Water is precious and will be more so in the coming years, it is a reality that we have been facing for some time, and it will only get worse. In science fiction films such as "Dune" there are characters, the "Fremen", who wear special overalls to recover water from the body and survive in the desert using very little. One can only imagine what they would have thought as they watched us shower and throw hundreds of liters of water into the sewers, as if it were waste and not a precious commodity.
Winner of this year's Best of Innovation award in the sustainability category al CES2020, Hydraloop is a relatively simple residential water recycling system that can treat approximately 95% of the shower water and 50% of the washing machine water, and halves your water bill.
85% of the total domestic water is not drunk: it is used in toilets, washing machines, swimming pools, gardens, pipes and more.
Hydraloop states on its official website to be able to save about 45% on water use and wastewater production, in a low maintenance self-cleaning unit that does not use membrane filters that need to be replaced. Instead, it treats the water using sedimentation, buoyancy, dissolved air buoyancy, foam fractionation, UV disinfection, and an aerobic bioreactor to clean it. And the bill is halved.
Recycle your home water and also save energy
Interestingly, there are also energy savings, as Hydraloop keeps the water at room temperature. This means that in colder areas, you are not wasting heat energy by bringing cold water into your tank at room temperature. The company says that this energy saving alone can reduce energy consumption by up to 600 kWh per year.
If the unit detects a component failure, it shuts down and stops supplying recycled water. There's a smartphone app to monitor what's happening with Hydraloop, and larger homes and hotels can run multiple units in parallel to handle much more flow.
The price? It's not like drinking fresh water
At around 4000 euros per unit, Hydraloop isn't super cheap. It is true that the bill is halved, but there is an argument to be made. The average Italian family pays about 420 euros a year for water, paying 4000 euros to reduce the bill by 45% is an investment that falls in well over 10 years (also because the expenses do not include work on the system).
