Mrüna - Resilient Nature-Based Sanitation Infrastructure

Globally, less than 10% of collected wastewater receives treatment. Lebanon, Like many less developed countries, is faced with dwindling and increasingly polluted water resources.

Our objective is to achieve both a technology and business model innovation in order to revolutionize sanitation utilities in the same way solar and smart-grids have revolutionized energy utilities, and to circumvent the technical and bureaucratic challenges associated the Centralized Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP).

A centralized WWTP allows utilities to consolidate management, but are a prohibitively expensive and inefficient proposition for informally planned cities that would benefit from water reuse in agriculture. 

Our solution is a decentralized network of nature-based WWTP that are remotely monitored by a IoT devices and require minimal operational maintenance. It offers an opportunity for swift sanitation improvements and water reuse in agriculture for millions of people in high-priority areas.

Despite significant investments in wastewater treatment infrastructure, levels of treatment in rapidly urbanizing, low-income urban areas are not keeping pace with population growth. Globally, less than 10% of collected wastewater receives any form of treatment. 

Agriculture is the largest water user in most countries, representing 70% of total global water withdrawals, and as upstream regions have urbanized, surface water sources have become dominated by sewage. In Lebanon, the country’s longest river, the Litany, is no longer safe for irrigation. 

However, donors and governments continue to invest millions of dollars in the traditional Centralized WWTP approach despite their drawbacks, including: 

• Complex collection and treatment system that requires a large capital investment in infrastructure, land acquisition, and operation and maintenance costs. 
• Risk of Failure due to the concentration of large flows and potentially far-reaching consequences. 
• Limited Reuse for agriculture as wastewater treated by gravity in a centralized location is too expensive  transport to where it’s needed. 
• Sludge Management – In Lebanon, centralized WWTP are unable to dispose of excess sludge due to limited space and landfills. 
• Network Collection Cost typically constitute 80% of the total cost. Also, all sanitation networks crack and shift over time, and require significant maintenance. 

The Litani River and its health directly impacts Lebanese residents living near the river or buying produce irrigated by its water. The largest river in Lebanon, it occupies 20 percent of Lebanon’s land area and winds through the country’s breadbasket – the Bekaa Valley. 

In April 2018, the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute (LARI) officially asked all farmers not to use water from the Litani because pollution levels were off the charts. 

Mrüna has installed its first Treewell Pilot system at the main LARI Campus. LARI is a governmental organization which conducts applied scientific research for the advancement of the agricultural sector.

The LARI Campus sanitation network was built during the Vichy Occupation in the 1940s and is representative of the overall challenge thorough out the country. Its connected to an adjacent military airforce base and a nearby town, and dumps raw sewage directly into the Litany River. It’s too damaged and bureaucratically complicated to repair.

Mrüna has provided LARI a demonstration system and is working to coordinate support and to develop a decentralized sanitation masterplan for the community. LARI will review and report on the overall performance of the system and its potential integration into a national sanitation strategy for Lebanon. 

TREEWELL - NATURE-BASED WWT

The main technology innovation rests in the TreeWell wastewater treatment system, a compact and low maintenance system which exploits aquatic food-webs to treat wastewater without sludge. Essentially, the remains of yesterday’s dinner are converted into reeds or fly off as dragonflies leaving behind a living water that tastes like mint tea.

TreeWell consists of two stages of microbial degradation (anaerobic and aerobic). It is a dynamic biological system imitating: biological processes, and hydrology of natural aquatic ecosystems like lakes and wetlands. Biological processes are identical with natural microbial food-webs consisting of bacteria, fungi, protozoans and insects. The system is totally sludge-free and does not produce odors. 

1. Stage one: Anaerobic  Wastewater enters anaerobic tank (1) where microbial fermentation processes are enhanced by fixed-bed biofilm carriers. This tank is inoculated with a specially blended microbial consortium. In addition to natural soil microbes it will include innovative microbial technology.     
2. Stage two: Aerobic  Wastewater purified in tank 1 enters highly aerobic conditions of tank 2 which is open to atmosphere. Selected local aquatic plants and microorganisms living in their root-zone (rhizosphere) ensure final polishing of the water. The plants are rooted in a special expanded tubular netting from Denmark. The final stage of treatment results in naturally purified living water. 

