The Aquaporin Chronicle

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They say that Helvetica is like water – it has great clarity, no intrinsic meaning, and a wide variety uses. So, it was an obvious choice for Aquaporin. But being Aquaporin, we gave it a twist. Helvetica® Now is a new chapter for what is perhaps the best-known typeface of all time. Originally created by Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffmann in 1957, the font is a beautiful yet functional mix of Swiss design and midcentury modernism. The Helvetica Now family has been redrawn with a variety of useful modern alternates. At Aquaporin we use Micro, Text and Display.

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About

The Aquaporin Chronicle is a corporate print magazine created by Aquaporin A/S, Nymøllevej 78, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. www.aquaporin.com

The subject of this issue of Aquaporin Chronicle states an ambitious goal, a hope for the future. At Aquaporin, we believe this goal is achievable, together. This magazine is a statement of intent, and a call to arms – for all in the water industry to join forces to find solutions to what is, without doubt, one of the world’s most pressing concerns.

Because the water issue is pressing. We all need water to survive; not just drinking water, but also water for cleaning and hygiene, industry and agriculture. For too long we, in the West at least, have taken water for granted and not given it the respect it deserves. This needs to change.

We need smart livable cities that capture, clean and reuse water as a matter of course. We need smart homes that do not just purify our water, but also analyze and optimize our water use habits. We need industries that recycle water within their own processes. We need energy-efficient systems that make irrigation water more affordable.

And, of course, we need clean drinking water for all mankind.

As an industry, we have solutions for all these things. Now, we must work together to integrate and apply them smartly on a global scale, to provide water for everyone – now and in the

Ifuture.hope

this issue of Aquaporin Chronicle will help inspire you to join us on this journey.

Matt Boczkowski, CEO, Aquaporin

Is a global water technology company dedicated to revolutionizing water purification, by purificationaquaporinscompanyengineering.andbiotechnologicalmergingtechniquesstate-of-the-artWearetheonlythatincorporatesintowatermembranes.

The purifierswatereffectivemostworld’s

Over billions of years, nature has developed unique water channels, known as aquaporins. Aquaporin water channels are found in all living organisms from mangrove trees to human kidneys, where they are responsible for rapid water transportation across cell

Themembranes.coreofour

Aquaporin Inside® technology replicates nature’s way of filtering water by incorporating the protein into a filtration membrane. The result is a natural water purification technologyAquaporin Inside®.

TheAquaticLife

“The solutions probably exist already – the technology anyway. The challenge is to tie it all together. It’s such a broad area that touches on everything from individual habits to the municipal use of waste. But it’s possible. It must be. We put people on the moon. We can do this, too.”

Matt Boczkowski is sitting in his office in Copenhagen on an unusually hot day, musing on the world’s water challenge. As CEO of Aquaporin, it is something he thinks about often. Matt has worked in many different spheres of water purification and water separation for over 20 years, and he has seen the impact wellmanaged water systems can have, not just on people’s lives and health, but also on the environment, waste disposal, and energy consumption.

“Managing water systems is complex,” says Matt. “It requires data. This will be the big difference between our cities today and the smart cities of the future. With the right data, homeowners and municipalities will be able to make better decisions about their use of water, energy and waste. They will know when to switch a system off to save energy, they will see leaks before they become a problem, and they will know what their water is being used for, so they can clean it to the right level for the right application. We can solve the water challenge, but we have to create efficiency throughout the system.”

For CEO Matt Boczkowski life at Aquaporin has never been more thrilling as he shapes the future of a company that has a technology with the potential to change how we think of water treatment.

Drinking water is a human right

Aquaporin is determined to be part of this future, by developing advanced water filtration membranes that use biotechnology as one of the building blocks to clean water more efficiently. These membranes are already making a difference in a range of applications.

Aquaporin’s home water purifiers, for example, address a number of issues. They produce clean and healthy drinking water directly from the tap, so homeowners can avoid contaminants in the municipal or groundwater supply, from pesticides and PFAS to limestone, bacteria, and viruses. By making tap water safe to drink, the purifiers also help cut down on the use of plastic bottles. They even enable homeowners to adjust and reduce their water use by showing individual consumption data in a connected app.

“People will always need drinking water,” says Matt. “But in many regions of the world today, they still don’t have access to it, so they need to buy plastic bottles or pay for water that is trucked in from outside. Home water purifiers address that. At Aquaporin, we firmly believe that clean drinking water is a human right. If we can help bring clean water to more people around the world, we’ve had a positive impact. And, if we can also help them cut down on their water use and the number of plastic bottles they buy, all the better.”

Water made by nature

Aquaporin’s water solutions are built on unique Aquaporin Inside® membranes. These use aquaporin proteins – the specialized water channels that exist in all living cells – to filter water. It is a natural process, developed over billions of years, and it is exceptionally efficient. As a result, Aquaporin Inside® membranes can filter water with less energy than traditional filtration membranes.

