In December 2018, the CAWT wrapped up a rewarding three-year project with Ontario-based company Greyter Water Systems, trailblazers in the field of greywater recycling. Seeking to address well-founded concerns around water scarcity, the company developed a first-of-its-kind residential technology called the Greyter HOME™ system—a compact appliance that provides a water recycling solution to homeowners and offers builders and municipalities the opportunity to create water efficient communities. The Greyter HOME™ system filters shower and bathwater to odour-free, near-potable conditions; in turn, this water is used meet a home’s toilet-flushing demands, helping to reduce average household water consumption by 20-25%. As a testament to the technology’s performance, the Greyter HOME™ system was recently deployed by a preeminent U.S. homebuilder in nine new single-family homes.

The CAWT played an instrumental role in the refinement of Greyter’s HOME™ system, optimizing and validating the technology to ensure it met and surpassed the stringent conditions required by the NSF/ANSI 350 standard—a crucial step in bringing Greyter’s product to North American markets. Specifically, our researchers evaluated the prototype through rigorous research and on-going testing, providing important recommendations on how to minimize maintenance requirements and optimize treatment capabilities. The results of this work were incorporated into the product’s final design, which was installed and tested in our CAWT laboratories over a 26-week period, providing robust confirmation of the system’s performance capabilities.

Our collaboration continued with the development of a scaled-up iteration of the Greyter HOME™ system, in which we modified the existing design and ultrafiltration technology for commercial use—the first of its class in North America. Unlike its market competitors that rely on biological treatment systems with large footprints, Greyter’s system is low-cost, has a small carbon footprint and requires minimal maintenance. The apparatus we built and tested removed total organic carbon from greywater, integrating it with the newly designed membrane technology. The resulting model, validated through full-scale testing to NSF/ANSI 350 specifications, is not only technically effective, but also ecologically and economically advantageous.

In the face of increasing pressures on the world’s water resources from climate change, population growth and widespread mismanagement, the need for water recycling solutions is more urgent than ever. Greyter’s technology has the ability to significantly reduce water consumption one home, building, or community at a time.