Clean water is becoming a scarce resource. And clean water is needed to produce concrete that can last for 100 years under water. Denmark’s largest construction project – the Fehmarn connection – already has an agreement that they can use tap water to cast tunnel elements, but when the tunnel is completed, it’s over.
Startup with test facility
For several months, the startup company Nordphos has had a test plant set up at Rødbyhavn, and the results show that wastewater can be cleaned for concrete production. Also, for demanding concrete constructions such as underwater tunnels. This is what Jesper Minor, one of the founders of Nordphos, tells us:
– It is entirely technically possible. We can make drinking water out of wastewater or seawater. There are a number of barriers we have to overcome, but technically it is no problem, says Jesper Minor.
Drinking water becomes technical water
One of the barriers we have to overcome is the notion that we can just get clean water up from the ground and use it without further treatment:
– We are starting to call our drinking water technical water because now and in the future, it must be purified before it can be drunk. Many groundwater wells, for example, are already contaminated with PFAS. But we do not have a tradition of technical water in Denmark. We have been used to our groundwater being clean for many years, he says.
Power to X requires the most
In fact, the requirements for drinking water and water for concrete production – including special concrete – are not the most difficult technical exercise. But if the Power to X visions are to come to fruition, then different clean water must be used. The electrolysis process separates water into oxygen, and hydrogen presupposes that the water is so pure that there is almost literally nothing but oxygen and hydrogen in it.
The combination of the tunnel element factory and Power to X is precisely the reason why Nordphos has chosen to establish itself in Lolland:
Lots of water
– There is plenty of surface water and a high groundwater table. We hope to become a local player in technical water in large quantities. And in fact, it is a rather small plant that is needed to deliver half a million cubic metres. It can be done with four or five 40-foot containers, says Jesper Minor from Nordphos.
The water price depends on the electricity price
The price of technical water is not necessarily a major barrier either. The raw material is largely free. It is the electricity price that determines what a cubic meter of technically – and completely clean and drinkable – water costs:
– In our test with technical water in drinking water quality, the process consumes around 2.5 kWh per cubic meter of water, says Jesper Minor and concludes:
– We have to get used to it.