Aquaporin is now working with companies like Vestel in Turkey and Phillips Water Solutions in China to take their drinking water solutions to thousands of homes. It is also collaborating with Diamond Drops in India to put water fountains in schools, so children can fill up water bottles with clean, uncontaminated water whenever they

excited to be part of these solutions,” says Matt. “Hopefully, our work with Diamond Drops, Vestel, and Phillips Water Solutions is just the start. Our membranes are not expensive. They are low energy and low maintenance, so they are ideal for many different drinking water systems – both in the home and in the community.”

Efficiency and diversity

Matt is keen to stress that Aquaporin Inside® technology has many more applications, stretching far beyond drinking water. The company produces a number of different membrane types – including membranes for both forward osmosis and industrial reverse osmosis – and it works with partners in many different Aquaporinfields.iscurrently

collaborating with partners in industries as diverse as biogas, sugar production, and waste leachate to develop, test, and implement systems that clean wastewater efficiently so it can be reused in industrial processes or safely released into the environment. It is working with local authorities to produce drinking water from municipal waste. It even provides a concentration system that enables food and beverage producers to concentrate ingredients without damaging their natural flavors or nutrients.

All these solutions have one thing in common: more efficient use of water.

“We’rewant.really

— Matt Boczkowski

“At the moment, a lot of our fresh water sources are used in agriculture for irrigation,” says Matt. “Nearly 70% of fresh water is used that way. Over the past two decades, we have seen a rapid growth in membrane desalination to produce some of this fresh water, because easily accessible sources are being depleted. When you think about it from an environmental point of view – and a business one – it doesn’t make sense. Why use such good quality water for irrigation? There is so much wastewater generated every day. Instead of just releasing it into the environment, we should recover much of that water for industry and agriculture. That’s what most of our solutions and collaborations are about – trying to find more efficient ways to treat and reuse water.”

The innovation fast track

As Matt points out, many of the solutions to the world’s water issues probably already exist. Aquaporin Inside® technology is just one example. There are many more technologies out there that can have a positive impact on the way the world manages water. The big challenge is getting these solutions to market in time.

“If we’re to protect water for future generations, we have to give a faster way to market for new solutions. This means the whole industry has to work together. Not just the innovators and system integrators, but

also the end-users: the municipalities and the water treatment companies that put new solutions to work in the real world,” he says. “I speak to a lot of exciting innovation companies and they all say the same thing. Even if they have a solution that’s 10-20% more efficient, they are often turned down as it’s untested. They don’t have the references or background, and the larger companies don’t want to take the risk. It’s holding the industry back.”

Matt would like to see a kind of fast-track development solution that enables small companies with bright ideas to work together with the big, established players. The solution would tie funding to specific development stages, giving these companies access to development money as they go along. But more importantly, it would bring the new technology developers and end-users closer together, so they can develop solutions that precisely match real world needs, right from the start.

“If we can bring companies together in this way, we can really drive change fast,” says Matt. “We can make an impact that will be good for others for generations to come. There’s definitely enough water out there. We just have to come together to find ways to access it and manage it. Humankind has done some amazing things. I think we can manage this, too.”

“If we’re to protect water for future generations, we have to give a faster way to market for new solutions. This means the whole industry has to work together. Not just the innovators and system integrators, but also the end-users.”

voda chát long regar

inInsideAquaporin®space

Re-using water has long been a challenge for space explorers - and the multi-filtration beds currently used are heavy and need to be frequently replaced. We set up ASA (Aquaporin Space Alliance) with the Danish Aerospace Company and NASA in 2013 to overcome this challenge. Our Aquaporin Inside® technology is currently being used by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) with promising results.

Art is close andAquaporin’stoheart,“

The High Seas of Your Intrinsic Ocean” is not a new streaming series. Meet artist Troels Sandegaard, who is experimenting with the other realm of water.

May the

Be with You

There is something about an artist’s home, isn’t there? Most of us enjoy art in a gallery or have pieces at home, but there is a significant distance to living with, breathing in, working with, and thinking about art every day. As we pull up in our stealthy Volvo to Troels Sandegaard’s studio on a beautiful sunny day in Tureby, it immediately becomes apparent: This is not your average house, despite the suburban neighborhood. Here, art is consumed every single day. And we are still only outside.

Troels greets us warmly as we enter his studio. He has a boyish charm, combined with a touch of Action Man from his crew cut, and he offers us herb tea picked this morning in a nearby field. In the distance, one of Troels’ many cats is meowing for help, trying to get down from a shelf with art in the backroom.

We are here to talk with Troels about his Aquaporin + Copenhagen Contemporary exhibition – The High Seas of Your Intrinsic Ocean – an art installation that explores water in its fourth dimension.

Karl Troels Sandegaard was born in 1979 and graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2007. The link between art and science has been a recurring theme in his work. In previous pieces and installations, he has often used his own body as a starting point to investigate physical and tactile aspects of the world that illuminate the complexity and mutability of our surroundings. Troels tells us how he previously experimented with his own sweat. This led him to gel-based water and a search to find the plasma created when water is absorbed by a human body or plant.

The sun creates a natural spotlight in the studio as it streams through the rooftop window. Troels guides us around, showing experiments where he mixes a gelling agent with hot water. “It creates a product like an organic jelly, which is tantalizing in its sensuous mutability. Like a living, mysterious body,” he says.