Centralized Management Via IoT Sensors

The project will wed waste water treatment technology with cloud based internet technology to produce an affordable and almost zero maintenance decentralized wastewater network that can be remotely managed. The result will be a decentralized distribution of wastewater treatment systems that is consolidated under a remote monitoring system that will allow municipalities, SME’s, and property managers to more effectively monitor the natural process exploited by the TreeWell system.

The combination of the sensors developed by Digigrow and the application developed by Backbone technologies will allow us to continually adapt our business model to suit the needs of communities within the confines of their unique environmental, regulatory, and commercial landscape. For example, a cluster of systems can be handed over and centrally managed by the Municipality itself or perhaps the Municipality can enter a Public Private Partnership with an SME.

Key benefits are:

• Minimize sewer network cost. 
• Simple and low cost treatment. 
• Maximize reuse of water. 
•  Avoid land appropriation. 
•  Eliminate risk of total system failure. 
•  Offer opportunities for SMEs.

The objective of our project is to achieve both a technology innovation, and a business model innovation in wastewater treatment. Our long term vision is to decentralize wastewater treatment just as photovoltaic panels and smart grids have decentralized power generation.

The project consists of: (1) technology innovation and, (2) business model Innovation. The latter requires a series of Internet-enabled sensors, and a web application to manage them. Together they will allow for more effective reuse and distribution of treated water among customers.

The business model innovation is a pay-per-use system to overcome sticker shock of centralized WWTP. It requires Internet-enabled water-metering that allows remote management of these physically decentralized WWTPs. A utility can then centrally manage these systems and bill real-estate developers, households, or municipalities against wastewater treatment usage - rather than capital expense. Think Solar City for wastewater treatment. 

It will allow municipalities the possibility to circumvent unwieldy  centralized WWTP projects with localized and decentralized WWTP via a formidable alliance among microbiology, IoT, and SMEs'.

Our solution consists of the following three components. Together they allow for more effective reuse and redistribution of wastewater.

1.  TreeWell: A modular plant-microbial system that combines inventive hydraulics with biological processes that occur in undisturbed aquatic ecosystems between plants, microbes and insects. TreeWell’s foundation is built on the principles of biomimicry and that there is no waste in nature.
   Treewell consists of two containers, which first digests wastewater anaerobically, and then aerobically. The anaerobic container contains fixed-bed media which digest the solids. The aerobic container holds aquatic reeds and is aerated by a simple low voltage pump which aids plant and microbial digestion of waste. The end product is living water suitable for irrigation. Essentially, the remains of yesterday’s dinner are converted into reeds or fly off as dragonflies.
2. Sensors: Will allow us to remotely monitor via a web application the following: volumes of water, TDS, water temperature, and electrical power consumption.
3. Web Application: Will store data transmitted from the sensors and allow clients to monitor their wastewater treatment services.  Additionally, it will set the stage to connect a network of customers, and service providers who have adopted the above set of technologies, to locally and collectively manage water surplus among each other depending on demand.

Promoting the development of decentralized wastewater treatment via TreeWell’s nature-based system would result in small-scale facilities equally dispersed throughout a city. This approach would allow for independent, self-maintained, and self-sustained facilities that are capable of recovering and sharing wastewater more effectively.

In addition, the sensor information for volume metering, temperature and turbidity will allow the team to develop safety measures to estimate the quality of the wastewater treated, identify abnormal conditions, and to immediately alert the client and project team remotely.

The result of our project will be a distribution and communication technology that will allow us to more effectively harness the natural process exploited by the TreeWell system. These will also support a business model innovation which we intend to further define using the grant money awarded.

Just as renewable energy providers have evolved from solar panel vendors to energy service providers, the project will allow us to potentially evolve from an onsite WWT vendor, to water service provider.

A bite-sized decentralized approach to WWT, powered by the private sector, will allow stakeholders to circumvent the formidable technical, commercial, and bureaucratic barriers associated with centralized WWTPs.

Mruna has installed three systems. One is in Abu Dhabi, at a construction site on an island. The other two systems are in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley; one at a government campus and the other at the most famous winery in the Middle East. 

