Technology & Innovation

Grants Awarded for Innovative Technologies

Boston – The Baker-Polito administration awarded $759,556 in grants to support six innovative technical advancements for wastewater treatment facilities in Plymouth, Hull, Haverhill, Amherst, and Palmer.

The funding, awarded through the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s (MassCEC) Wastewater Treatment Pilot program, supports publicly owned wastewater treatment districts and authorities in Massachusetts that demonstrate innovative wastewater treatment technologies showing potential to reduce energy demand, recover resources such as heat, biomass, energy, or water, and/or remediate nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus. 

Each project being awarded is a partnership between a municipality and a technology provider. The program leveraged an additional $575,406 in funding from the six pilot projects.

The following municipalities and technology providers were awarded funding:

Plymouth Municipal Airport and JDL Environmental Protection ($150,000), to install, monitor, and evaluate a low-energy membrane biological wastewater treatment reactor at the airport’s small municipal wastewater treatment facility.

Hull, AQUASIGHT, and Woodard & Curran ($140,627), to implement and maintain an artificial intelligence platform, known as APOLLO, that informs wastewater workers of any operational issues and actions that would increase operational efficiency.

Haverhill and AQUASIGHT ($150,000), to implement and maintain the artificial intelligence platform APOLLO at the wastewater treatment facility in Haverhill.

Plymouth, Kleinfelder, and Xylem ($135,750), to purchase and install optic nutrient sensors developed by Xylem, which will act as the primary means of process control for nutrient removal.

Amherst and Blue Thermal Corporation ($103,179), to install, monitor, and commission a wastewater source heat pump, which will provide renewable and consistent heating, cooling, and hot water to the Amherst Wastewater Treatment Plant from a renewable source.

Palmer and The Water Planet Company ($80,000), to install a nitrogen-based aeration control system along with sampling equipment.