At Aquaporin, art is an integral part of the company. It has its own in-house art department called Primer, run in collaboration with Diakron. When Aquaporin Founder & CIO Peter Holme Jensen met Troels and heard about water in the fourth dimension, it was no surprise they decided to create something together.

Water is necessary for life to arise and be sustained. It is present in all living organisms, transferred in and out of cells by aquaporin proteins. But inside the body, water assumes a different form than the ones we know, transforming into a state somewhere between liquid, gas, and ice.

“The High Seas of Your Intrinsic Ocean is based on the concept of water as a messenger, fuel, or vehicle that transmits information to the organism”

— Troels Sandegaard

As Troels’ cats playfully jump between pieces of art and his computer keyboard, he explains that The High Seas of Your Intrinsic Ocean is based on the concept of water as a messenger, fuel, or vehicle that transmits information to the organism.

The sculptures, in many shapes and forms in their current state of progress, are all part of Troels’ longstanding exploration of water. As the exhibition unfolds at Copenhagen Contemporary, in a disused ship construction building on Refshale Island, Troels will keep working on them in an open lab outside. Part of the installation will explore how the sculptures react when people touch their jelly-like form, and how the weather will impact their composition over time.

The pieces will naturally transmute into other forms, of course. The jelly is mutable and subject to natural decomposition. When exposed to wind and weather, the sculptures will change. Troels explains that the installation “lets us flow with the water as it changes from liquid to jelly to airborne vapor, to dripping water that runs into the surroundings and water around Refshale Island.”

Water is essential for our future existence, and global water challenges are growing as we speak. In this context, it would be easy to dismiss Troels’ artwork as a flight of fancy, but the exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary is part of a wider dialog. Just a couple of kilometers away, 10,000 water professionals from around the world will gather to discuss water solutions at the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition.

Troels will be present at the IWA, showcasing a piece from The High Seas of Your Intrinsic Ocean at the Aquaporin stand (E128). Pieces will also be on display at Aquaporin’s headquarters in nearby Lyngby, as well as at the headquarters of Danish Industries in central

TroelsCopenhagen.isapleasant

host, and nice company to be with. He is deeply engaged in his work, driven by a force to find a different water realm – or perhaps an entirely different water phase that we do not yet know exists. When we depart his studio, in our suburban Volvo, we cannot help but think:

May the Fourth Be with You!

As humans we are profoundly spoilt in our existence. In our small individual worlds, we often overreact when things do not go the way we expect or when things are taken away from us.

Imagine if water ran out. Imagine if it vanished from mankind.

Just imagine.

NewWorldWater

NewNewWorldWorldWaterWater

Peter Holme Jensen tells a story. Back in 2016, Aquaporin was still in the development stage. It had a large industrial building outside Copenhagen, but no money to put art on the walls. Peter reached out to a friend who owned a gallery and asked if she knew any artists who would like to exhibit in Aquaporin’s offices. His friend suggested Simone Åberg Kern, the Danish artist and pilot.

A little later, when Simone was installing her exhibition, Peter took her on a tour of the laboratories. “In Aquaporin’s lab we produce ultra pure water – a liquid made of H2O and nothing else. Simone asked a question: What does ultra pure water taste like?”

“Every scientist in the lab could explain, but none of us had ever actually tried it,” says Peter. “We all knew that ultra pure water lacks ions, which makes it taste extremely metallic. But had we tried it? No. We’d been working with ultra pure water for a while, but never once thought of drinking it. So, the tour ended with us all sitting down for an ultra pure water taste test. And you know what? None of us liked it.”

For Peter, this is what collaboration is all about. It’s about creating a space where different disciplines can interact and generate new ideas and ways of thinking. Artists and scientists work in similar ways, he says. They both delve extremely deeply into a single

Aquaporin founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Peter Holme Jensen never intended the global biotech water innovator to only be a commercial company. Quite the opposite. Meet the founder who is revolutionizing the water industry through technology, art, and open innovation.

subject, but this can make them blinkered. If you bring them together, they may shake each other out of their narrow view by asking very different questions.

The encounter with Simone marks an example for Aquaporin of how interdisciplinary collaborations can inspire and open new innovation dimensions. Ultra pure water may be very interesting from a scientific point of view, but its applications are extremely complex. Today, the company concentrates on creating practical solutions to real-world problems, by creating water treatment systems that deliver water filtered for a purpose – whether it is to drink, release into the environment or reuse in industrial processes. It does this through open innovation.

Entering the fourth dimension

Open innovation is all about bringing different dimensions together. Science is one dimension, art another. Innovation through private public partnerships introduces another two.

Aquaporin has worked with open innovation since the very beginning. Its first customer was NASA. The space agency bought an early iteration of the Aquaporin Inside® membrane and its feedback was instrumental in creating the Aquaporin products in use today. But Aquaporin also works with universities, biogas plants, manufacturers of drinking water purifiers, municipalities, and food and beverage producers – an extensive list of companies, institutions, and researchers, reflecting the diversity of water and all its

Peterapplications.isnow

bringing even more dimensions into the innovation mix: water treatment system providers and end-users. By doing so, the company can ensure its products and innovations are fully fit for purpose before they are released. This may help overcome one of the water treatment industry’s biggest challenges: time to market.

