Berkeley Lab Water Technology “Boomerangs” from
Bangladesh to California
By Tamara Straus
In 2006, when UC Berkeley Civil
Engineering Professor Ashok Gadgil
began researching the possibility of
removing arsenic from drinking water
using electrochemistry, he targeted
his invention at South Asia, specifically
Bangladesh and West Bengal, where more
than 60 million people are estimated to be
consuming groundwater with dangerously
high arsenic levels.
Gadgil’s invention, ECAR (short for
Electrochemical Arsenic Remediation)
has since been tested in his lab and
is currently being implemented in
the field, thanks to funding from the
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and
the Development Impact Lab. Since
December 2013, the technology has been
under license by the Indian company
Luminous Water Technologies, which
plans to bring ECAR to arsenic-affected
villages throughout India and Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, members of the ECAR team,
lead by Gadgil and Susan Amrose are
conducting a 10,000 liter-per-day trial
of the system in preparation for the
considerable scaling.
For Gadgil and Amrose, these outcomes
are the result of years of experimenting,
planning, and partnering. One outcome
they didn’t necessarily expect, however,
is unfolding here in the United States.
During the summer of 2013, Amrose
and John Pujol launched their own
company, SimpleWater, using the same
electrochemical arsenic remediation
technology developed in Gadgil’s lab
but directed at the tens of thousands of
wells and rural American water systems
with high levels of arsenic. With funding
from the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency,
SimpleWater
successfully
validated the technology in California in
2014 and is now preparing a larger scale
pilot in Grimes, California. ECAR was
also awarded a 2013 UC Proof of Concept
Program Commercialization Gap Grant,
to see if it could be used to remediate
PAGE 4
arsenic-contaminated
California.
groundwater
in
This turn of events is a prime example of
what business and engineering scholars
are calling “reverse” or “boomerang”
innovations—whereby
products
and
services developed as inexpensive models
to meet the needs of developing nations
are then repackaged or remodeled as
low-cost alternatives for developed
markets. In the case of Grimes, a town
of about 550 people 50 miles north of
Sacramento, ECAR technology may prove
as useful to residents as those in rural
Bangladesh—although the regulatory,
Sample ECAR set up including steel plates connected to current, enabling robust and reliable removal
of arsenic III and IV from drinking water”
political, and environmental conditions
are quite different.
“The water treatment needs of remote,
low-income, and small American
communities have largely been ignored,
because U.S. innovation focuses so
much on large municipal systems,” said
Amrose. “ECAR technology was designed
to be affordable and robust in rural and
primarily very low-income South Asian
communities, which translated easily to
the unmet U.S. needs that SimpleWater is
addressing.”
One reason that arsenic-contaminated
water has been overlooked globally is
that it is hard to detect. Arsenic dissolves
from soil and rock into drinking water
supplies and is tasteless and odorless,
but it unquestionably a poison. Over
the past few decades, scientists have
found increasing evidence that chronic
ingestion of arsenic results in lower IQ
in children as well as severe maladies,
such as lesions, diabetes, cancer, and
blood vessel diseases that can lead to
gangrene, amputation, and premature
death. As a result, in 2001-2002 the
World Health Organization and the
Environmental Protection Agency set a
new drinking water standard prohibiting
the consumption of water with more than
10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic. Yet
arsenic in drinking water has remained
an international problem for which longterm solutions have been elusive.
As Gadgil told Lawrence Berkeley
Lab News in a 2014 article, “A lot of
technologies to remove arsenic on the
community- and household- scale have
been donated. But if you go to these
villages it’s like a technology graveyard.
One study found that more than 90
percent failed within six months, and then
were abandoned to rust in the field.”
Among the reasons Gadgil thinks ECAR
could prove effective is that the technology
has been created to be inexpensive and
easy to maintain. Unlike complex chemical
processes or maintenance-heavy devices,
ECAR works by using electricity to quickly
dissolve iron in water. This forms a type of
rust that binds to arsenic—and that can
then be separated from the water through
filtration or settling. ECAR is not meant to
serve large populations that are serviced
by government water systems. Instead,
the technology is designed for residents
who can collectively maintain and own a
water system.
One of the goals of SimpleWater’s
ArsenicVolt system is to provide remote
monitoring of arsenic levels. This is being
done, said CEO Pujol, for a very simple
reason: There are few water engineers
in the U.S. with expertise in arsenic or
other heavy metals—and even fewer
who will live in a small town. Indeed,
lack of detection of arsenic is one of the
biggest problems facing small system
U.S. water supplies. According to data