The TreeWell system impacts people’s lives in two ways. The first way is direct, for the people owning the TreeWell system and who use the treated wastewater. Mruna’s Treewells do this:

1. Currently, for approximately 1,500 people between Abu Dhabi and Lebanon. 

2. In one year, after installing an additional 5-10 systems, for an additional 500 people. 

3. In 5 years, after installing at rate of 10 systems a month, will impact over 100,000 people. 

However, the second way the TreeWell system impacts people’s lives is indirect, and dramatically more impactful. This has to do with the nature of untreated wastewater itself and how it spreads infectious diseases. The TreeWell systems will impact large swaths of a community’s population by eliminating the dangers of untreated wastewater in communities that cannot afford traditional, centralized WWTPs. Locally, untreated wastewater spreads infectious diseases through direct contact. Regionally, crops irrigated with untreated wastewater can spread diseases to many more people miles away. The TreeWell systems will thus benefit many more people than just those using them.

Securing clean water resources can create the conditions income-generation opportunities based on IT-supported shortening food chains solutions that connect producers and consumers and that bring social, environment, economic benefits for whole communities

A full 1% of the global gross domestic product is invested on urban water management (UWM) infrastructure. With an estimated return on investment of $5.5 per US dollar invested, UWM is a major asset of the built environment and enormously benefits human and environmental health. 

Within the next year we want to establish an alternative sanitation masterplan for a community of approximately one thousand residents. This project will likely be donor funded, and will serve as a proof-of-concept to engineering consultants, regulatory authorities, international donors, and community stakeholders. 

In the next five years our goal is to develop economies of scale for a mature nature-based solution, equipped with remote sensing technologies, and supported by a range of financing instruments or public private partnerships. Our solution will offer a legitimate alternative to the centralized wastewater treatment path dependency that others can emulate throughout the world.

Traditionally, urban water management (UWM) consists of centralized wastewater treatment plants and network infrastructure; and it is dominated by civil engineering expertise. This approach has led to entrenched technological path-dependencies and resistance to more innovative approaches. Consequently, UWM suffers from an overreliance on centralized infrastructures and hostility to more sustainable alternatives. This is analogous to the energy sector’s troubles from overreliance on centralization and the consequent carbon lock-in. 

Currently, challenges to the TreeWell system are the following:

• Manufacturing - polypropylene CNC welding requires advanced machinery which is not available in all regions. 

• Excessive Personnel Costs - required to manage many decentralized systems dispersed over many countries. 

• High Unit Cost - is greater than potential alternatives. 

• Technological path-dependencies - sectoral resistance to innovation. 

• Long Payback Periods - small business and households are discouraged by sticker-shock of large capital expense. 

• Transportation Costs - large volume hollow tanks are expensive to ship.

• Import Duties -  High duties for materials shipped from Europe to Middle East. 

• Uncertain Market Potential - Difficult to attract potential investors and manufacturers to establish the necessary economies of scale. 

In the next one year our key barrier is achieving regulatory approval to install the system in new markets and to establish demonstration systems. 

In the next 5 years our key barrier is to develop economies of scale and a mature product which is considered as a viable alternative to the technological path dependencies based on centralized systems.

• Manufacturing - we have approached a manufacturer in Dubai which is well situated to supply systems to North Africa and the Middle East.  

• Excessive Personnel Costs - will be avoided by exploiting the availability of low cost automation and Internet-enabled devices for monitoring. 

• Technological path-dependencies - establish demonstration project support by 3rd-party lifecycle costing studies and testing data that will convince decision makers to adopt innovations. 

• Long Payback Period  - offer a range of financing products for prospective TW users, especially vulnerable and/or low income populations. Cooperate with a consultant (Deloitte) to establish Public Private Partnership model with municipalities to develop sustainable infrastructure. 

• Transportation Costs - develop a new (Ikea style) model which we can be assembled onsite. Ship greater number of units per container. 

• Import Duties -  manufacture in Dubai and ship duty-free to all Arab countries. 

• Uncertain Market Potential - Perform a heuristic algorithm for sewer network generation known as Sustainable Network Infrastructure Planning (SNIP) to estimate the optimal degree of decentralization, and to geographically identify and assess market potential. 