“Today, the water treatment industry takes an average of 9-13 years to adopt new technology. That is a very long time. Apple launched the first iPhone just over 14 years ago. Imagine if iPhones were just hitting the streets today. We want to bring system integrators and end-users into the development stage earlier to ensure our products meet user requirements when they are launched. If we can do that, maybe we could cut adoption time in half,” says Peter.

That would be great news for Aquaporin – and the world in general. The UN estimates that to meet future requirements for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, the world needs the pace of progress to increase four-fold. Open innovation is one way to make that happen.

From students to space

At the start, many of Aquaporin’s collaborations were ad hoc, but the company has since built them into its company structure, creating programs that intensify the daily mix of employees, innovation companies, and student

Throughresearch.Aquaporin

Garage, for example, start-up companies can work in Aquaporin’s offices and labs free of charge, while Aquaporin Academy enables students to complete university projects in collaboration with the team at Aquaporin. So far, around 175 students have been through Aquaporin Academy – and the company has since hired 24 of them.

These collaborations have enabled the company to explore research paths that would otherwise have been closed: The aquaporin proteins needed for early development came from work with the University of Århus; a collaboration and student project with the Danish National Hospital led to Aquaporin’s work with hemodialysis; even the forward osmosis hollow fiber tubes that will soon be used in space to extract water from astronauts’ body fluids came from a student Ph.D. project.“Itisvery

hard for a company to dedicate time and resources to space technology,” says Peter. “There just isn’t a good business plan for it to scale. But when you work with universities and other companies, the possibilities are almost endless. Open innovation has given us a stream of new potential employees, ideas, and science. You can get a long way with an open lab and free coffee.”

More for your money

There are of course challenges. Perhaps the most obvious issue with open innovation is intellectual property (IP) rights. Many large companies fear losing IP – which is one reason why they prefer to innovate behind closed doors. But Peter is categorical: the benefits are just too hard to ignore. And, if you have the IP contracts sorted out in advance, there should be no “I’dproblems.ratherhave

part in something than nothing at all,” he says. “Analysis shows that SMEs get seven times more out of each dollar spent on innovation than large companies. 30-40% of the science done at Aquaporin would have been impossible without an open innovation development model. It opens up new funding and creates a space where many dimensions can work together. It opens doors that would otherwise have been closed.”

Moving forward

Peter is a scientist and scientific explorer at heart. When he founded Aquaporin in 2005 with the biophysicist Morten Østergaard Jensen, he never envisaged leading the company for 16 years. So, when Aquaporin launched on the Nasdaq Copenhagen stock exchange in 2021, Peter decided to move from CEO to

TheCIO.

move enabled Aquaporin to bring in Matt Boczkowski as CEO, an extremely experienced technology professional with expertise in product and company commercialization. And it freed up Peter to focus on what he does best: innovation.

“Open innovation has given us a stream of new potential employees, ideas, and science. You can get a long way with an open lab and free coffee.”

Peter Holme Jensen

5reasons why you shall purify drinking water

There are many good reasons for wanting to purify your drinking water. Clean water is essential for every human being and by using a water purification system, you can ensure that the water in your home is always safe, sustainable and free from unpleasant taste and Evenodor.

though access to clean drinking water should be a basic human right, an increasing number of regions face challenges due to a lack of drinking water. The challenge of enabling access to clean and safe water is

not limited to developing countries - the United States and Europe also face challenges when it comes to drinking water, such as health concerns, contaminants, taste, environmental issues, and odor.

The good news is that a household water purification system can help you overcome these challenges and ensure clean drinking water right from the tap. Here are 5 reasons why you should purify your drinking water.

1. Add an extra layer of security

In the most industrialized countries, municipal water treatment systems are usually quite effective. However public water treatment is not infallible. There is an increasing numbers of incidents where contaminants from pollution, lead from outdated or faulty water pipes, or residue from the use of pesticides have found their way into the tap water. Extraordinary weather conditions, such as heavy rainfall, can also put a strain on municipal water treatment facilities.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to want an extra layer of security to supplement your local or municipal water treatment. You can do this by using a household water purification system, which can remove a wide range of impurities from the water and will help ensure that you will not end up drinking unsafe water.

2. Remove unwanted contaminants

Lead, PFAS, pesticides, bacteria, viruses and many more physical, chemical, biological and radiological compounds and substances, find their way into the water supply. It is virtually impossible to remove all traces of contaminants from your water, so the local water authorities regulate how much of a specific substance it is acceptable for the water to contain.

While water that lives up to these standards is usually considered safe to drink, you may have your own preference to the level of contaminants you drink. A private water purification system lets you set your own limits.

3. Protect your health

Drinking water containing bacteria and viruses can lead to serious health issues and diseases from diarrhea and dysentery to cholera. If you live in an area where such diseases are a risk, the most effective way to protect yourself is by using reverse osmosis water purification.

