide that on an open-source basis to anybody.”

The world’s population is set to increase by 1.2 billion between now and 2030, says Mr Nichols.

He adds: “There’s six and a half billion now and the expectations, rightly so, of that increasing population is they will have the things that we’ve had.

“They’ll have the expectation that the clothes they will wear will be clean so therefore the demand for washing machines will grow rapidly. But the world can’t afford the chemistry and water now, let alone with another 1.2 billion. It can’t afford the effluent.”

By 2050 the population is set to grow by another 1.2 billion, Mr Nichols says.

“My little girl, who is four now, will be 17 by 2030. She’ll be 37 in 2050.

“Quite honestly with 2.4 billion people in the next 33 years if we do not bring these innovations to our planet then it’s going to be a very, very difficult place.”

Herein lies one of the motivational factors for the Xeros boss.

“I do it because it’s quite exciting. If you were to ask all my people here why they do it they will say it’s really exciting stuff but we’re doing a good thing too.”