Unit Cost - establish economies of scale to reduce the price of each unit. Consider development and manufacture of proprietary, fixed-bed media as it represents a significant portion of the manufacturing cost.

Mruna DWC-LLC is registered company in Dubai which is licensed to trade in environmental products and to offer environmental and sustainability consulting services in the UAE. 

Mruna SARL (LLC) is registered in Beirut and is licensed to register and service wastewater treatment services in the Middle East. 

Carex of Sweden registered in Beirut the owner and inventor of the TreeWell wastewater treatment system. Mruna is a minority shareholder in CarexofSweden. 

Mruna is registered LLC in Dubai and Beirut. Mruna is also a minority shareholder in Carex of Sweden which is the supplier of the core technology.  

• Full time 

  • Ziad Hussami - Urban Planner and Sustainability Consulting

  • Stanislaw Lazarek - Limnologist and Inventor of TreeWell 

  • Nadim Hussami - Networking Tools

  • Farheen Khanum - GIS Spatial Analysis

• Contractor 

  • Romeo Khoury - Infrastructure Engineer Contractor and public sector liaison 

Developing the technology will be a relatively simple process. The key to widespread success will be interfacing with a wide variety of stakeholders involved in the urban development process, and the ability to identify the unique environmental, economic, and regulatory landscape of each market. 

Mrüna brings an appreciation of the multidisciplinary nature of the urban design and planning process, and brings international experience in planning, GIS, and sustainable construction and wastewater treatment within the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.   

Our team members have held a variety of roles, in both the private and public sector, and offer a holistic understanding of the wide spectrum of stakeholders and professionals involved in the urban development process.  

• Wastewater Treatment 

• Sustainability Built Environment: Our team has sustainable design and construction of buildings and infrastructure across multiple rating systems within the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.    

• Urban and Environmental Planning: assessing capital improvement projects, conducting environmental and site surveys, and developing planning documents.     

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS): citywide system implementation, data collection, and spatial analysis.

Atomes Bio (SAL) - develop effective bacteria. Cooperating on solution for Lebanon's largest winery, Chateau Ksara. 

Carex of Sweden AB (Lund) supplier of the TreeWell wastewater treatment system. Mruna is a minority shareholder in Carex of Sweden. 

Associated Consulting Engineers (Beirut) is a multinational engineering company specialized in infrastructure, utilities and plants. Technical support for decentralized infrastructure design.

Witness As Ministry 501(c)3 (Fort Worth) non-profit which operates in Lebanon and Syria to support refugees and ethnic minorities. Seeking sanitation project donor funding. 

Digigrow (Athens) - development, prototyping, production and installation of a remote monitoring system. 

Backbone Technologies (Athens) -  full Service Web Development and Design agency which can develop a fully integrated web solution that interfaces with the remote monitoring system.  

Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute (LARI) hosting and operating the TreeWell system on their campus and showcasing decentralized strategy to stakeholders. 

Deloitte. (Montreal) - Developed an internal presentation for Deloitte. management for Public Private Partnerships opportunities from decentralized wastewater strategy. 

ADW Consultants (London) - life cycle costing expert which developed a comparative study for onsite WWT for a development on Masdar Campus.  

Our proposal is to upgrade the TreeWell WWTP with the necessary technology to support a business model innovation that will put it within reach of a much wider client base. Just as renewable energy providers have evolved from solar panel vendors to energy service providers, the project will allow us to potentially evolve from an onsite WWT vendor, to  water service provider.

Rather than sell the system at a steep upfront capital cost, which is prohibitively expensive to most potential customers, the objective of our project is to bill clients against waste water treatment as a service provider (€/m3). 

The objective is to establish a showcase for our business model within the heart of key market segments as an alternative to the existing technological path dependencies established over the last several decades. Our long term vision is to decentralize waste water treatment, just as solar photovoltaics (PV) and smart grids have decentralized power generation, and to exploit technology and financing innovations which will disrupt the wastewater treatment industry.