The pore size of the membranes used for reverse osmosis is measured in nanometers, which is small enough to stop both virus and bacteria. In addition, reverse osmosis also removes common chemical contaminants, such as sodium, chloride, copper and lead.

4. Cut back on plastic to protect the environment

The annual consumption of bottled water worldwide can be counted in the millions. 35% of Europeans (50 million households) do not drink their tap water, and the use of bottled water has grown by more than 10% a year over the last decade. In general, bottled water is considered convenient because it is portable. But that convenience comes with problems and a high environmental cost. Costs and pollution associated with the manufacturing and transportation of plastic bottles, as well as extra water use, make bottled water an unsustainable choice.

Drinking tap water is not only cheap, but also environmentally friendly. According to the European Commission, access to better quality water can reduce bottled water consumption by 17%. By installing a home water purification system, consumers can access clean drinking water directly in the home in an environmentally friendly way.

5. Improve the taste and odor of your tap water

Being able to drink fresh and clear water with a refreshing taste and no unpleasant odor can have a big impact on your wellbeing and quality of life. One of the most common complaints about the taste of tap water is chlorine - an essential disinfectant used around the world. When it comes to odor, the most irritating is hydrogen sulphide. It smells like rotten eggs.

Water purification can not only help remove harmful contaminants, but also improve the taste, smell and visual appearance of your drinking water. It reduces the amount of chlorine, soil residue, and organic and inorganic substances.

All in all, water purification is an investment in your health, the environment and a smart way to reduce how much you spend on bottled water.

Our beach is cleaner than yours

The shape

shape of waterdrinking

A sip of water can taste a million different ways, but in the future, every drop of water can taste equally good, and the flavor of your soft drink, beer or the like will remain homogenous regardless of what country you are in. It seems like a farfetched dream, but it is a reality much closer than you might think.

Have you tasted your water? You likely have, and you probably think it tastes good. But your water can taste so much better. In fact, so much better that it is exactly like nature intended. When you work with flavors, you want every sip of juice to taste the same, but when you go abroad and try drinking the exact same brand of juice that you do at home, the flavor can be vastly different. That change of flavor usually boils down to a difference in the water and not in the juice mix.

If you put it into perspective, going to a cinema and grabbing your favourite soft drink can taste different depending on the city you are in. The drink consists of syrup and water. The groundwater used alters everywhere in the world - and that makes the product’s taste change even though the brand name is the same.

At Aquaporin, we are working towards providing the same drinking water flavor in the water we purify around the world. Whether it is Istanbul, Singapore, Copenhagen, or Los Angeles, our ambition is that drinking a soft drink or a beer will taste the same.

Creating the Aquaporin standard

By having water that is standardized, it is possible for companies to have the flavor they dream of everywhere, and not where they develop their

products. Achieving this comes through our carefully developed membranes that ensure water quality and taste remain the same.

Imagine a world where you can enjoy your favorite drink and have it taste exactly as you expect. By standardizing the water, you can also move your production more easily and scale up without having to worry about your product tasting different.

Groundwater’s flavor changes everywhere, even within a few miles in a country, but purifying the water through membranes allows us to switch the varying quality of the water into an Aquaporin-proven standard that creates the best water possible, filtered the way nature intended.

Setting a standard for the future

Developing a product that allows companies to have complete control of the process and ensure product quality is the essence of Aquaporin’s work. Imagine being a beverage manufacturer who can trust that the exact flavor of the product is the same in any given market. Not only would it allow more streamlined products, it would also allow you to expand more rapidly to new markets, knowing the product quality and flavor would be the same as the one bringing you success on the home market. When purifying water with Aquaporin membranes, this scenario is no longer a dream, but reality.

Kim Andersson, Aquaporin Commercial Director, says the future is a consistent great taste.

ConcentrationCondensation

Imagine that you are sitting at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning with your family. The apple juice is passed around, but instead of the rather dull processed taste you are used to, the juice oozes natural flavor. In your mind’s eye, you see fields of apple trees stretched to the horizon, because your Sunday morning juice tastes better than it ever has before – just like freshly hand-picked apples.

Yunfeng Li, Commercial Director at Aquaporin, enjoys apple juice, and a lot of other things. But in terms of taste, he expects more than just average. Aquaporin is working to create a future in which products like juice, dairy, coffee, and tea are bursting with their original flavor and aroma – just like nature intended. As Yunfeng Li explains, it will achieve this through natural concentration technology, which keeps the product’s original qualities intact.

“Envisioning a future where apple juice tastes like fresh fruit direct from the tree may seem farfetched, but this is already possible,” he says. “At Aquaporin, we are changing the narrative around the products people consume. By using nature’s filtration process to extract water from raw ingredients, we can keep the natural qualities of the food, even after it has been

Inconcentrated.”thefoodindustry

today, many products like apple juice are concentrated through heat treatment. As a result, they need flavor enhancers added afterwards. Thanks to Aquaporin’s natural concentration technology, the products enjoyed by future consumers will always have a natural, fresh taste, without

artificial flavors or aromas. This is because natural concentration technology concentrates products gently, without damaging their natural flavors, aromas or nutrients – giving consumers a healthier, tastier and more sustainable choice.

