"We want to become the industry standard for water treatment!"
Interview with Dr. Christian Göbbert, Managing Director of Nanostone Water GmbH
With a ceramic filtration system, Nanostone Water has developed a product that reliably filters out microorganisms from water circuits: for drinking water supply, but also for various industrial applications and wastewater treatment. Dr. Christian Göbbert, co-founder and managing director, explained in an interview how the technology works exactly and why he would explicitly welcome the market entry of other companies with comparable solutions.
Wirtschaftsforum: Dr. Göbbert, Nanostone Water aims to significantly shape the future of water security and sustainability – what approach is at the core of your company?
Dr. Christian Göbbert: Fundamentally, there are many ways to recycle water. The goal always is to remove coarse impurities – or in our case, microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. We use a special filtration medium in the form of ceramics – the underlying physical processes were already known to the ancient Romans, who used it to filter yeast from their wine. Our special ceramic is, of course, much more sophisticated and can ensure the reliable removal of the smallest impurities and microorganisms with a pore size of 30 nm.
Wirtschaftsforum: Where can your membrane be deployed?
Dr. Christian Göbbert: Essentially, wherever clean water is needed, provided (in the case of our smallest plant) a flow of at least 5,000 liters per hour is guaranteed. We started with the treatment of industrial water in China after the government there imposed strict regulations on air and water pollution a few years ago. In this context, our product is now strongly represented in the semiconductor industry, mining, and the power plant sector – fields of application for which it is excellently suited thanks to its robust material compared to traditional plastic membranes, and where it now reliably ensures that industrial water is treated as a valuable resource so it can be reintroduced into the process.
Wirtschaftsforum: Originally, however, you had aimed your solution at drinking water production.
Dr. Christian Göbbert: Our technology is now also used there, including in large treatment plants in the USA and the Philippines. We will soon implement additional projects in both markets. Moreover, our ceramic membrane is now also used for prefiltration for seawater desalination in the Middle East – and we also see a strong field of application in municipal wastewater treatment, especially in light of the mandatory introduction of a fourth cleaning stage. Particularly in Germany, this market is still quite conservative, and during pilot testing a test plant is often operated in a side stream for a full year to record the performance throughout the seasons before making an investment decision – given the limited availability of pilot containers, this unfortunately ties up many resources.
Wirtschaftsforum: What innovations is Nanostone Water currently working on?
Dr. Christian Göbbert: We have now succeeded in developing a new product that delivers at least 40% more performance than our existing solution with the same external dimensions and chemical compositions and can be installed more compactly. After verifying and validating the first prototypes in the real environments of our customer applications by the end of 2024, we will be able to start with the first sales at the beginning of 2026. Furthermore, during the coronavirus pandemic, we already intensively thought about further scaling our production capacities and in this process, designed a plan for a plant with five times higher performance and full automation where we can produce significantly larger quantities of our products at a lower price while maintaining a consistent quality standard. In the future, we look forward to extraordinarily strong growth opportunities.
Wirtschaftsforum: What goals have you set for the coming years?
Dr. Christian Göbbert: We aim to become the global industry standard for water treatment – ambitious, but achievable. Naturally, we also want to further reduce our own production-related carbon footprint – by another 10% by 2030 – and plan to establish a recycling system for our products once they have reached the end of their lifespan after decades. With Acuriant Technologies, Inc., Nanostone Water now belongs to an American investor, by the way, together with Solecta, a manufacturer of polymer membranes for water filtration, with whom we complement well. In the future, we hope for the market entry of other companies offering comparable technologies as ours – not only because competition enhances business, but also because a single company alone cannot tackle the challenges of sustainable water treatment.