The result of our project will be a distribution and communication technology that will allow us to more effectively harness the natural process exploited by the TreeWell system. For example, we will enter a standard lease agreement with municipalities in the form of water purchase agreement (WPA). We will build and operate the onsite wastewater treatment system, and the customer will then make a fixed €/m3 payment that will be cheaper than their previous utility bill, which translates into value.

The residential solar industry serves as a model to our market strategy, which has quickly become a consumer credit and lending business, focused on customer acquisition. 

The leading solar companies do more than install the panels, too. They have become providers of “solar-as-a-service”: they sell, install, finance, and maintain the solar system for customers. The model also recognizes their customer’s true need, their clients are not in the market for solar panels, and instead, they are in the market for cheap energy. 

From our experience, it is evident the same can be said about our potential clients. They are not in the market for waste water treatment; they are in the market for clean water. As such, we must re-imagine ourselves not as a wastewater supply company but as a water service provider and as a global Sustainable Network Infrastructure Planning consulting service. 

Customers will still pay monthly water bills to their local utility, but will do so at a lower rate than without the system. This represents the primary value proposition of our business model. Furthermore, we will meter customers according to volumetric tariffs (€/m3), meaning that customers (households, business, or municipalities) can become both users (i.e., demand) and generator, trade surpluses.

Overcome a Rigid Industry - wastewater infrastructure stakeholders are generally a conservative lot. Convincing regulators, international donors, and the multinational engineering firms that support them to change their strategy from Centralized to Decentralized treatment is a major challenge. Solve can help by connecting Mruna with authorities in the field who can throw their support behind our vision. 

Biofilm Carrier Production - a significant capital expense are the fixedbed biofilm carriers. The bio-film carriers provide surface area for bacteria to thrive and gobble up nutrient from the water. Assistance developing a cost effective 3d printed biofilm carrier from recycled single use plastic would be awesome and help us hit two birds with one stone.    

IoT Development and Security - we are using basic IoT devices and 3rd party software. We need a framework for developing a secure system and robust system for managing a decentralized network of wastewater treatment systems placed throughout the world. 

Public Private Partnership (PPP) we need assistance developing a framework for PPP for a decentralized wastewater treatment network. We are looking for funding to sponsor a study to be completed by Deloitte. Infrastructure team in Montreal. 

Deloitte. (Montreal) - Develop a Public Private Partnerships scheme based on decentralized wastewater treatment and pay-per-use. 

ADW Consultants (London) - life cycle costing expert to develop  an analysis which include non-monetary factors (public health, environment, aesthetic, resource conservation) to provide a more holistic comparison between a decentralized and centralized approach to wastewater treatment. 

EMPA - Sustainable Network Infrastructure Planning heuristics and algorithms for sewer network generation and to establish a clear understanding of the target market internationally. 

https://www.empa.ch/

MASDAR  - install a demonstration system at the Masdar headquarters to be officially tested and evaluated for the UAE and Arabian Peninsula market, and to champion the strategy and assist Mruna in navigating the local regulatory hurdles.

The use of untreated wastewater can pose substantial health risks to those cultivating, selling,and consuming agricultural products. Consequently, alternate water reuse strategies can have significant health impacts on downstream farmers and consumers reliant on urban wastewater return flows for irrigation. 

Studies have found that 65% (35.9 Mha) of downstream irrigated croplands were located in catchments with high levels of dependence on urban wastewater flows. These same catchments were home to 1.37 billion urban residents. Of these croplands, 29.3 Mha were located in countries with low levels of wastewater treatment and home to 885 million urban residents. These figures provide insight into the key role that water reuse plays in meeting the water and food needs of people around the world, and the need to invest in wastewater treatment to protect public health.

Combining ecosystem technology and approaches, with community-based collaboration among stakeholders can provide the basis for more equitable governance structures that ensure the most vulnerable are included as partners with economic development opportunities. The need and opportunity is for developing a partnership with public, private and civil society partners that will use this technology to provide prospective users the following combination:

• a technical solution of waste-free water treatment

• financing arrangements adapted to local needs and circumstances, with an emphasis on financing that also generates social and environmental benefit. 

• local capacities, skills and competencies

• institutional arrangements based on sharing costs and benefits among users thus upgrading of the whole community).