According to Yunfeng Li, natural concentration technology has already caught the attention of the market – and more companies and industries are looking to see what the technology can do for them. The possibilities are almost endless. Natural concentration technology allows brands to open an entirely new world of great tasting and convenient products for their consumers. Products that are healthy and pure – and bursting with natural flavors and aromas.

Part of Yunfeng Li’s food and beverage mission at Aquaporin is also to reduce carbon footprint by condensing the sheer volume of liquid product that companies transport. Natural concentration technology allows companies to extract water from, for example apple juice, while keeping the natural flavors intact. The concentrate can then be transported over long distances at a lower cost and with fewer carbon emissions. On arrival in the final market, water can be added to rehydrate the juice, but none of the original flavor will have been lost.

So next time you enjoy a sip of juice, ask yourself if the flavor is really what you expect. If not, perhaps it is time to make your Sundays artificial flavor and additive free, by choosing a product made with natural concentration technology.

Yunfeng Li, Aquaporin Commercial Director, believes in a near future where taste will exceed expectations.

ConcentrationCondensation

RevolutionIndustrial

Søren Robenhagen is on a mission. He wants to create a new future – one in which every city and industry is smart enough to recycle and reuse every drop of its most precious resource: water.

“The problem today”, as Søren explains, “is that water use in our cities and industries is linear. We take water, use it, treat it and then discharge it into the sea. To get it back, we have to desalinate, which is expensive and resource-heavy – and just not sustainable long-term”.

The city water shortage

Søren Robenhagen has a point. The UN estimates that by 2025 around two-thirds of the world’s population will be living under water-stressed conditions. Droughthit countryside may make the photos, but it is the cities where future water shortages will be most felt.

Already today, one in four global cities faces water stress. In Mexico City, one in five residents gets just a few hours of running water from their taps each week. In Sao Paulo in 2015, the problem was so acute police had to escort water trucks to stop looting. Even London, often thought of as the wettest of cities, is expected to face water supply issues by 2025.

But the solution is within our grasp. Aquaporin is developing an energy-efficient water treatment system that can clean municipal and industrial wastewater until it is good enough to be recycled into industrial processes or the municipal system. In the future, this treated water may even be clean enough to drink.

Energy and water from waste

But why stop there? If there is one thing cities produce in abundance, it is waste. Increasingly, organic waste is collected and turned into CO2-neutral biogas, giving the city a local and reliable source of renewable energy. But once the biogas is extracted, the processed organic waste – known as digestate – is still packed with nutrients and water.

Today, the digestate is quickly treated, often by screw press or centrifuge, and then trucked to the countryside to be used as fertilizer. But trucking is expensive, liquid digestate smells bad, and the balance of nutrients is haphazard. Perhaps worst of all, screwpressed digestate is about 95% water – and it is just being tipped away.

Aquaporin is working with a number of biogas producers to develop a system that can separate clean water from digestate and extract valuable nutrients in a dry form. These nutrients can be converted into a light and easy-to-use fertilizer, while the water can be reused in industrial processes.

The solution is a perfect example of the circular economy. And it is just the beginning. Aquaporin water treatment systems are already being piloted in industries as diverse as pharma and apparel, so in the future, every industry and smart city can clean and reuse every drop of water.

Isn’t it time you joined the revolution?

The first industrial revolution changed the way our cities look. According to Søren Robenhagen, Commercial Director at Aquaporin, the next will change the way they drink.

The Believer

The theory is simple enough. For a technology company, the branding landscape can be broken down into three groups. At one end you have the technology suppliers, like Aquaporin. At the other end are the endusers – the consumers, municipalities, and industries that actually use the product. But the real decisionmakers are in the middle – the resellers and system integrators who take a product to market.

Nearly every technology supplier is good at pushing products at decision-makers, and they have the facts, figures, and spreadsheets to prove it. But how many can create a pull from consumers? How many technology suppliers can build a brand that end-users like and want to use?

For Ed, this is the key to brand success for a simple reason: Key trade decision-makers – the resellers and system integrators – are people and consumers, too. They have feelings, see adverts, and read stories on social media. They want to feel an emotional connection to the brands they buy. And when their customers ask about a brand, they listen.

Ed began Aquaporin’s brand journey three years ago by asking an important question: Why does Aquaporin exist? It soon became apparent that everyone in the company is driven to do good for people and the planet. The company’s first campaigns – Clean water is a human right and Stop bottling and transporting water came out of this. They did not mention technology at all. Instead, they presented the company’s deep-felt

belief that the world must do more to solve water and environmental challenges. The campaigns struck an emotional chord with consumers.

With brand recognition and likeability increasing, the company moved onto stage two: The Whatintroducing the Aquaporin Inside® technology. A drop of nature explained the aquaporin protein and how the membranes work, but it also stayed true to the emotion of the original campaigns by focusing on the natural process that the technology is based on. A drop of nature was backed by the “How” – examples of how companies are using Aquaporin Inside® to overcome specific water challenges.

Together, these Why, What, and How have created a pull from consumers, a recognition of the company and its technology, and a desire to be associated with its vision. Aquaporin is now combining this pulling power with other, more established global brands.

Companies including Vestel and Phillips Water Solutions create cutting-edge products for the consumer market, including water purifiers. These companies are now launching products that utilize Aquaporin Inside® technology. It is a win-win for all concerned. Vestel and Phillips are both powerful brands. They have global reach and are recognized for quality. Aquaporin is a hi-tech company with relatable core values. Together, they are bringing high-quality, naturally filtered drinking water to thousands of people and households worldwide.

When asked if he could make a brand out of a protein, Ed Renner, Vice President of Brand & Marketing at Aquaporin, knew he had to do something slightly rebellious: bring emotion into water treatment.

WaterFeminism

Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer in the world. Marie Sklodowska-Curie is the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in two different fields, chemistry and physics. But, as female scientists, these groundbreaking women may not have gained the acknowledgment they deserve.

Maria Salud Camilleri Rumbau is a chemical engineer and scientist. She has been working as an engineer since 2009, and has experienced firsthand that engineering is a man’s world. But she also knows that women are no longer defined by dated perceptions of what they can and cannot do and, over the years, she has seen many women engineers make an impact.

Creating new role models

In any scientific field, professionals are driven by the same goals. Regardless of gender, they want to answer questions and solve mysteries. Salud found her great interest in water, and especially water cleaning. She was inspired to pursue these interests by one of her chemistry high school teachers. A great communicator, the teacher encouraged Salud to dedicate her career to chemistry and science. It is something she is very grateful for. It led her to study chemical engineering and it has taken her on a journey that she is still enjoying immensely today.

During Salud’s university years, there were more women studying life sciences than men. The men were mainly in the engineering courses. Salud can see that this is beginning to change, with more and

more women entering traditionally male-dominated areas. It is a change that Salud would like to see accelerated by increasing visibility of female role models – both old ones like Ada Lovelace and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, as well as new role models in companies like Aquaporin.

Even today, role models are predominantly male, especially in positions with greater responsibility in government, industry, and academia. Salud firmly believes that female empowerment should be a joint effort between governments and society as a whole. This way, initiatives, such as creating campaigns about great female scientists, or giving incentives to engage more women in decision-making roles, should be set up to promote visibility of female role models, especially in science.

Making an impact

These new female role models will never arise if we do not create them ourselves. At Aquaporin, Salud supervises students – both male and female – at the Aquaporin Academy. Her goal is to encourage them to become excellent engineers who are curious and reflect on results. This way, they can find real solutions to real problems, and become role models for those around them.

The success of Aquaporin Academy shows what a skilled team of mainly female engineers and scientists can do, and allows them to dream that anything is possible.

Nikola Tesla. Albert Einstein. Gustave Eiffel. The list of well-known male scientists and engineers is as long as your arm. But what about women? For years, female scientists have been kept in the shadows. But now, a new generation is bringing female scientists into the light.

Yes, we know,

Water in our cities is something we take for granted.

But standards are falling rapidly due to PFAS and PFOS contamination, causing a risk to mankind.

Stand up for your right to clean water, and help us save the world’s drinking water.

Drinking water in modern homes is fast becoming a tightrope, forcing families to choose between contaminated tap water and expensive, and environmentally damaging bottled water. But the future looks different, and it is made with aquaporins.

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We all know that water is good for us. We may even have been told to drink up to two liters of water a day. But that water may not be as clean as we would like. Even if our tap water is deemed safe enough to drink, it can still contain a large portion of chemicals, microplastics, and other contaminants.

This has seen the rise of a very modern evil: bottled water. A staggering one million plastic bottles are sold in the world every minute. While some may be reused or recycled, the very large majority find their way into landfills and the ocean. For consumers, this creates a stark choice: contaminate your body or the planet.

But imagine a future in which every kitchen has its own water filter, driven by biotechnology. Always on and always ready, the filter will clean even the most contaminated tap water, so homeowners can enjoy a glass of clean, pure, good-tasting, lime-free, healthy water whenever they want – water that is as pure as nature intended. This future may not be as farfetched as it sounds.

Nature’s own water filters

At Aquaporin, we have developed exceptionally efficient water filters powered by aquaporins. Tiny proteins that exist in every living cell, aquaporins transport water in and out of the cell membrane – and they are essential for all life on Earth. Billions of years of evolution have made aquaporins exceptionally efficient, far better than any manmade filter. One gram of aquaporins can filter 700 liters per second.

Using a fusion of advanced biology and engineering, we embed these proteins into all our membranes and products, in a technology called Aquaporin Inside®. The technology has been used and approved by NASA, and applied in industrial processes. Now, we have taken this space-age technology and made it available in home drinking water applications for the first time.

Space age home drinking solutions

Our A2O drinking water product line utilizes Aquaporin Inside® membranes and RO technology. It features two products: An under-the-sink purifier and a built-in kitchen water bar.

In a nod to its space-age origins, the under-the-sink purifier is a sleek NASA-style box, no bigger than an oversized shoebox, that can easily be installed under the sink. We firmly believe that a product should look as cool on the inside as on the outside. So, when opened, you are greeted by a filter room that looks a little like a space shuttle, with white housings and a simple design. The pre-filter, post-filter, and RO-filter are

Thisinside.simplicity

of design is carried into the product’s functionality. Once installed, the A2O under-the-sink purifier works as simple as turning on the water tap, and purified water comes out. It removes all pesticides, PFAS, limestone, bacteria, viruses, and other contaminants – so homeowners can enjoy a greattasting and healthy glass of water whenever they want.

A refreshing blend of form and function

The kitchen water bar utilizes the same technology, but with an extra twist. As well as plain filtered water, it also dispenses sparkling water, chilled water, hot water, and ice cubes – all with just the touch of a button –turning the home into a full-on water bar. The product has the same dimensions as a standard built-in oven and a classy glass front with a touch display, enabling homeowners to integrate it into their kitchen design.

True to our Scandinavian roots, we have also codeveloped a free-standing kitchen water bar with renowned Danish kitchen design company Boform Kitchen.

The A2O

The stand-alone cabinet can be placed anywhere in the kitchen, home, or even the office. It combines the clean lines and shapes of classic Nordic design with carefully curated Scandinavian woods. There is also a matte black version for consumers who favor a more minimalist look.

Simplicity in control

Smart houses and geared-up consumers are increasingly using technology to improve efficiency, save energy and make home maintenance and control simple. The A2O product line is designed to meet these modern requirements.

All products are IoT (Internet of Things) enabled. Using an Aquaporin app, consumers can connect their device to the cloud to get an easy overview of settings, and maintenance requirements to see when filters need to be changed. In the future, this will be made even simpler through an automatic filter replacement program. The app will tell Aquaporin when the filters need replacing, and we will automatically ship the filters directly to the consumers, so they are there when they need them. It is an efficient and worryfree solution – and will ensure the product performs optimally for its entire lifetime.

yourassameROInside®technologyunder-the-sinkwithAquaporinmembranesandtechnologyutilizesthemembranetechnologyusedbyNASA,butinhome.

The bottom line

Aquaporin’s A2O home drinking filters are stylish and space-age, but they fulfill a very real need. Substantial progress has been made in recent years to deliver clean drinking water to the global population. UNICEF and WHO figures show that one in three people around the world still has limited or no access to clean drinking

Inwater.Europe,

Africa, Asia, and South America, many countries still cannot provide tap water to their populations that is clean enough to drink. Even in the US, where tap water is considered safe, many modern millennial consumers no longer want to risk their family’s health with unfiltered tap water. This is causing a continuous rise in plastic bottle consumption, and

thereby increasing the global plastic bottle problem. These consumers are increasingly in the majority. 90% of all new mothers in the US are millennials, born between 1980 and 1995. These parents are fully informed on health and wellness issues. They are committed to buying healthy foods and products for themselves and their children, and they want to avoid potentially harmful chemicals, and other contaminants whenever they grab a glass of water.

All this makes the A2O product line not just a nice to have, but a need to have. It is a beautifully designed and exceptionally functional answer to a very pressing global problem.

The stand-alone cabinet, designed by Danish kitchen designers Boform, can be placed anywhere in the kitchen, home, or even office.

It combines the clean lines and shapes of classic Nordic design with carefully curated Scandinavian woods.

One of the most serious threats to water resources is the degradation of ecosystems, which often takes place through changes to landscapes.

Every change to a landscape will have its own impact. Most of the time directly on natural ecosystems and directly or indirectly on water resources.

Change starts with people

Photographers

Cover David Kovalenko

Page 2-3 Stephen Leonardi

Page 5 Kendal

Page 6

Mike Ko

Page 9 Bjarke Johansen

Page 10-11 Yoksel Zok

Page 12 Bjarke Johansen

Page 14 Bjarke Johansen

Page 17 Bjarke Johansen

Page 20-21 NASA

Page 23 Jesper Grundahl

Page 24-25 Jesper Grundahl

Page 26-27 Lionello Delpiccolo

Page 29 Bjarke Johansen

Page 30-31 Jesper Grundahl

Page 32 Karim Ghantous

Page 34 Yulia Matvienko

Page 35 Luciano Paris

Page 38 Bjarke Johansen

Page 41 Bjarke Johansen

Page 42 Bjarke Johansen

Page 45 Bjarke Johansen

Page 46 Bjarke Johansen

Page 50-51 Mink Mingle

Page 52 Aakanksha Panwar

Page 58-59 Autri Taheri

Page 60-61 Bjarke Johansen

Page 63 NASA

Page 64 Gretchen Seelenbinder

Special thanks to all photographers who graciously provide their pictures for free on unsplash.com as a showcase of their art and photographic talent. We salute you.

Extended thanks to unsplash.com for continuously providing a free platform for artists and photographers to express themselves through their art, while highlighting important Earth matters to a global audience.